Informal science education is a key for community engagement and healthy gardening. Community gardening brings numerous benefits such as fresh produce, therapy, physical exercise, reduction in grocery bills, improvement of mood among many others. “Last weekend I had the privilege to teach community gardeners on the importance of soil testing
The Biospheres, working through the CDA*, accompanies and trains farmers/agricultural companies in the agroecological transition based on a soil conservation approach. The group is also working on applied research projects and therefore on trials under real farming conditions in which they evaluate the impact of certain changes in practices on
Ariel White, a ninth grader at Pretty River Academy in Ontario, Canada, utilized microBIOMETER® in their science fair project titled Post Wildfire Forest Reboot Kit. The project was awarded first place at their high school and chosen to compete at the Simcoe County Regional Science Fair. At the regional fair,
Graham Mackie, Golf Course Manager at Edzell Golf Course in the U.K., has been using microBIOMETER® to monitor the health of the soil on the greens. Here is what he had to say about our soil test. “I really like microBIOMETER®. It is simple to use and for the first time I
Sustainable Organic Q8 was launched in mid-2018, educating people on recycling their organic waste, being environmentally aware and teaching people how to grow whatever and wherever they can. As far as gardening/farming styles, Sustainable Organic focuses on the value of the living soil and the soil food web and teaching
Ben Taylor-Davies, also known as Regen Ben, is a farmer and bioagri-ecologist working from Herefordshire in the UK. His farm is based in Ross-on-Wye and has been focused on environmental improvements for the past 22 years. His work includes creating 12km of new hedges with 6m of pollen and nectar
Often, we are asked about variance – different results when you test the same sample. Our answer is that nature produces most of this variance. To explain, when you measure out 0.5 cc of soil, you have on average about 0.6 grams of soil. If your microBIOMETER® results read 300ugMBC/gram
In learning how to develop healthy soil for healthy plants and people, Frans Plugge of New Zealand discovered the importance of increasing the fungi population in his garden and this led him to microBIOMETER®. “The microBIOMETER® soil test makes measuring the fungi to bacteria ratio so easy,” Frans said. To
microBIOMETER® reports the microbial biomass as ug of microbial carbon/gram of soil. The chart pictured here shows how much carbon can be stored in an acre just by increasing microbial biomass alone. (Chemically fertilized farmland averages about 100 ug/microbial C/g of soil.) Microbial biomass is the best single estimate of
Katharhy G. is an agroecosystem and ethnoscience researcher who traveled to Ecuador to investigate the relationship between microbial biomass and crop health, as well as to study the local indigenous agriculture practices. He visited 28 different farms growing 15 different crops. 14 of these farms are practicing conventional farming, while
Many first-time cannabis growers don’t think too hard about the soil their plants will be growing in. If the soil looks healthy enough, it should be good to go, right? Well, it might be, but that isn’t enough information to tell for sure. If you really want to know whether
Soil microbes are tightly bound to and often covered in soil making them very hard to evaluate by microscopy. The special magic of microBIOMETER® is the extraction powder and whisking process that separates most of the microbes from the soil. And during the 20 minute settling time allows the soil