Introduction to Building Better Soils

Healthy soils are an important key to clean environments and nutrient dense food production. As such, healthy soils support the sustainability and the profitability of any farm. Healthy soils also support the sustainability, health, and prosperity of any society.

In this course, I will introduce basic principles about how soils work to clean the air and water around us, and to produce nutritious food. This course targets beginners, and does not dive deeply into the complexity of soil microbiology, chemistry and physics. Rather, I seek to help home and market gardeners, hobby farmers, and growers with minimal scientific training understand those basic parameters they can monitor to ensure their soil is producing healthy crops.

Participants will be shown the 5 key components of soil, and how each component influences overall soil health. They will learn how to assess soil texture, improve soil structure, and manage soil minerals, organic matter, and microbiology to ensure that soil quality and crop nutrition improve. I avoid making any but the most general recommendations about additives that can be used to improve or restore soils.

Because the course reaches growers in vastly different natural and regulatory environments, it is important to stick to general principles that apply almost anywhere.