Soil Your Undies: The Cotton Test

The Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food, and Rural Affairs recently had an article about how people are burying their cotton underwear in the soil to determine amount of biological activity in the soil. The idea is that the more microbes in the soil, the more they will munch on the undies. When they checked the underwear after 2 months, they found that the fields that had cover crops were more biologically active and hardly anything remained of the underwear. The conventionally grown soil did not have so many microbes so the underwear was pretty much in one piece when it was pulled out. To learn more about the process visit this Youtube video. To learn what happened in an area that has cover crops, view this Youtube video. To see what happened on a conventional cropfield, view this Youtube video. If you want to learn more about what Holistic Management practitioners have been able to do with cover crops, check out Gail Fuller's case study.