Introduction to Building Better Soils
- 2 hours on-demand video
- Full lifetime access
- Access on mobile and TV
- Certificate of Completion
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- Understand the relationship between soil health, plant productivity, and nutrition.
- Name the 5 soil components that make up a healthy soil.
- Carry out qualitative, on site assessments of soil texture and structure.
- Identify the 16 classic, and 18 contemporary mineral nutrients recognized as essential for plant health
- Make practical decisions about when to run soil chemistry tests.
- Understand why scarcity of a single nutrient may limit plant growth, even when other nutrients are abundant.
- Reasons for measuring and managing soil cation exchange capacity (CEC) and pH
- Why researchers are exploring soil redox chemistry as an indicator of soil health.
- Basic interest in growing plants (farming, gardening, etc.) or building soil for environmental restoration.
Healthy soils are key to clean environments and nutrient dense food production. As such, healthy soils play key roles in the profitability of any farm, and the 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.
You will be shown the 5 key components of soil, and how each component influences overall soil health.
You 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.
- Farmers, Gardeners, and other Growers seeking to understand basic soil chemistry, biology, and health principles.
- Farmers, Gardeners, and other Growers who want to optimize soil health in order to reduce the need for synthetic inputs.
- Growers interested in maximizing production.
- Students or entry level agricultural, horticultural, or natural resource professionals.
- Science teachers seeking real life applications for basic soil ecology information.
This lesson provides a general overview of what we will cover in the course, why the content matters, and who can benefit from enrolling.
In this section we explore the relationship between healthy farm soils and healthy populations, highlighting the impact that industrialization has had on human health and consumer understanding of what constitutes "good food."
Life in the soil depends on chemical reactions and related energy transfer. In this I discuss the need to understand that chemistry, biology, and physics are all tightly coupled. You can change the biology by changing the chemistry and physics of the soil. You can also change the chemistry and physics of the soil by changing the biology.