Ecologist helping North American growers use their yards to help fight the climate crisis 🌻
Building a greener tomorrow with soil 🍄
Hi friend,There are few things I love in this world more than soil. It’s where all life starts and where we go when we die. What I don’t love is how poorly humans have treated soil. Why don’t we have more respect for something that grows our food? Something that we need to continue life on Earth? Soil science is an up-and-coming field with new findings happening all the time. When the legendary (and recently deceased 😞) Dr. Elaine Ingham started researching soil biology in the 1990s, she was met with a lot of resistance. Her colleagues in academia were convinced we already knew what there was to know about soil, and that it had a lot more to do with chemistry than biology. But boy, were they wrong. The reality is that humans have been destroying the soil across the world for thousands of years through tilling and other poor land management practices.Because of this, most of us have never even seen healthy soil. This means that scientists have been studying dead soil and unhealthy plants for centuries and treating that as the baseline. It’s a big part of my mission to help others learn why and how to regenerate the soil around them.Recent studies have shown that if we regenerated soil on a large enough scale, we could remove ALL Anthropogenic (human-made) carbon dioxide from the atmosphere within just two years! And soil regeneration starts with compost. Compost creates conditions where soil microbes can thrive, reproduce, and transform nutrients like nitrogen into plant-available amino acids. Did you know that plants prefer to get their nutrients from eating microbes and microbial waste?Having the nutrients present isn’t enough - the plants need to be able to access them with the help of microorganisms. And when plants grow in healthy soil with a robust microbiome, they become immune to pests and diseases, sequester more carbon dioxide, and produce more nutritious fruits. Want to learn more about how to regenerate the soil in your yard to grow healthier, happier, easier plants?Check out the Soil Secrets Masterclass for an introduction to how soil ACTUALLY works, what you can do to help, and a simple, non-overwhelming guide to getting started with compost.
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Native Yardening
Ecologist helping North American growers use their yards to help fight the climate crisis 🌻
Hi friend, As I post more on social media about the problems caused by invasive plants, I realize how much misunderstanding there is around these issues. I always get a little discouraged when I see firsthand how misinformed the general public is about how nature works. But I also understand that it's a systemic issue. We aren't taught about these things. I recently made this post on Facebook and Instagram, showing a handful of common invasive species in North America. For some reason, people...
Hi friend, Galls! What are they? Should you be concerned if you see something like this on your plants? A gall is an abnormal growth on exterior plant tissue (leaves, branches, flowers, etc.). They may look like tumors, warts, balls, or lumps, and vary widely in shape, size, color, etc. They’re complex and highly organized structures, and science still has a lot to learn about them. Most galls are caused by insects and other invertebrates like wasps, midges, aphids, mites, etc. either feeding...
Hi friend, Something that I don’t think is talked about enough is the fact that we’re living through one of the largest mass extinction events to ever happen on Earth. Our planet has lost 73% of wildlife biodiversity between 1970 and 2020, according to the World Wildlife Fund's Living Planet Report Right now, 40% of all insect species globally are in decline. And up to 1/3 of all insects are in the range to be endangered. Insects are the foundation of the food chain for both human and...