What Spring Brings in the Woods
The sun is stronger than a month ago, birds are singing, critters are moving about, spring is here! Our shrubs and trees are waking up but that’s not the only vegetation ramping up in the woods! Minnesota has a variety of ecosystems including a variety of forest types. Each is unique and offers different opportunities. […]
Soil Monitoring, Could it Become a Thing?
In the land of 10,000 lakes (technically 11,842 lakes), it is obvious why water testing is so critical. Funds are spent annually to test surface and ground water quality with recommendations, impairment listings, regulations, and laws resulting from these studies. This testing is imperative to understanding the conditions to keep our citizens and biological communities […]
COVID-19 and Events
Due to the COVID-19 spread, events are being cancelled or postponed. If you are planning on attending an upcoming event, please contact the event organizer to determine if the event is still scheduled. Please follow precautions and best practices to keep yourself, family, and loved ones healthy.
Preparing Gardens While the Weather is Frightful
We’re in the dead of winter, temperatures are cold, the wind blows, and that lovely white stuff is blanketing our landscape. How is a gardener supposed to get their fix while improving conditions for the coming growing season? Snow seeding! You can snow seed different cover crops this winter so when temperatures start rising, you’ll […]
Local Soil Health Groups and Their Importance
What is a local soil health group? It’s a group of farmers that provide range of support including discussions, sharing experiences, learning with and from each other, bringing in specialist for education, completing testing, doing test plots, working together for obtaining seed and equipment, obtaining funding for projects, and being leaders in their area willing […]
What to Do During the Cold Winter Months
So it’s the time of year to spend more time inside, review how 2019 went, go over financials, and plan for 2020. What are you looking at for the coming year? This is the perfect time to plan, take the time to evaluate what your ground needs – do you need to increase infiltration, increase […]
Breaking Wind
Breaking Wind – While Improving Air Quality, Soils, and Diversifying Breaking wind isn’t always a bad thing, it can actually bring a smile to your face! If you look around and notice snirt (dirty snow), you are seeing one reason to break wind. During the snowy months we are able to see some of the […]
MN Soil Health Coalition activities
The Minnesota Soil Health Coalition has been busy providing education, mentoring, networking, and logical information to farmers, the general public, and youth. We are very grateful for our members and partners for participating and support in accomplishing these objectives! Because of your support and understanding of the importance of implementing soil health practices, we have been […]
Alley Cropping
Alley Cats or Alley Cropping? We know that alley cats aren’t welcoming, comfortable, or what we’d like to interact with but alley cropping isn’t as rough. So what is alley cropping? It’s growing food, forage, or specialty crops between rows of trees and/or shrubs. You can start with a forested area and clear out land […]
Focus on the Front End and Quit Putting Out Fires
Cleaning drinking water, mitigating flooding, removal of sediment, and installing erosion control structures are some of the activities that receive large amounts of funding to complete. These activities are a result of multiple sources and we aren’t always treating the causes, we’re mitigating their effects. Instead of paying on the back end, pay on the […]