#soil-sterilisation

#soil-sterilisation

Stagnant indoor air is one of the less discussed reasons houseplants struggle. Fungal spots, mould on the compost surface and pest infestations like mealybugs can all be traced back to a room with no airflow.

Plump, wiggly slugs may look innocuous, but they can wreak serious havoc on a carefully-curated garden, even causing total crop failure.

Orange trees enjoy the same temperatures as humans, and are most comfortable at around 65 to 75 degrees Fahrenheit, though they'll do fine in a much wider temperature range.

Crushed clean, dry eggshells, when scattered over the soil, are intended to stop adult gnats from laying eggs and potentially add natural fertilizer. However, they merely sit on the surface, collecting dust, while the gnats remain attracted to the damp compost.

"The awesome thing with pulse crops is no nitrogen needs... not having to put any nitrogen on a pulse crop is a great starting point," he says, noting that this allows growers to not only meet PKS requirements but, in some cases, build soil fertility for the rotation.

From ultra-processed foods to hidden chemicals, we ask whether what's on our plates is making us ill. From ultra-processed foods to chemicals linked to cancer and chronic disease, this episode unpacks what's really inside everyday supermarket products. We examine how mass production and convenience culture reshaped our diets, why some ingredients are banned in parts of the world but legal elsewhere, and what FDA-approved actually means.

Last week, I was making my morning coffee-you know, the complicated order I'm too embarrassed to say out loud at coffee shops-when I noticed the pile of used grounds in my filter. For years, I'd been tossing these straight into the trash without a second thought. But then I remembered something my grandmother wrote in one of her letters years ago: "The garden teaches us that nothing is truly waste."

Raised beds provide access to fresh food, even organic veggies and fruits if you choose, for a fraction of grocery store prices.

Kochia continues to spread beyond its traditional areas, bringing resistance to multiple herbicide groups. This shift may require growers to rethink their canola systems, including variety selection.

If you've got it severe enough it can be devastating and if not it can be managed... it just depends on where you are and what weather conditions you've had in the past and the amount of peas or lentils you've grown on those fields before.

The term "soil fatigue" or exhaustion refers to the condition that soil profiles take on when they've been heavily monocropped and untended. This soil is devoid of the microbial content that offers plants bioavailable food. It lacks the fungal and bacterial organisms that interact with plant nutrients.

To an unimaginable eye, a seed looks inert. Yet they are packed with genetic information and biological processes poised to unfold. All it takes is the right configuration of signals and stimuli from the environment to let them know it's time to dare to grow.

As concepts such as "regenerative" and "biodynamic" continue to enter the mainstream coffee lexicon, scientists continue to literally dig into the soil to give them meaning. A recent peer-reviewed study from India's Western Ghats argues that one of the clearest signals of healthy, sustainable coffee farms lies in the ground itself, with organic coffee soils performing better than soils from conventional farms treated with synthetic inputs.

"I've been with Syngenta for 28 years," Ramachandran says, noting that early travels across Canada shaped his passion for seed care. "What really stood out to me is seeing firsthand the passion, the resilience and the impact the growers made." Those experiences, combined with Canada's short growing season, continue to guide his work. "Everything that we have done... is around addressing those challenges, and how do we create solutions that are fit for purpose, for Canadian growers?"

People grow asparagus from crowns because it shortens the long wait times for harvesting. From seed, you'll need to wait three years before harvesting asparagus. Some people consider that a waste of time. The tradeoff is that you can keep harvesting every spring for up to 15 years or more. If you plant crowns, you get a one-year jump on things. However, those crowns may have soil-borne diseases you don't know about, so there is a risk involved. Seeds remove that problem.

When you think of farming, what ingredients do you generally associate with a successful harvest? The basics certainly come to mind: fertile soil, plenty of sunlight and lots of water. But there are other variables that can also mean the difference between a crop of healthy fruits and vegetables and a large heap of organic waste. And it turns out that one of those variables is a very small hawk.

More than 100 research studies show that soybeans typically suffer from a nitrogen gap when yields exceed 60 bu/ac. At that yield level, the combination of soil nitrogen and nodulation often doesn't provide what the plant requires to achieve higher yields. Could biologicals - including nitrogen-fixing endophytes and biostimulants - fill that "yield gap" and provide the nitrogen required at high yield levels? That's a question Syngenta Canada biological field specialist Greg Stewart has been working on for the past two years.

My older brother has worked with pigs his entire adult life, managing about 70,000 of them across five counties, Faaborg says. But we got to a point where he went from laughing at me to saying: well, I guess maybe I'll quit my job and help you out. Now he's the most dedicated, says Katherine Jernigan, director of the Transfarmation Project at Mercy for Animals, a non-profit that helped the Faaborgs make the switch and set up their new business, 1100 Farm.