I quit spending all my money on grid sampling, fertilizer, and lime. My dollar is best spent growing something. Always growing something. Photosynthesis is the only way to get carbon out of the atmosphere and into my soils where it can be put to good use. That’s why I keep a living root in my soils 100% of the year when possible.

Carbon is on the rise in my soils. I can see it when my shovel turns over rich, dark, living earth where just a decade before there was only lifeless, tan clay. This progress has been achieved through my combined use of no-till, cover crops, planting into green cover, double cropping, carbon-conscious crop rotations and the addition of livestock.

Years of layering in carbon-building strategies have paid off, and I look forward to finding new techniques to take my soils even further in the future. Until then, here’s what I’m doing today. 

Dirt or Soil

Organic chemistry is the study of carbon. Carbon is life. It gives us water infiltration, water and nutrient storage and nutrient cycling. When I look at an NRCS Soil Survey, it doesn’t show me carbon and topsoil. It shows me the…