David Kuchta, Ph.D. has 10 years of experience in gardening and has read widely in environmental history and the energy transition. An environmental activist since the 1970s, he is also a historian, ...

CORVALLIS – When you walk about your yard on a wet day, do your shoes stick in the mud? Could you make ceramic pots out of the soil in your garden? If the answers are yes to both, odds are you have ...

David Kuchta, Ph.D. has 10 years of experience in gardening and has read widely in environmental history and the energy transition. An environmental activist since the 1970s, he is also a historian, ...

Photo caption: This undated photo shows a shovelful of soil in New Paltz, N.Y. Good care, mostly by regularly adding plenty of organic materials and avoiding compaction, results in a soil with many ...

Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... Soil is soil, right? In some years, the dirt in your garden yields decent tomatoes and pretty marigolds while in other years nothing much grows. (Maybe ...

Most garden soils are either too sandy or too heavy with clay. If yours is the latter there's a kitchen pantry staple that can help break things up.

Both extremes in soil have their advantages and shortcomings. These soils act the way they do mostly because of the size of the particles that make them up. Sand particles are relatively large (by ...