Purpose of This Workbook

For producers

We provide background information on physical, chemical, and biological characteristics of soils as well as activities to try for monitoring and how different management activities fit into the Healthy Soil Principles. We encourage you to reach out to the extension programs at your local universities, Natural Resources Conservation Service, and local Conservation Districts to help determine the techniques that may be best suited to your goals. And finally, we encourage you to speak to your social and professional networks to learn from and share your knowledge with others.

This workbook is a living document. Please make it your own!

• Write in it.

• Get it dirty.

• Keep it in your truck.

• Use it as a reference for tools to understand and monitor soils.

• Use it to support your teaching techniques.

• Copy forms and quizzes to use in monitoring and teaching.

• And, if you get it too dirty, coffee stained, muddy, wet, or otherwise wrecked, print copies of all or part of it for free: https://quiviracoalition.org/techguides/

For trainers and outreach educators

One of this workbook’s goals is to establish consistent baseline information and vocabulary that will allow trainers and outreach educators to reduce confusion for the producers that we work with across the state. This workbook is intended as a teaching tool, with activities and discussions to do in person, but also someone could download it and read through it on their own. The soil fundamentals section will root the reader in the physical, chemical, and biological characteristics of soils. The soil health principles will help you discuss and evaluate management practices with producers. We also provide new ways to teach and engage diverse audiences in active learning when engaging them in discussions about soils. The in-field and activities are meant as “stepping stones” for someone who has never thought about monitoring and evaluating their soil, before they take on techniques that require specialized equipment/expertise/or are more costly. The idea is that if people start building consistent monitoring into their operation, when a Technical Service Proider comes out and says something like “You know, you’ll get texture better data if you send this sample out to a lab instead of doing a ribbon test” it will just be a minor adjustment instead of a major new thing to take on.