Field Notes – February 2026
Are you ready to get started gardening already? So is our new Horticulturalist, Tom Zink! In this issue, David Redhage introduces him, and then Tom himself explains his plans for the horticulture program this year.
Soil health is key to any gardening – or farming, or ranching – endeavor. We’re sharing news about how to both build and monitor soil health:
- One great way to boost soil health – that also creates many other benefits – is to add a poultry enterprise to your existing operations, and ATTRA has a new resource explaining the ins and outs.
- Another multi-benefit approach to enhancing soil health is to incorporate prairie strips into crop fields. The resulting improvements in soil health can be amazingly quick!
- Typically, tracking those changes has been tedious and time-consuming, involving multiple soil samples and lots of labwork – but a new approach is streamlining soil health monitoring by borrowing tech from earthquake scientists.