Tonight, Penny and I attended the Greater Columbus Growing Coalition (G.C.G.C) meeting at Broad Street Presbyterian Church in Columbus. The G.C.G.C is a newly formed organization that focuses on bring folks together to promote Civic Agriculture. Civic Agriculture is bringing together people in the community who are focusing on growing food for the community. G.C.G.C has different types of members including community gardeners, individuals interested in helping people eat healthier and individuals marketing and selling locally grown food.
We had "social/networking" time before the meeting where we mingled and heard about the work others are doing in the community. Dr. Darrah from CLC testing labs talked about preparing soil samples for testing. My word of the week (from Dr. Darrah's presentation) is kriging. Kriging is a statistical technique for used to randomly select samples. This was demonstrated as walking in a zigzag pattern to collect soil samples in area. Dr. Darrah reminded everyone when we take soil samples to get a clean sample that does not contain mulch and other non-soil material. We should take a number of samples from about 3 to 6 inches and mix these samples in a bucket to get a sample to send in for testing.
Dr. Darrah also talked briefly about the way CLC test for nutrients. This was demonstrated with a pyramid chart showing the basic nutrients and also micro-nutrients. We also heard some about heavy metals and soil testing. One concern that many gardeners have with their soil is lead contamination. Dr. Darrah will be back at a future meeting to so over the results of soils test and explain how we should interpret the results. As always we get so much information from these meetings. It is always good to hang out with our gardening friends!
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