Building Healthy Living Soil for Plant and Planet Health

This will be an ONLINE Zoom class!

This Class will be my half of the class taught at the 2020 OEFFA Conference covering basic soil microbiology, what it does for plants and our bodies, and how to restore soil life and nourish it without tillage, including basic aerobic compost tea brewing techniques.

With our compacted clay soils in much of Ohio, it can be a challenge to increase organic matter and to get it worked in very deep. Tilling can break it up, but also takes soil succession backwards and smaller particles usually compact even worse than before, but there is another way!

The Keyline Plow was originally used to help capture water on sloped soils, but can also be used to open thin, deep trenches in the ground that allow air and water to infiltrate and are the perfect place to introduce soil life in the form of aerobic compost tea, charged biochar and diverse cover crops to begin to build soil structure and regenerate aerobic life in the soil in the presence of existing vegetation; helping plants grow deeper roots for stronger, healthier, resilient crops, not to mention sequestering carbon to reduce global warming!

There is a sliding scale in place for those who are hard hit financially but please be honest to evaluate that as to leave those for people that need it. A guide is pictured below. If you can chip in extra or make donations i would appreciate it as I currently have no income as my shop at second street market has been closed along with the market and I have not been taking any pay from DUG farm in order to put everything back into building shared infrastructure for new farmers. Thanks!

About our teacher:

Lisa Helm is the founder of Garden Station art park and community garden, Dayton Urban Grown Coop, EarthFest and has been a speaker for gardening and planning conferences and sustainable living events at the state and national level. She is Permaculture Design Certified through the Cincinnati Permaculture Institute, a Master Organic Gardener, has taken classes in natural building at Blue Rock Station and urban farming with Will Allen, Jean-Martin Fortier, Singing Frogs Farm and Neversink Farm; and is a graduate of Rocky Mountain Seed Alliance Seed School. In 2013 Lisa and her partner, George, opened “Dayton Urban Green”, a sustainable living shop at the public market to provide supplies for the workshop series and eco-friendly options for everyday items.