Soil School 2025

Presented by: Nathan E. Stacey, OSU Extension Small Farms

For farmers and gardeners alike, soil tests help you better understand the current conditions of a field or property. They help guide your management decisions which allows you to maintain productive, healthy, and fully functioning soils. N,P,K? pH? CEC? % organic matter? Boron? In this session, you will learn what all those numbers and letters mean, and which practices can help you meet your plant’s needs. If you’ve already had a test done, bring it! Possible amendments, what you can add to the soil to change those numbers, will also be discussed. Come find out all about soil tests and what to do with them.

Presented by: Catherine Creech, Mt. Hood Community College

Learn about the fascinating world of mushrooms in your own back yard! This talk will cover fungal ecology with an emphasis on the role fungi play as decomposers, recyclers, and symbiotic partners. We will also discuss fungal life cycles, classification, soil interactions, and common garden mushrooms found in our area.

Presented by: Hailey Maria Salazar, Portland State University

This session will bring together Indigenous Traditional Ecological and Cultural Knowledge (ITECK) with regenerative practices to explore Indigenous perspectives that have long recognized soil as a dynamic and living system. Attendees will learn about how ITECK engages with soil as a complex web that sustains all life, and traditional strategies in reading the landscape for indicators of soil health and biodiversity.

Presented by: Signe Danler, Oregon State University Extension

This presentation covers everything you didn’t know you wanted to know about garden mulches: their many benefits, what types are best for different purposes, when and how to apply them and what mulches NOT to use. Includes living mulch – i.e., groundcovers.

This garden tour will take visitors through each section of the master garden (certified at the Gold Level for the Backyard Habitat Certification Program), sharing the process used for planning, site preparation and garden installation. The Master Gardeners will highlight native plants, gardening for wildlife strategies, and strategies used to help manage the soil and characteristics of each garden section. The tour will also include instructions on taking soil samples and demonstrations for different irrigation methods.

Three different soil health demonstrations will be performed—a rainfall simulator, slake test, and slump test—to demonstrate how soil biology and vegetation can affect soil-water relations within the same soil type. An emphasis will be placed on how management decisions can affect water infiltrationInfiltration Water absorbs into the ground instead of running over the surface, soil water holding capacity, and water quality.