Soil your undies in Sudbury — CBC tests local land for active microbes

It's not a shameful thing to say you soiled your undies.

The Soil Conservation Council of Canada is challenging people across the country to do just that. It's an experiment used to test the activity of your soil.

CBC Morning North host Markus Schwabe invited Nat Basiliko to try the experiment around Greater Sudbury.

"The premise is that you can take a pair of pure-cotton, white underwear and bury it for two months in different soils," says Basiliko, a soils scientist at Laurentian University.

"Then you come back, and depending on how much is left, you have an idea of how active your soils are. The microbes and insects that have eaten the cotton tells you how much organic matter is turning over naturally in your soils."

A field, a forest and farmer

Schwabe and Basiliko planted a pair in a re-planted forest. Then, they put a pair in the ground of a barren, wide open plot of land.

Finally, they travelled to Stuart McCall's farm on the outskirts of Sudbury. The two planted a pair of underwear in one of the most fertile parts of McCall's garden.

Then, they waited.

Sudbury soils have polluted history

The soil around Sudbury is unique because of the mining and smelting at the turn of the last century. Clouds of acidic smoke wiped out plant life. That allowed for extreme erosion, washing away much of the soil. What remained was very acidic.

But since the 1970s, there's been a huge effort to re-green Sudbury. Tonnes of lime was added to the ground to reduce the acidity, and millions of trees have been planted.

Undies give feeding frenzy to microbes

Basiliko says the undies provide a feeding frenzy for any microbes in the soil. They eat dead plant remains coming from roots or leaves or wood.

"Then, they break down organic compounds, release the nutrients tied up in there like nitrogen and phosphorous. Those nutrients that come out then are available for the next generation of plants to re-grow."

After two months, the two dig up the underwear. The pairs buried in the replanted forest and the barren soil were almost as good as new.

But the farmer's field was a different story.

"It kind of proves that the way I condition my soil is the right way to go," says McCall.

"So it gives me hope that if we continue to develop the land, adjust the pH, get the microbe concentration higher, we have plenty more land here to develop and make the farm bigger and stronger."