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Soil covers only 10% of the earth’s surface, but within this small area, all of the world’s crops are produced. It provides the anchor that allows plants to grow upright and is the primary source of water and nutrients for plants. Scientists have identified over 70,000 varieties of soil in the United States alone...

The farm-to-table process in China starts in villages like this one in the agricultural heartland. Food from the fields of Ge Songqing and her neighbors ends up in their kitchens or in the local market, and from there goes to other provinces. The foods are Chinese staples: rice, cabbage, carrots, turnips and sweet potatoes. But the fields are ringed by factories and irrigated with water tainted by industrial waste. Levels of toxic heavy metals in the wastewater here are among the highest in China, and residents fear the soil is similarly contaminated. Though they have no scientific proof, they suspect...

One of the best ways to combat the deer, the dirt, and freezing temperatures, while optimizing your available garden space, is with the use of raised garden beds...

. Good morning fellow gardeners! Here in NE Louisiana the weatherman claims we will reach 90 degrees today. He is really starting to get on my nerves ... doesn't he know that this is the first week of March, for pete's sake? He could shade the truth and tell us it's going to be 68, it's not like he's given bad information before, he does it at least 3 days a week. But, I digress.First off this week, I want to share a link that fanfan, one of our gardening FRiends in Canada, sent to me earlier in the...

. Greetings from hot and sticky NE Louisiana! We set a record high yesterday at 89 degrees. I miss the mountains of Montana already. It averaged around 15 degrees while we were there and I was walking around in shirt sleeves. Without the extreme dampness, the cold is really comfortable.I want to extend a big THANK YOU to Red Devil_232 and Ellendra for taking care of the thread in my absence. Y'all did wonderful work and I appreciate your efforts more than you will know. I had expected to be able to post the thread for the past 2...

I have a dear friend and neighbor who is elderly and not in the best of health. Day in and day out during gardening season she sits at her kitchen table and watches me work in my yard and garden, living vicariously through me. Once or twice a week I'll take her some vegetables and we discuss gardening, which was such an important part of her earlier years. You can see the love of gardening in her eyes every time we have a talk. I asked her one day to tell me the difference between dirt and soil. Soil,...

Fukushima soil decontamination zone may be larger than expected Topic: Global consequences of Japanese quake The Japanese government said it would lay down new soil pollution standards for the area around the stricken Fukushima nuclear power station, expanding the soil decontamination zone to neighboring prefectures, the Asahi Shimbun newspaper said on Tuesday. "Our goal is to reduce radiation levels to under 1 millisievert. Those areas with radiation levels between 1 millisievert and 5 millisieverts will naturally be covered," said Goshi Hosono, the state minister in charge of the Fukushima nuclear accident. According to a preliminary decontamination plan made last month,...

HELSINKI (AFP) – Finnish researchers called for a revision of climate change estimates Monday after their findings showed emissions from soil would contribute more to climate warming than previously thought. "A Finnish research group has proved that the present standard measurements underestimate the effect of climate warming on emissions from the soil," the Finnish Environment Institute said in a statement. "The error is serious enough to require revisions in climate change estimates," it said, adding that all climate models used soil emission estimates based on measurements received using an erroneous method. The institute said that while emissions from soil were...

Centuries-old European explorers' tales of lost cities in the Amazon have long been dismissed by scholars, in part because the region is too infertile to feed a sprawling civilization. But new discoveries support the idea of an ancient Amazonian urban network—and ingeniously engineered soil may have made it all possible.

New results from NASA's Phoenix Mars lander suggest that the surface layers of the Martian arctic region may not be as friendly to life as initial results suggested, NASA said today. Two samples analyzed within the last month by Phoenix's Microscopy, Electrochemistry and Conductivity Analyzer (MECA) suggest that the Martian dirt may contain perchlorate, a highly oxidizing substance, which would create a harsh environment for any potential life. The findings stand against the results from MECA's first analysis, which indicated the dirt was Earth-like in certain respects, including its pH and the presence of certain minerals. "Initial MECA analyses suggested...

Hardy Earth bacteria can grow in lunar soil 00:53 14 March 2008 NewScientist.com news service David Shiga, Houston A hardy life form called cyanobacteria can grow in otherwise inhospitable lunar soil, new experiments suggest. Future colonists on the Moon might be able to use the cyanobacteria to extract resources from the soil that could be used to make rocket fuel and fertiliser for crops. NASA plans to send astronauts back to the Moon starting in 2020, with the ultimate aim of setting up a permanent lunar base. Sustaining such a base will be a major challenge, because it is so...

The soil on Mars may contain microbial life! Joop Houtkooper of the University of Giessen, Germany, will declare on Friday the Viking spacecraft may have found signs of a weird life form based on hydrogen peroxide on the subfreezing, arid Martian surface. His analysis of one of the experiments carried out by the Viking spacecraft suggests that 0.1 percent of the Martian soil could be of biological origin. That is roughly comparable to biomass levels found in some Antarctic permafrost, home to a range of hardy bacteria and lichen. Developing....

For today's Halloween GPoW, I challenged myself. I have frequently posted pictures of volcanoes, waterfalls, caves, arches and bridges, canyons, and mountains; I've occasionally veered off that path with landslides, remote-sensing views, and a couple of crystals and minerals. So my challenge was to come up with something DIFFERENT; unusual, photo-worthy, and significant geologically. And also something a bit relevant to Halloween. See if you think I succeeded. All of these are in the United States.

   Naturally and Safely Treat Contaminated Soil and Water with Natural Enviro 8000 BioremediationNatural Environmental Systems, LLC announces the addition of Natural Enviro 8000 Bioremediation, for use in the removal of petroleum hydrocarbons and chlorinated solvents from soil and water, to its existing line of all natural microbial products.(PRWEB) October 2, 2006 -- Natural Environmental Systems, LLC (www.naturalenviro.com)announces the addition of Natural Enviro 8000 Bioremediation, for use in the removal of petroleum hydrocarbons and chlorinated solvents from soil and water, to its existing line of all natural microbial products. Natural Enviro 8000 is a proprietary blend of microorganisms that have...

PESHAWAR: The head of the Islamabad-based Al-Quds Media Centre has received an audio message from a senior Taliban leader in which he asked Muslims living in the US to leave the country as soon as possible “because God’s punishment would fall on America in the month of Ramazan.” Jamal Ismail, a senior journalist who once worked for Al-Jazeera television channel and is now head of the Al-Quds Media Centre, told The News that he received a phone call Thursday from Taliban leader Mulla Masoom Afghani. “Afghani said he was speaking from somewhere in Kandahar province. He read out the message...

Border guards seized a British lorry on its way to make a delivery to the Iranian military - after discovering it was packed with radioactive material that could be used to build a dirty bomb. The lorry set off from Kent on its way to Tehran but was stopped by officials at a checkpoint on Bulgaria's northernborder with Romania after a scanner indicated radiation levels 200 times above normal. The lorry was impounded and the Bulgarian Nuclear Regulatory Agency (NPA) was called out. On board they found ten lead-lined boxes addressed to the Iranian Ministry of Defence. Inside each box...

Soil health crisis threatens Africa's food supply 12:16 31 March 2006 NewScientist.com news service Roxanne Khamsi Population pressures combined with limited access to fertilisers threaten the future of farming in Africa, a new study warns. The report highlights the continent’s “soil health crisis”, revealing that three-quarters of its farmlands are severely degraded. The politicians and researchers behind the report stress that urgent changes are necessary to improve food security in the continent, particularly in sub-Saharan countries. Agriculture is the main source of income for two-thirds of Africa’s population, according to the document from the International Center for Soil Fertility and...

Ever since the horrific public assassination of Rabbi Meir Kahane at the Marriott Hotel in New York City in 1990, there has been a small, yet vocal group of individuals trying to get certain US authorities - both state and federal - to pay attention to his murder. Their many entreaties both for personal justice and for a wider investigation fell on deaf ears. Nonetheless, the ramifications from the inaction of these US authorities can no longer be ignored. This small group's personal pain at the rabbi's cold-blooded assassination fueled their initial anguished pleas. However, there was much more underlying...

...A van set off an alert yesterday when it passed through a recently installed radiation portal monitor at the Santa Teresa port of entry. US Customs and Border Protection officers say they found 49 baggies of soil from Mexico hidden in the door panels...

Michelle Malkin is a syndicated columnist and author of two books, of which her latest is In Defense of Internment (New York: Regnery Publishing, 2004). In it, she provides a defense of "threat profiling" already taken or contemplated since September 11. Ms. Malkin's earlier book was Invasion: How America Still Welcomes Terrorists, Criminals, and Other Foreign Menaces to Our Shores (New York: Regnery Publishing, 2002). Her syndicated column appears in nearly 200 papers nationwide. Ms. Malkin addressed the Middle East Forum in Philadelphia, on December 2, 2004. Millions of American schoolchildren have been taught that there was no evidence...