Older than Dirt

Bill Gurstelle over at The Technology Underground Blog states that, having turned 50 years old today, he realizes that he is easily older than dirt. And does a fair job of proving it out, quoting John Adams on compost, posting a swell picture of compost (hmmmm. dirt.) and pointing out that compost produces fresh dirt in less time than it takes to live to be 50. I'm down with that. Happy birthday to you Bill.

Tech Tags: dirt birthday

In 1794

On January 4th in 1794, was born Edward Ruffin the father of soil chemistry in the U.S., who showed how to restore fertility to depleted soil. Though without formal science education, Ruffin determined that the soil of southeast plantations that had been overused with single-crop production had become more acidic and unable to benefit from fertilizers. The remedy he published (1818) was the spreading of marl to neutralize the acidity. He went further by specifying effective methods of fertilizing, plowing and rotating crops to increase production of grains. He expanded his recommendations in book and journal article form, as well as lecturing up to the 1850's. He then became an outspoken secessionist, and took his own life upon the South losing in the Civil War, at least when he learned of it on June 18, 1865.

Today in Science History

Adapted from a post at XDA blog by Roger Fraley.

This would be a good addition to soil science articles in wikipedia.

Technorati Tags: Soil science