Daily Survival

Friday, August 21, 2026

Lichens: A Survival Food You Can Find Almost Anywhere

Estimated reading time: 11 minutes

Lichens are a common wild edible, but if you’re not paying attention you might miss them. They usually grow on trees and rocks and have a distinctive appearance similar to a flat, leafy plant. However, they are a unique form of plant related to the algae family. What makes lichens unique is that most algae require fresh water or salt water to survive and thrive. Lichens are a terrestrial form of algae.

Lichens have been on Earth for billions of years and are one of the oldest forms of life on the plant. Equally surprising is the fact that some lichens can be hundreds if not thousands of years old. These elder lichens typically grow on rocks, boulders and cliff faces. Lichens that grow on trees are never older than the tree itself but even then, some trees live for hundreds of years.

Here’s the dictionary definition of a lichen according to the U.S. Forest Service:

Lichens are dual organisms consisting of a fungus and an alga or a cyanobacterium. The fungus provides the alga with structure, protection, nutrients, and water absorbed from the atmosphere and the substrate (e.g., soil, rotten logs, tree branches).

In return, the alga provides carbohydrates from photosynthesis to the fungus. Algae from some lichens grow independently of the fungus, but in lichen form, the algae can inhabit more challenging environments than when growing alone.

Lichen Edibility versus Lichen Toxicity

There’s good news in lichen land. Out of the 20,000 or more species that grow across North America, only a few lichens are truly toxic. This is in stark contrast to wild mushrooms. Out of the 10,000 species of wild mushrooms across the North American continent, 96% of them are toxic with 4% of that number falling into the poisonous and deadly category. That means only 400 out of 10,000 wild mushrooms are safe to eat.

Lichens are largely benign and won’t harm you, but there are few to watch out for. Any lichens that have a yellowish or orange color are toxic to varying degrees.

The two most toxic examples include Vulpacida pinastri and the other is called Letharia vulpina. Their common names are the Powdered Sunshine Lichen and the Wolf Lichen. If you’re not an expert on all lichen identification, just play it safe and stay away from the yellow and orange ones.

So, What's a Good Lichen Look Like?

Good lichens that are safe to eat have a bluish to blue/green color. They can appear with all shades of these colors:

Unfortunately, even some of these safe-to-eat lichens can be surrounded by the toxic, yellow and orange lichens.

Basic Lichen Identification

Lichens fall into one of three broad categories defined by their shape and appearance according to the U.S. Forest Service:

1. Foliose (leaf-like)

2. Fruticose (shrub-like)

3. Crustose (growing closely attached to a surface)

Lichen Crustose — ^{Image via U.S. Forest Service}

Who Would Eat a Lichen?

You might be surprised by the answer to that question. Certainly, people in a wilderness survival situation would consider lichens as part of their survival menu, but it goes well beyond that.

Chef René Redzepi of the Noma restaurant in Copenhagen features lichens as a central part of his cuisine. In case you don’t know, Chef Redzepi is considered to be the top chef in the world by numerous publications and culinary organizations. If lichens are good enough for the best chef in the world, they’re good enough for the rest of us.

Lichens are particularly important in a wilderness survival situation. They are a year-round source of food 365 days a year. While lichens alone won’t sustain you in a survival situation, they should definitely be a part of your wilderness menu.

What Does a Lichen Taste Like?

A raw lichen right off the tree or rock will have the consistency of a rubber inner-tube and many will taste highly acidic if not down-right astringent. That’s not very encouraging, but there are some simple steps to make lichens palatable.

The first step is to soak the lichens in vinegar for 30 minutes. Vinegar is a powerful antiseptic and most lichens have had years and years to accumulate all matter of debris, microbes, and dust carried on the winds.

The second step is to soak the lichens in numerous water changes. They’re usually immersed in a bowl of cold water and held down with a plate. After 6 hours the water is changed, and this is repeated until a little nibble doesn't taste bitter. A tablespoon of baking soda can also be added to neutralize the acids.

The third step is to boil and shock the lichens. The lichens are gently boiled in water for 10 minutes and then removed with a slotted spoon to a bowl of ice water. The result is prepped lichens that are ready to eat as an ingredient in a soup, a topping for a wild green salad of dandelion and plantain leaves, tossed over pasta, or even quickly deep-fried for lichen chips. We’ll cover some of these recipes later in this article.

Another approach is a Japanese technique which involves gently boiling them with frequent water changes. This will result in a lichen that is quite gelatinous. In case you’re wondering, “gelatinous” means slimy similar to the slime you see when you boil okra or cactus. In fact, a little lichen boiled in a broth will yield a hearty and velvety soup with a texture approaching a gravy.

Many people in Africa, Native Americans, and our pioneer ancestors used lichens as a thickening agent for a variety of foods. Pioneers used the gelatin from lichens to thicken not only soups but as a replacement for gelatin in jams and jellies.

The Scandinavians soak and dry lichens and grind them into a flour to be added to wheat flour or pine bark flour for baking.

In a survival situation, you may have limited resources and boiling lichens in water may be as ambitious as you can get.

Harvesting Lichens

Tools for lichen collecting include two types of knives. A sharp knife like a buck knife and a serrated knife for sawing through bark for a well-entrenched lichen. A one-gallon plastic ziplock bag or two for carrying your lichens and garden gloves is also important.

In a survival situation, you can just pull them off the tree, but you might tear more than a few if you don’t have a knife to cut them off at the base.

Older trees present the most lichens, and remember to look both at the base and above your head. To remove a lichen, gently grab the lichen by the edges and use your knife to find the root attached to the tree and cut. You’ll probably get some bits of bark and they should be carefully removed when harvesting and again after soaking in water.

Lichen on rocks are easier to remove but you may still need a knife to cut it loose. You also want to make sure you scrape away any bits of rock or sand from the back of the lichen. If you've ever eaten a sandy sandwich on the beach, you’ll be sure to make sure any grit is gone.

In a survival situation, you may only have water or at least boiling water to prepare any lichen. In this case, look for lichens growing on a tree and ideally under a large, over-hanging branch. It may have had less exposure to the elements in this kind of environment as opposed to lichens growing on rocks.

Lichen Nutrition Facts

You may be surprised to learn that lichens are loaded with nutrients, minerals, and micronutrients. Lichens offer many of the benefits of a form of algae known as “spirulina.” Lichens also present vitamins like Vitamin-K, Vitamin-C, carbohydrates, and a decent calorie count based on size.

Adding lichens to your other survival food gathering, like the internal layers of tree-bark, is a good idea, especially when you consider that so many lichens grow on the external bark of trees.

Lichen Recipes

Lichen-Ramen Soup

Ingredients:

1 package of Ramen noodles and the Ramen broth seasoning
2 cups of cold water
1 cup of lichens that have been soaked in water changes to remove the acids and then cut into thin strips
1 teaspoon of soy sauce or Teriyaki sauce

Directions:

It’s important to soak the lichens in vinegar for 30 minutes and then put them through continuous water soaks with water changes until the lichens lose their astringent taste. Taste as you go.

You can also add baking soda to speed up the process. You then add the two cups of water to your saucepan and the Ramen soup broth packet. Cut the lichens into strips, and once the water has come to boil, add the noodles and the lichen strips. Pour into bowls and serve.

Lichen-Pasta

Ingredients:

1 quart of cold water
1 tablespoon of salt
12 ounces of pasta like elbow macaroni or spaghetti
3 tablespoons of Extra Virgin olive oil
½ cup of grated parmesan cheese
1 cup of sliced lichens
1 tablespoon of parsley, oregano or Italian seasoning

Directions:

Prep the lichens with a 30-minute soak in vinegar, followed by soaking in water and changing the water every six hours until the lichens lose their bitterness. A tablespoon of baking soda can speed up this process to neutralize the acids.

Add the water and the salt to a pot and bring to a boil, and add the pasta until al dente. Drain the pasta plate. Toss with the Extra Virgin olive oil and then top with the parmesan cheese, lichens and a sprinkle of your favorite herbs.

One Caution

Whenever you harvest a lichen, get on the Internet and identify the species. It’s good to get some knowledge and experience before you find yourself lost in the woods. The good news is that they’re not as dangerous from a toxic standpoint like mushrooms–but you never know. You should also not give them to children until an adult has tried it and had no side effects.

Originally published on Urban Survival Site.

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Canning Green Beans – The Complete Guide

Green beans are one of the most commonly home-canned vegetables, and also one of the vegetables most frequently linked to botulism outbreaks when canned incorrectly. That combination makes this guide worth reading start to finish, even if you’ve canned other vegetables before, since green beans have their own exact, tested requirements that don’t carry over from other recipes.

This is the specific, complete procedure, straight from the National Center for Home Food Preservation’s tested method, covering prep, packing, exact processing times and pressures, and the storage and safety details that actually matter.

Why Green Beans Must Be Pressure Canned

Green beans are a low-acid food, with a pH well above 4.6, which means they cannot be safely processed in a boiling water bath canner. According to the CDC, home-canned vegetables are the most common cause of botulism outbreaks in the United States, and pressure canning is the only recommended method for canning any low-acid food. A boiling water bath tops out at 212 degrees Fahrenheit, which is not hot enough to destroy Clostridium botulinum spores. Only a pressure canner reaches the 240-plus degrees needed to make green beans safe for shelf storage.

If you want the fuller explanation of water bath versus pressure canning and why the distinction exists at all, we cover that in more depth elsewhere on the site. This guide assumes you already have a pressure canner and are ready for the specific green bean procedure.

What You’ll Need

Equipment

A pressure canner (not a pressure cooker or electric multi-cooker) with a rack
Pint or quart canning jars with new lids and bands
A jar lifter and canning funnel
A bubble remover or thin, non-metallic spatula
Clean towels for the counter and wiping jar rims

Ingredients and Yield

According to NCHFP, a canner load of 7 quarts needs about 14 pounds of beans, and a load of 9 pints needs about 9 pounds. A full bushel weighs about 30 pounds and yields 12 to 20 quarts, averaging roughly 2 pounds of beans per quart jar.

Fresh green beans, filled but tender, crisp pods
Canning or pickling salt, optional, for flavor only (never use table salt, which contains anti-caking agents that cloud the liquid)
Water

Selecting and Prepping Your Beans

Choose pods that are firm and crisp, avoiding anything limp, diseased, or showing rust spots. Wash the beans thoroughly, trim both ends, and either leave them whole or snap them into 1-inch pieces, whichever you prefer for how you’ll use them later.

Hot Pack vs. Raw Pack: Which Should You Choose

Both methods are equally safe and use the identical processing time and pressure. The difference comes down to texture and how many beans fit in a jar.

Raw pack: Beans go into the jar uncooked, tightly packed, then covered with boiling water. This is faster and produces a firmer final texture
Hot pack: Beans are boiled for 5 minutes first, then packed more loosely into the jar and covered with the hot cooking liquid. This method typically fits more beans into fewer jars, since the beans shrink slightly during that initial boil

Neither is objectively better. Pick based on your own texture preference or how much jar space you’re working with.

Step-by-Step: Raw Pack Method

Fill jars tightly with raw, trimmed beans, leaving 1-inch headspace
Add ½ teaspoon canning salt per pint, or 1 teaspoon per quart, if desired
Cover the beans with boiling water, maintaining that same 1-inch headspace
Remove air bubbles by sliding a bubble remover or non-metallic spatula around the inside edge of the jar
Wipe the jar rim clean with a damp cloth, apply the lid, and screw the band on to fingertip tight, not forced

Step-by-Step: Hot Pack Method

Cover trimmed beans with boiling water in a pot and boil for exactly 5 minutes
Fill jars loosely with the hot beans, leaving 1-inch headspace
Add ½ teaspoon canning salt per pint, or 1 teaspoon per quart, if desired
Cover the beans with the hot cooking liquid, maintaining 1-inch headspace
Remove air bubbles, wipe the rim clean, and apply the lid and band to fingertip tight

The Exact Processing Times and Pressures

This is the part where precision actually matters, and where recipes passed down informally sometimes drift from what’s actually been tested. According to NCHFP’s tested tables, both hot pack and raw pack green beans use the identical process time and pressure, adjusted only for your altitude and canner type.

Dial-Gauge Pressure Canner

Pints: 20 minutes. 11 lb at 0-2,000 ft, 12 lb at 2,001-4,000 ft, 13 lb at 4,001-6,000 ft, 14 lb at 6,001-8,000 ft
Quarts: 25 minutes, at the same pressures listed above for your altitude

Weighted-Gauge Pressure Canner

Pints: 20 minutes. 10 lb at 0-1,000 ft, 15 lb above 1,000 ft
Quarts: 25 minutes, at the same pressures listed above for your altitude

Before applying pressure, vent your canner for a full 10 minutes to purge all air from inside, since trapped air prevents the canner from reaching the true temperature its pressure gauge indicates. Skipping this step is one of the most common and most dangerous shortcuts in home canning.

Cooling, Sealing, and Checking Your Jars

When the timer ends, turn off the heat and let the canner depressurize naturally. Never force-cool it with water or by opening the vent early, since this can cause liquid loss and seal failure
Once pressure reads zero, wait a few more minutes, then carefully remove the lid, tilting it away from you to avoid a steam burn
Use a jar lifter to move jars to a towel-lined counter, without tilting them, and let them sit undisturbed for 12 to 24 hours
After cooling, check each lid. It should be concave and should not flex or pop when pressed in the center
Remove the bands, wipe the jars clean, and label each one with the contents and date
Any jar that didn’t seal properly should go in the refrigerator and be used within a few days, or reprocessed with a new lid within 24 hours

Storage and Shelf Life

According to the CDC, canned food should be stored in a clean, cool, dark place, ideally between 50 and 70 degrees Fahrenheit, and never above 95 degrees or near a heat source like a furnace or uninsulated attic. For best quality, plan to use home-canned green beans within about a year, canning only what you realistically expect to eat in that window.

Safety Non-Negotiables

Never water bath can green beans under any circumstances, regardless of how a recipe is written or how long a family has done it that way
Never use an electric multi-cooker, even one with a canning setting, since these are not validated for safe low-acid food processing
Have your dial gauge tested for accuracy annually. Many local extension offices offer this service for free
Before eating, the CDC recommends boiling home-canned low-acid vegetables for 10 minutes, adding 1 minute for every additional 1,000 feet of elevation, since heat can destroy the toxin even if it happens to be present
Discard, without tasting, any jar that is leaking, bulging, spurting liquid when opened, or containing food that looks discolored or smells off

That last point deserves emphasis. Botulinum toxin cannot be seen, smelled, or tasted, and a single taste of contaminated food can be fatal. When in doubt, the only correct move is to throw it out.

Common Mistakes

Water bath canning green beans because a family recipe or online source suggested it was fine with a longer boil
Skipping the 10-minute vent step before pressurizing the canner
Using table salt instead of canning salt, which clouds the liquid and can affect texture
Force-cooling the canner to speed up the process, risking siphoning and seal failure
Guessing at altitude adjustments instead of looking up your actual elevation and the correct pressure for it
Reusing old lids, which lose their ability to form a reliable seal after the first use

A Full Pantry Starts With Skills, Not a Shopping Cart

A shelf lined with jars of home-canned green beans represents more than preserved food. It represents something increasingly valuable: the ability to take what you grow and turn it into food your household can rely on months after the harvest is over.

That kind of practical knowledge is exactly what The Lost Skills of Independence is about.

Previous generations couldn’t depend on supermarkets being stocked year-round, next-day deliveries, or a freezer full of food staying cold indefinitely. They learned how to grow, harvest, preserve, store, repair, build, reuse, and make what their families needed with their own hands.

Many of those skills haven’t disappeared because they stopped working. They disappeared because modern convenience made them seem unnecessary.

Until suddenly they aren’t.

Food prices rise. Supply chains get disrupted. Power goes out. Equipment breaks. Harvests arrive faster than you can eat them. And when those things happen, having another case of supplies is useful, but knowing what to do with the resources you already have can be even more valuable.

That’s why learning to pressure-can green beans properly matters. You’re not simply following a recipe. You’re developing a skill that can turn a few rows in your garden into shelf-stable food for months to come.

And that’s only one piece of genuine self-reliance.

The Lost Skills of Independence brings together practical, old-fashioned knowledge for people who want to become more capable at home, whether that means producing and preserving more of their own food, making useful things instead of buying them, maintaining what they own, or becoming less dependent on systems outside their control.

You don’t have to abandon modern life to benefit from old-fashioned skills. You simply need to make sure convenience hasn’t become your only option.

Discover The Lost Skills of Independence and start rebuilding the practical knowledge that can help you grow more, preserve more, make more, waste less, and depend less on the outside world!

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I can green beans with bacon or other add-ins?

Stick to plain beans, salt, and water unless you’re following a specific tested recipe designed for that addition. Untested add-ins like bacon, butter, or thickeners can change how heat penetrates the jar and compromise the safety of the tested processing time.

Is raw pack or hot pack safer?

Both are equally safe when processed at the correct time and pressure. The choice comes down to texture preference and how many beans you want to fit per jar.

What altitude adjustment do I need if I don’t know my exact elevation?

Check a topographic map, a GPS device, or a simple online elevation lookup for your specific address rather than guessing, since using too low a pressure for your actual altitude can result in under-processed, unsafe jars.

Can I reuse the liquid from a jar that didn’t seal?

It’s simplest and safest to start fresh with new boiling water or cooking liquid for reprocessing rather than trying to reuse liquid from a jar that has already been opened and cooled.

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Thursday, August 20, 2026

Why You Should Bury Your Cotton Underwear in the Garden

You take a look at your garden and it looks A-M-A-Z-I-N-G!

The tomatoes are heavy and bright red all the way up the vine. The beans have run to the top of their poles and started reaching for each other.

So you stand there a minute feeling pretty good about the whole thing. You’ve made it!

But even with all of these signs, your garden might not be as healthy as you think. Maybe this year’s harvest is good, but this is not a guarantee for the next year.

If you were to run a lab soil test, you would be able to see the pH and the potassium and phosphorus levels. These are things that matter a lot. The living part of your soil decides how much your plants will grow.

But I want to share something with you: it’s possible to see how “alive” the soil is without using fancy lab tests. There’s a test for this, and it costs about $4. You bury a pair of cotton underwear and come back in two months. I know how that sounds, but this is a real method.

So, ready?

Where This Strange Test Came From

The idea came out of NC State University, from a group called the Amazing Grazing team. They needed a way to show cattle producers what management actually does to soil, and telling a man his soil is alive only gets you a polite nod.

So they buried underwear in rotationally grazed pasture, in continuously grazed pasture, and in tilled cropland. Then they dug it all up and laid it out on a table.

All that remained of that underwear was the waistband. How did this happen?

This got some traction and from there it spread. The USDA picked it up as an annual challenge, state conservation districts run it every summer, and it traveled as far as Australia, where researchers at the University of New England buried pairs out in cotton country to make the same point.

To make a comparison with other similar practices, one of the most familiar ones is the X-Ray Soil Test, which tells you exactly the composition of the soil.

Why is this important? Because your soil type decides your harvest. Plain and simple…

You can’t tell your soil type by looking at the surface. Two gardens on the same street can have completely different dirt a few inches down. That’s where the Soil X-Ray comes in. It tells you the exact anatomy of your soil. Carrots, potatoes, and other root crops want loose soil they can push through, so they struggle in heavy clay. Squash and tomatoes are hungry feeders that do best in loam that stays moist without turning soggy.

So, make sure that by the end of summer or early spring you test your soil this way.

What the Cotton Is Actually Telling You

Cotton is nearly pure cellulose. And cellulose is the same material that makes up cornstalks and straw and dead roots and the leaves that pile up under your trees every fall.

So a buried cotton brief is just a meal your soil already knows how to eat, cut into a shape you can measure.

Bacteria and fungi do the eating. They break cellulose down into forms roots can take up, and that same chewing is what builds crumb structure and helps a bed hold water instead of shedding it off the top.

According to the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service, one teaspoon of healthy soil holds more microbes than there are people on the planet. You can’t see them and you can’t count them. But you can watch them eat.

If the crew down there is active, the cotton disappears. If it isn’t, the cotton comes out intact.

The waistband is polyester, so it survives either way. Which is handy, because it helps you find the buried undies easier.

Bring the “Soil Your Undies” Test into Your Garden

Get 100% cotton – Read the tag. A cotton and polyester blend won’t break down, and you’ll end up with a useless result. Plain white men’s briefs give you the most fabric and they’re the cheapest thing on the shelf. And if you can’t find all-cotton undies, a square cut from an old cotton t-shirt or a piece of unbleached muslin does the same job. Once again, if only the waistband is made out of plastic, this is perfectly fine.

Wait for warm soil – Late May through June works for most of the country. Soil biology barely moves in cool damp spring ground, and if you wait until high summer in a dry year you’ll get nothing either.

Slice, don’t dig – Push a spade straight down and lean it back to open a slot. Lay the underwear in flat, straighten it out so it isn’t bunched, then close the slot with your boot. A big loose hole changes the very thing you’re trying to measure.

Leave the waistband up – Two inches of elastic sticking out of the ground saves you a lot of hunting in August. Protocols disagree on depth, and some run them a foot down while others keep the fabric in the top few inches. What matters more is burying every test spot the same way so your comparison holds up.

Chlorin – Use rainwater or well water. City tap water carries chlorine, and chlorine is in there specifically to kill microbes, so you’d be poisoning your own test.

Flag the spot – Use a real marker, not a stick you’ll mow over. And if you have dogs or raccoons or curious hens, bury the whole thing and trust the flag. The Australian crew lost their first pair to a kangaroo.

Mark the calendar – Sixty days is the minimum. Write the dig-up date somewhere you’ll actually see it.

When the day comes, work the soil loose with your hands instead of a shovel so you don’t tear the fabric yourself. Rinse it gently in a bucket and lay it out on a board.

How to Get Chlorine-Free Water All Year Long

The reason you can’t use tap water on the test is chlorine, and chlorine is put in there for one job: killing living things in the water. It doesn’t know the difference between bacteria in a city pipe and the bacteria you spent four years growing in your soil.

Now carry that thought past the test. Every time you water the garden with the hose, you’re running that same chlorine over the exact microbes the underwear is supposed to measure. Your test says the soil is alive. Your hose works against it every single day.

So you need chlorine-free water for more than one buried pair of briefs. You need it for the whole garden, all season, without hauling buckets around in July.

Digging a well? That can work, but maybe you don’t have the time, the tools, or the skill for it…

Ok, these two are the main options, but I want to tell you that there’s one more option out there. Nobody talks about it because not many people know about it.

It might sound a bit unconventional, but after all, you’re reading this in an article telling you about how you should bury your cotton undies in the garden. So, bear with me.

Imagine your basic home dehumidifier. What does this machine do? It pulls water out of thin air. Now, how would it be to have a scaled-up machine like this that does the same job but 10x better? A machine able to generate water you can use in your garden?

This device exists and is nicknamed “The Cloud in a Box.” It is designed for those of you who want to get chemical-free water.

Compared to regular dehumidifiers, this machine is designed to be used outside in your garden. It’s sturdy and can resist bad weather, from rain to drought. Try to do that with a Temu dehumidifier. It will break down in less than a week…

If you want to finally start to treat your garden right and give your plants pure water, this is your chance.

Reading What Comes Back Up

Nothing but the waistband – Your soil is about as biologically active as possible. Whatever you’ve been doing in that garden, keep doing it.

Lacy and full of holes – Good, active soil. This is what you should be aiming for in a working garden bed.

Stained and soft but still in one piece – Something is happening down there, just slowly. Usually that points to low organic matter, or a bed that dried out partway through.

Looks about like it did going in – Very little activity, or a problem with the conditions. Read the next section before you write the bed off.

You’ll also see colors on the fabric, oranges and browns and blacks and sometimes a purple streak. Those stains come from different bacteria and fungi, and researchers at South Dakota State have been studying that pigmentation as a shortcut for judging microbial activity without a lab. For your purposes, colored stains mean you had company down there.

How to Make Your Soil More Productive

Your underwear came out almost intact? One smart move that makes your garden beds x3 more productive is upgrading them. And when I say this, I am not telling you to make them bigger.

Among the most important factors that tell you how big your harvest will be is how often you water your garden beds. Homesteaders who follow a consistent watering schedule are the ones who get the biggest harvests.

But let’s be real for a second. You are a regular person. It’s normal to forget to water a garden bed from time to time.

This happens, but your garden won’t forgive you, and you’ll see it when you end up with 5 sad tomatoes instead of 35 beautiful bright red tomatoes…

Ok, so what can you realistically do about this?

As I said, you can upgrade your garden beds and transform them into self-watering garden beds. I did that for all of the garden beds I have in front of my house, and it’s been a game changer.

Here’s where I keep all my fussy vegetables and they seem happier than ever:

So, do you also want to make your garden happy? Transform your garden beds with my method! The process is simple and you don’t need fancy materials. Probably the PVC pipes are the most “expensive” thing on the list.

Real Results From Real People

The Dubois County Soil and Water Conservation District in Indiana ran this test in 2017, and theirs are the results I’d point you to, because they got a surprise.

Their project manager buried several pairs on the Vincennes University campus in Jasper that April. Tilled ground, no-till ground, a grass waterway, and the woods. She dug them up in June and almost nothing had happened to them. So she buried fresh pairs in early June and pulled them mid-July, and that time the soil went to work.

The tilled field chewed its pair full of holes. There was nothing else down there worth eating, so the soil life ate the underwear. And the pair in the woods came out untouched. Not because forest soil is dead, but because the forest floor was already buried in leaves and duff, so the soil life had better food sitting right there and ignored the cotton.

Out in Montana, the same NRCS folks published a comparison I think about often. Five weeks in a garden that had been no-till for twelve years, next to five weeks in a fertilized Kentucky bluegrass lawn. The garden pair came back in shreds. The lawn pair came back wearable.

And in Rhode Island, a conservation district buried pairs on working farms and came back with nothing but elastic bands at a couple of the sites.

The Mistakes That Ruin the Test

How you use water is a big one here. Dry soil shuts microbial activity down almost completely, so a healthy garden that was hit every day by the sun of August will hand you the same sad result as a dead one. Check your test spot when you water the rest of the garden.

Temperature comes next, which is exactly what Indiana ran into that first spring. Cool soil means slow soil. And then there’s the competing food problem from the woods. If you bury a pair under six inches of fresh wood chips, don’t be shocked when the soil life goes for the chips first.

Double Your Tomato Harvest With an Old Pioneer Method

The bigger thing to understand is that one pair of undies from one bed tells you very little on its own. You need something to hold it up against.

So bury two or three at once. One in your best bed, one in a bed you’re worried about, and one out in the lawn or a corner you’ve never amended. Same day, same depth, same water. Then you’re measuring your own ground against your own ground, and the answers start to make sense.

Final Thoughts

I like this test because it hands you something physical. Numbers on a soil report are useful, but they don’t land the way a shredded pair of briefs does when you pull it out of a bed you spent four years building up.

So, if you want an unconventional but reliable way to test your soil, this is the one you should choose. It’s easy to use, and it gives you visible results.

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