This summer, 115 participants in Leiden and The Hague worked with scientists from Leiden University to investigate the soil life in their community garden plots. With mangetout peas, a taste test, a buried pair of underpants and a harvest festival, they helped scientists better understand the connection between soil, plants and people.
"From April 27 onward, you can bury the underpants." It is a somewhat unusual gardening instruction. Yet every participant in the Proef je Tuin! (Taste Your Garden!) Project buried a pair of cotton underpants in a garden plot this spring. Weeks later, they dug them up again. The more fabric had disappeared, the more active the soil life in their garden was likely to be.
The invisible life beneath the soil
A decayed pair of underpants is a simple, visible way of revealing something that usually remains hidden: the vast army of microorganisms living in the soil.
For her Ph.D. research, biologist Marieke Elfferich studies the relationship between this microbiome and plant health. "We now know quite a lot about microbes that can harm plants. We know much less about the microbes that play a beneficial role. I'm interested in how they relate to the chemical composition of plants, and perhaps even their flavor."
