This event forms part of the 2022 Festival of Birds & Biodiversity https://birdfestival.greenskills.org.au/ supported by Lotterywest, Green Skills and the Denmark CRC.

Soil microbes are essential to healthy soil and healthy soil is essential to healthy plants. Let us build your knowledge and skills to understand how microbes build soil, so you can reduce water requirements, provide plant nutrients, protect our environment and break down toxins with these naturally occurring little workers. These interactive workshops will get you much more closely acquainted with our wonderful living soil whether it is on a town block, or acreage and are suitable for individuals, professional development, and as an introduction for commercial purposes.

The ‘It’s the Soil that Counts’ series comprises two workshops – the first will provide foundational skills and knowledge of soil food webs and using brightfield microscopes. The second will build on the knowledge and skills from the first to monitor and assist in managing soil biological health. The topics to be covered are outlined below.

Foundational Class (10am to 4pm) ($295)

Use brightfield microscopes
Soil food webs
Identifying micro-organisms
Viewing soil samples
Exploring strategies to assist soil health

By the end of the Foundation Class you will have a greater understanding of soil food webs (why we need bacteria and fungi to gather nutrients, and protozoa and nematodes to make those nutrients available to plants). You will be able to identify soil food web microbes when you look at a sample of soil through a microscope and have some ideas for how you can look after and attract microbes to your soil.

Master Class (9am to 4pm) ($550 for both Foundation and Master)

*Please note a Foundational class is a prerequisite to attending the master class.

Use brightfield microscopes
Review and extend knowledge of soil food webs
Review and extend knowledge of micro-organisms
Monitoring soil biological health
Exploring remediation strategies

By the end of the Master Class you will have extended your knowledge of how the soil food web works, practiced organism identification, learnt how to assess the qualitative health of soil and consider remediation strategies based on what has been learnt.