This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: 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. 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." Together with her colleague Shana Hepping, she enlisted the help of community gardeners in Leiden and The Hague.
Every participant received the same mangetout seeds and the same instructions but planted them in different plots of land. "There is no way we could have planted in so many different locations ourselves," Elfferich says. Each gardener also leaves their own mark on the soil.
"That hopefully means we'll have a lot of variation within this relatively small region." For Hepping, the soil itself was not the main focus. As a Ph.D. candidate in public administration, she investigated what the project did for the participants. "I'm the project's social mirror," she says.
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