Sussex Conservation District, farmers “soil their undies” to track soil health

SUSSEX COUNTY, Del. – Have you ever soiled your undies for science? It may sound a little strange at first, but there’s a deeper meaning behind it.

In the beginning of May, the Sussex Conservation District (SCD) planted several pairs of 100% cotton underwear in farm fields in Bethel and Georgetown. Just shy of 60 days later, pretty much all that’s left of them is the elastic waistbands.

SCD personnel gently unearthed each pair of underwear, being careful to not fragment the material more than it already was. “If you just dive right in, you cut up a lot of your experiment. So, if you dig around them and get the item up, you can delicately pull it away,” said Jonathan Walton with SCD.

“The more organic matter, the more microbes you typically have. It typically goes hand in hand. The better the ground, and the heavier it is, the more microbes and activity you’ll have, which transpires into the underwear being consumed by them,” said Walton. “Basically, any of the cotton that was actually buried into the soil has decomposed with the natural microbes.”

In other words: the more the cotton in the underwear has disintegrated, the better the sign for healthy soil. Earthworms seen wriggling around Monday morning also served as an indication of good earth. Walton says their burrowing creates tiny channels for water to flow through. “If you have earthworms, microbes, and other bugs, that shows that your soil is where it needs to be,” he said.

Farmer Martin O’Neal says he wasn’t quite sure what to expect when SCD first visited his farm months ago. He says their return visit showed him surprising results: each of the pairs of underwear planted on his property were almost, or completely, disintegrated. “I didn’t know we had quite that much microbe activity, but I’m glad to see it,” said O’Neal. “I’d be happy to do it for them again. Any time you can run an experiment, you stand the chance of learning something that you didn’t know.”

Walton says healthy soil means less spending on fertilizer and wider profit margins for farmers like O’Neal. “There’s multiple different steps and practices that people are willing to try. If they try one thing, it’s more than they had before,” said Walton. “Especially this year, there’s extensive cost in it, and they want to put down enough to get what they’re after, and no extra, really.”

The last time the SCD experimented with soiling their undies was in 2018. Walton says they’ve only seen improvement since then. “We have seen, in general, that the soil health is definitely increasing, just through awareness and people trying different things. The biggest thing is that you don’t have to do it all at once. You start small and see what you’re comfortable with,” he said.

And looking ahead, Walton says they plan to alter future experiments to get more specific results. “I think what we’ll try to do next year is staging them out, and doing five pairs at once, and pull them once a week for five weeks. They’re all deteriorated, and we want to see if there’s a transition between different times and different places,” he said.

Until then, if you want to get up close and personal with the soiled undies unearthed Monday, they’ll be on display at the Delaware State Fair. You can find them, and learn more about the project, at the Delaware Conservation Partnerships booth.