Do you have a vision and picture of what happens in a soil judging pit? Clare Tallamy, a recent graduate of Virginia Tech's School of Plant and Environmental Sciences (SPES), shared her passion for soil health and soil judging in this episode. Clare was a member of Virginia Tech's Soil Judging Team and helped the team win its seventh collegiate national championship. Clare also distinguished herself as the individual winner at the 2022 International Soil Judging Contest that was held in Scotland. As an avid gardener growing up in Northern Virginia, Clare took a keen interest in soil science and joined Virginia Tech's Soil Judging to follow her passion to learn more about soil physics, chemistry, and ecology in a very practical way -- as part of a team down in a soil pit.

Clare describes how a soil pit is dug and shares a picture to understand and judge the different layers of a soil's profile. Additionally, Clare emphasizes that we can learn a lot about the history of how the soil was formed and why keeping soil covered is important to building soil health through the soil judging process down in the pit.

For more details about Virginia Tech's Soil Judging Team and its recent national championship, please refer to the following article: https://vtx.vt.edu/articles/2022/05/soils-soil-judging-2022-champs.html.

To view the winning submissions of the recent Healthy Soil, Healthy Life art competition sponsored by the Virginia Association of Soil and Water Conservation Districts, please visit the 4 The Soil blog at https://www.4thesoil.org/post/va-association-of-soil-water-conservation-districts-names-winners-of-healthy-soils-healthy-life.

Learn more about the Virginia Soil Health Coalition, join the 4 the Soil conversation, and read the latest Soil Health Tip Tuesday blog post at https://www.virginiasoilhealth.org/ and https://www.4thesoil.org.