The word “lasagna” brings mouth-watering thoughts of baked pasta noodles layered in tomato sauce, fresh garlic, meat, and melted cheese. But in the world of gardening and composting, “lasagna gardening” is far from tasty. It gets its name from the layers created on Mother Nature’s giant sheet pan.

If you are like me, you have a fascination with streams and creeks.
This fascination may be due to my childhood. There was a stream near our house where kids from the neighborhood spent many summer days playing.

I often get questions from hunters and other wildlife enthusiasts about improving whitetail deer habitat on their property. In many instances, these conversations are immediately directed toward the planting of food plots. Landowners want to know the best food source they can plant to attract deer and other wildlife.

Conservation districts are where the why and how of conservation come together. The mission of the Guernsey Soil and Water Conservation District is to promote the sustainable use of natural resources.

Carroll County Soil and Water Conservation District is offering their no-till drills for only $8 per acre to plant cover crops.

It’s no secret that every tax funded agency has been under scrutiny the past several years to justify its existence, and soil and water conservation districts are no different. While the value of conservation to society is long-established, putting an actual dollar value on clean water, clean air, open spaces and productive soils is elusive. [...]

Over the next few months, soil and water conservation districts will be having their annual meetings and open houses. These events will showcase all the conservation activities within the district for the past year.

This is the time of year when harvest begins, and farmers become aware of where erosion and gullying is under way in their fields and needs to be addressed. The remedy is often installing grassed waterways — those green stripes located in the middle of certain fields. Grassed waterways are like a natural Band-Aid, healing [...]

This summer, the Coshocton Soil and Water Conservation District partnered with the Pomerene Center for the Arts and the farming community for a special project this summer. This project was done in honor of Coshocton’s bicentennial and agriculture’s prominent and enduring place in our county history.

Everyone likes a success story, and when Maggie Corder from Jefferson SWCD wrote a couple of weeks ago about the things that were done in her county to improve the quality of water in Yellow Creek, she inspired me to write about the work that’s just beginning here in Noble County. Mining This story began [...]