Soil is the foundation of a healthy garden…or homestead…or farm. For sustainable gardening that gives us nutritious food without depleting the land, we need to know how to feed and maintain living soil. After all, it’s the community of living things in the soil that feeds the plants we eat ourselves. That’s where Michelle Bruhn comes in. Michelle is a suburban homesteading author, speaker, and educator who manages the online information hub Forks in the Dirt. This week, she joins Erin (who’s always excited about home-scale regenerative agriculture) to talk about how she has turned a sandy suburban lot into a tiny paradise that produced almost seven hundred pounds of food in 2024.Through the course of this conversation, Michelle gives us the dirt on a range of organic practices that build soil, feed it, and maximize its effectiveness, even in a short growing season. We’re talking composting in place with sheet mulching, lasagna gardening, and hügelkultur; supporting healthy soil food webs with companion planting, mulch, and cover crops; and extending the growing season with cold frames, hoop houses, and even plastic bins. If you think you’re already a master of all these things, so did Erin—and this interview got her out gardening in the early-March snow to try something she’s never done before.If you want to keep learning from Michelle Bruhn, check out…* Her online hub, Forks in the Dirt (https://forksinthedirt.com/): (Here you’ll find courses, resources, and recipes for homesteading and gardening).* Her book, Small-Scale Homesteading, co-authored by Stephanie Thurow* Stephanie’s fermentation books (https://minnesotafromscratch.com/) which Michelle shouted out during the episode: * Michelle’s Substack newsletter (https://forksinthedirt.substack.com/)You can also find her on social media:* Instagram: @forksinthedirt (https://www.instagram.com/forksinthedirt/)* Facebook: @forksinthedirtmn (https://www.facebook.com/forksinthedirtmn/)Citations:Jeff Lowenfels’ book Teeming with Microbes, which discusses how adding Nitrogen fertilizer to soil decreases the Nitrogen produced by bacteria:Lowenfels, J., & Lewis, W. (2010). Teaming with Microbes: The Organic Gardener’s Guide to the Soil Food Web.