Hey friends, welcome back to the old-fashioned on-purpose podcast.

So, last year, many of you are aware that I had some major issues with my tomato seedlings.

I posted about it on Instagram, but it was basically an epic failure.

I killed over 150 little baby plants, took me a long time to figure out why,

but even though it was a rough year of the garden, it taught me some really important lessons,

and one of the silver linings that came from that whole disaster is that it really

kick-started my interest in soil health. That has been an interest that I kind of had bubbling

under the surface for a number of years, but after last year, I realized, you know, I needed

to start figuring some things out. So, the way that I ultimately diagnosed what was going on

with my tomato seedling disaster was through a soil testing kit that I got from Redmond agriculture.

And that told me what my potting soil was lacking and it helped me figure out how to pivot

and move forward. And so, ever since then, I've been intrigued by this idea of being able to

test our soil at home because this process has gotten a lot simpler over the years.

And also, of course, the flip side of that is once we have that data, what the heck do we do with

it, especially if you're not a soil scientist? So, we are going straight to the source today,

and I am so very honored to have Aaron Ellison with me today. He works in Redmond agriculture.

He has a master's degree in animal science. He's worked on beef ranches on dairy operations.

He's been in the field. He knows his stuff. He understands agriculture at a very deep level.

And I can't wait to talk about soil with you today, Aaron. Welcome.

Thank you. Glad to be with you.

Yeah. So, I guess, let's just kind of start off at the beginning. That makes sense.

Let's say I have a homesteader or a gardener listening to this episode right now,

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