Teachers participate in Soil Food Web Course in Finland

From March 13 to 16, the Soil Food Web course was held in Tampere, Finland. This course was provided by AhlmanEdu, partner of the European Platform for Urban Greening, with the aim of teaching participants more about healthy soil and how to make high-quality compost.

Participant experiences

Five green teachers from Yuverta took part in the course: William Peters and Henri van Son from Yuverta location Boxtel, Koen Molenaar and Rob Goossens from Nijmegen and Bert Toet from location Ottoland. They were all very enthusiastic about the course. Bert: “It was my wish to learn more about the soil life under the ground, the micro-organisms and the effect on plant growth. These themes are important in our agricultural/green sector and will continue to demand our attention in the future.”

Content of the course

“On the first day of the course, we were mainly trained theoretically and we were able to get to know each other somewhat professionally,” says William. “On the second day of the course, we were able to actually experience the process of composing compost by practically carrying it out ourselves. On the third day of the course, we were mainly able to view results under the microscope. The research results of previous years were also discussed, resulting in many great ideas for applying them in our education. We have built up a nice contact with the trainer Dora Tkalec.”

Creating awareness among future generations

The teachers expect to be able to incorporate the acquired knowledge into the teaching material. For example, Henri wants to develop a soil dashboard that deviates from the standard soil investigations that mainly look at the soil chemically. Bert wants to work more on a micro level: “I also want to apply making high-quality compost in my lessons. In addition, I also want to do microscopic research with the students to create awareness of life in the soil.” William adds: “We can use this to teach future generations to deal with our (urban) living environment in a responsible and sustainable manner. Awareness of CO2 storage in the soil and fixing nitrogen are an important part of this.”