Belle's Soil Bacteria Collection

Collecting soil is hard when you leave the collection bag in the lab, but I'm not someone with a tendency to make things easy for myself, so naturally that's what happened last Wednesday. Since this bacteria is needed for Monday's class and I was unable to retrieve my kit before the weekend, I decided to improvise best I could.

Instead of the sterile conical tube, collection baggie, and gloves provided to me, I set out into the woods behind my house a little before 11:30 am with two fresh sealable ziplock bags, some disposable vinyl gloves that I sterilized in rubbing alcohol, a garden shovel, and a ruler I grabbed from my sewing kit. Not ideal, but isn't most scientific discovery caused by improvisation? I mean, we wouldn't even be in the business of antibiotics if Alexander Fleming had had good aeseptic technique and kept his window closed, but I digress.

I hiked out along a trail in the woods behind my house that we cleared many years ago just enough to ride a horse through. It was cold, about 16 degrees out, but that was significantly warmer than the -1 it was a few hours prior. The trail itself hasn't gotten much use in a while, outside of the turkeys and deer passing through, but it's a good bit away from the house, the nearby businesses, and uphill from the barn and the cornfield, meaning any potential runoff from those areas shouldn't affect the soil. The spot I chose was on a slope where the sunny day was covered somewhat by tree foliage. About twenty feet farther down the slope, the trees are marked in pink tape to signify wetlands, so I figured the soil from above should hold some nice moisture and biodiversity, but wouldn't be wet or hard as a rock.

I dug a few shovelfuls down along the side of the trail and measured how far down I was once I was below anything frozen. I inverted the collection baggie over my gloves so most of the inside was facing out and stuck my hand under some roots to grab the loose dirt below. It was about 8 inches from the surface of the dirt, which was below about another 3 inches of snow we got Friday night. The soil itself still held bits of leaves and pine needles, but overall was pretty uniform dark, cold, damp soil. I inverted the bag so I could seal it, then put the sealed bag and my gloves into the second, larger bag, which I sealed as well. I then took a few pictures, dropped a pin at my coordinates, and filled my hole back in.

Though I'm not sure if this impromptu method will be acceptable by Tiny Earth, I figured I can always just run home between lecture and lab on Monday with the correct materials if need be. Worse case scenario, that gives me another chance to do a little walk in the woods!