What if a pair of white cotton underwear could reveal whether a farm’s soil was biologically active? For Ontario farmer Blake Vince, that idea became the basis of an unconventional soil-health experiment. In healthier, biologically active soil, microorganisms break down the cotton more rapidly, leaving less fabric behind.
By burying cotton briefs for about two months and then digging them up, Vince and other farmers behind the “Soil Your Undies” campaign created a simple visual test for biological activity.
The test was not intended to replace laboratory soil analysis. Instead, it offered farmers an easy way to see that soil is more than a growing medium. Beneath the surface, bacteria, fungi, earthworms, and other organisms help decompose organic material and cycle nutrients. Vince farms near Merlin in southwestern Ontario, an area close to Lake Erie. His current rotation has included corn, soybeans, and winter wheat, with cover crops such as red clover, oilseed radish, and Austrian winter peas. The idea behind the underwear experiment was straightforward. Cotton is an organic material that soil organisms can consume. If a buried pair shows substantial decomposition after several weeks, it suggests biological activity in the surrounding soil. If the fabric remains largely intact, the soil is showing less visible decomposition. A comparison made by Vince himself showed a clear visual difference between conservation farmland and conventionally tilled land. Later, the movement urged farmers to experiment themselves. The study suggests a link between cover crops and soil biology. That makes the cotton test useful as an educational tool, but it should not be treated as a precise measurement of soil health. Many factors influence how quickly cotton decomposes, including moisture, temperature, soil conditions, and the composition of the microbial community. Red clover can provide more than just ground cover. As a legume, it can capture atmospheric nitrogen through nitrogen-fixing bacteria, potentially supplying part of the next crop’s nutrient needs. Recent Ontario research has found similar results. The researchers also found that results varied between years, showing how important establishment and growing conditions are. A simple cotton brief is more a catalyst for discussion than a scientific tool. It gives farmers the chance to bury it, dig it up again, and see the results with their own eyes. Vince saw that soil is more than a growing medium; it is a living system.
John Deere’s The Furrow later reported that underwear buried in no-till fields with cover crops in southwestern Ontario typically had about 47% of the fabric missing, compared with about 2% in conventionally tilled fields. His family adopted no-till practices in the 1980s, and Vince began strip-tilling corn in 2007. A 2020 meta-analysis in Soil Biology and Biochemistry found that cover cropping increased soil microbial abundance by 27% and microbial activity by 22%, although the effects varied with climate , tillage, and how cover crops were terminated. A Grain Farmers of Ontario project reported that red clover produced the highest corn yield among the cover-crop treatments in its 2022 results, at 11.35 metric tons per hectare, compared with 7.16 metric tons per hectare for the no-cover control. A 2025 study in Applied Soil Ecology found that no-till systems with cover crops increased soil microbial populations compared with no-cover and tilled systems, while also improving microbial resilience during mid-season drought.
