Soil Week Australia School Competition 2026 

Is Your Soil Healthy? 

Students of Room 9 & 11 have been busy with learning about healthy soil and preparing entries for the Soil Week Australia competition 2026, during their gardening lessons in term 2. This year’s theme is “Soil Matters - Its Importance to Our Food and Environment”.

They have been learning about types of soil, what is healthy soil, the importance of organic matter in the soil and web of living creatures in the soil.

To apply their learning, students of Room 9 &11 conducted an experiment in the school garden to check how healthy the soil is by burying different types of organic matter, like cotton tea towels, tea bags, carboard and dried leaves for six weeks in one of the school garden beds.

The rationale behind the experiment is that healthy soil has microorganisms which we can’t see. But they love to eat (decompose) anything made of carbon. Healthy soil = carbon rich soil.

 After six weeks, if the buried cotton tea towel and other carbon rich organic materials are completely decomposed or only the thick edges are left, the soil is healthy. If the materials are slightly broken down and look the same after six weeks, there is very little life in the soil, and it is not very healthy. 

Here are some before and after predictions, observations, and conclusions of students about how healthy the soil in our school garden is.

Room 9 

Isaiah – I think the earthworms helped to breakdown the organic matter we buried.

Daniel – I saw healthy soil but some of the materials we buried, like tea bags, were not fully decomposed.

Ricky – I saw lots of earthworms. Only materials left after six weeks was a tiny piece of the egg carton.

Vihaan – I saw dark healthy soil. All the materials we buried were decomposed.

Emily – I saw lots of earthworms in our plant pot.

Aastha – Our group buried tea bags and cardboard. There were lots of earthworms and all the materials were decomposed.

Room 11 

Oscar – I think the soil in our school garden beds is healthy because when we dig for the tea towel, we found only the edges.

Leo B – The soil in our school garden beds is healthy because the tea towel was decomposed after six weeks.

Elijah S, Nathan & Alex – We observed that all the materials we buried were decomposed and there were lots of earthworms. So yes, the soil in our school garden bed is healthy.

Burhan – We observed lots of earthworms and most of the tea towels were decomposed.

Judd & Hannah – The soil in the school garden beds is healthy because it is dark brown and the paper tissues were decomposed.

Lacey & Jayce – The soil must be healthy with lots of microorganisms because the tea towel was completely decomposed.