Measuring the life beneath California
The California Plant Your Socks Project is a statewide citizen science effort. Anyone with a shovel and a 100% cotton sock can help build the first crowd-sourced picture of how alive our soils really are.
Why a cotton sock?
Cotton is pure cellulose — exactly what soil microbes, fungi, and invertebrates eat. When you bury a sock, you're handing the soil food web a meal. Sixty days later, how much of that sock is gone is a simple, visual stand-in for biological activity.
A sock that comes out shredded and fragile means a busy, living soil. A sock that comes out nearly intact suggests low biological activity — often from compaction, drought, heavy tillage, or a lack of organic matter. Scientists call this a "soil my undies" or cotton strip assay, and versions of it are used by researchers and extension programs around the world.
One low-cost test anyone can run, producing comparable results across thousands of sites.
From coastal farms to Sierra forests to city backyards — geography we could never cover alone.
Gardeners, growers, teachers, and students all contribute to the same public dataset.
What we do with your data
Every submission adds a point to the public map and the experiment database: photos, decomposition estimate, burial site type, dates, and your observations. Researchers, educators, and curious neighbors can compare results across regions, land uses, and seasons.
Your privacy stays in your hands. When you submit, you choose whether your exact coordinates are shown publicly or whether only your city-level area appears on the map. Exact locations are never revealed unless you choose to share them.
Why soil health matters here
California grows a large share of the country's fruits, nuts, and vegetables, all on soils under pressure from drought, fire, and intensive management. Living soil holds water longer, stores carbon, cycles nutrients, and recovers faster after disturbance. Tracking it at scale is the first step toward protecting it.
Ready to dig in?
Read the step-by-step instructions, then add your results to the map.