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Productive Planting: Soil to Harvest, a free nature course on Tomo

Productive Planting: Soil to Harvest

Learn how to turn any plot of earth into a high-yielding food garden. Master soil assessment, seed sowing, tailored fertilization, and proven habits that multiply your harvest.

Like Duolingo, but for Productive Planting: Soil to Harvest. Tomo turns the whole topic into a game you play five minutes a day, until it actually sticks.

A short one: 12 levels across 2 sections, about 24 minutes end to end, roughly 5 days at five minutes a day. It moves through Groundwork and Sowing and Feeding and Multiplying Yield. It starts from scratch.

12 bite-size levelsAbout 5 minutes each

Free forever · No credit card · iPhone & Android

Barnaby the Beetle, the guide who teaches the Productive Planting: Soil to Harvest course
Productive Planting: Soil to Harvest
with Barnaby the Beetle
12
Levels
2
Sections
5
Min/day
What you'll learn

Key ideas in Productive Planting: Soil to Harvest

  • A ribbon test uses damp soil rolled between thumb and forefinger to reveal texture without lab equipment
  • Sandy soil lacks cohesive particles, so it falls apart when squeezed
  • Dense clay sticks tightly together and forms ribbons, while rich loam holds shape lightly and yields under pressure
  • Sandy ground lets taproots like carrots and parsnips grow straight and unhindered
  • Sand drains water and nutrients very quickly, making it tough on thirsty, heavy-feeding crops
  • Sandy soil warms up faster in spring than heavy soil, permitting early root seedings
  • Working saturated clay destroys its natural air pockets and squishes it into brick-like clumps that dry rock-hard
  • Clay naturally holds abundant mineral nutrients and moisture, which brassicas like cabbage appreciate
  • Wait until wet clay dries enough to crumble rather than smear before digging or planting
  • Compost adds spongy organic matter that binds sandy particles to retain moisture and nutrients
  • The same organic compost wedges apart tiny clay particles, letting air and drainage channels form
  • Adding sand directly to wet clay can create a cement-like texture instead of loosening it
  • Raised beds allow total control over soil composition, entirely bypassing contaminated, rocky, or waterlogged native ground
  • Raised plantation beds warm up earlier in spring and drain excess rain far faster than ground level
  • Very large or deep-rooted perennial crops like standard orchard trees naturally need deeper native earth rather than bounded boxes
  • A reliable planting rule is burying seeds roughly two to three times their own thickness
Why not just Google it

You've tried the other tabs

Wikipedia

Thirty open tabs. Four facts you actually kept.

YouTube

You watched. You nodded. By Sunday it was gone.

ChatGPT

One answer, then back to scrolling.

Online courses

Eight weeks. You meant to finish. You didn't.

Tomo gives Productive Planting: Soil to Harvest the Duolingo treatment: levels, streaks, and quick quizzes that test what you just learned. That game loop is what the tabs above never had, so it's the one you actually finish.

Try a question

Here's what playing it feels like

A real question from this course. Take your best guess.

Feeling Your Garden Soil

What happens when you squeeze a handful of damp sandy soil?

Get it right to open this lesson and 11 more in the app.

Course map

Where Productive Planting: Soil to Harvest takes you

  1. 1

    Groundwork and Sowing

    • Matching Crops to Your Soil
    • Sowing Seeds and Transplanting Starts
  2. 2

    Feeding and Multiplying Yield

    • Supplying the Right Nutrients
    • Habits That Maximize Harvest

2 sections · 4 units · 12 levels. Built to play, not to enroll.

New

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How it's taught

You pick the voice

This course
Explain Like I'm 5

Productive Planting: Soil to Harvest is taught in the Explain Like I'm 5 style: no big words. promise.. Want a different feel? In the app you can spin up the same topic in any of Tomo's teaching styles. Same facts, totally different vibe.

Start free

Start Productive Planting: Soil to Harvest today.

Download Tomo, search Productive Planting: Soil to Harvest, and play your first lesson in under a minute.