To most gardeners, organic matter is like Husker football—everybody is a fan, but not everybody understands the details of the game. Anyone who uses a soil should have an interest in its organic matter content because so much about the soil is influenced by its organic matter content. In this lesson, we will increase our knowledge about soil organic matter to be able to understand its importance.
[This lesson, as well as the other nine lessons in the Soils series, is taken from the "Soils Home Study Course," published in 1999 by the University of Nebraska Cooperative Extension.]
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Nitrogen (N) is one of the most abundant elements on earth, and after carbon (C), hydrogen (H), and oxygen (O), it’s the element living creatures need most. The atmosphere over each square foot of the earth’s surface — which is 78 percent dinitrogen (N2) gas — contains approximately 6,000 pounds of nitrogen. However, most of the earth’s nitrogen (98 percent) is in rock, sediment, and soils. The amount of nitrogen in rocks is about 50 times more than that in the atmosphere, and the amount in the atmosphere is approximately 5,000 times more than in soils (Stevenson, 1982).
[This lesson, as well as the other nine lessons in the Soils series, is taken from the "Soils Home Study Course," published in 1999 by the University of Nebraska Cooperative Extension.]
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