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Paper short abstract

In the citizen science project Taste your Garden, urban gardeners engage with soil microbes through hands-on practices. We analyze whether participation shifts perceptions of microbes from risk to collaboration, reshaping everyday food and health practices and challenging dominant food policy frames

Paper long abstract

Dominant Pasteurian ideas portray microbes primarily as threats to be dealt with or eliminated. Yet emerging microbiome research and connected sustainability visions increasingly reframe them as vital partners in ecological resilience, soil biodiversity, and human health. The question remains how this new way of thinking lands with people. Our paper examines how participation in the Dutch citizen science project Taste Your Garden reshapes everyday understandings of microbes in soil, food, and human health.

One hundred urban gardeners plant Norli peas, do the Soil your Undies Challenge, and document their gardening practices through writing and photography. Through these practices, participants might learn new ways of sensing and interpreting microbial connections between soil, food quality, taste, and their own bodies. Urban gardeners are an interesting population, as the roles food producer, consumer and patient intersect in their practices.

We use qualitative and participatory methods, including questionnaires, photovoice probes, and interviews, to analyze how microbes become meaningful through sensory experience, care practices, and everyday garden routines. Our central question is: in what ways does participation shift participants’ ideas of microbes, and how do these shifts influence everyday food and health practices?

Preliminary findings suggest that participants increasingly frame microbes in relational terms, emphasizing ecological interdependence and co-production of health. These perspectives often diverge from dominant policy narratives on healthy food and soil quality, revealing tensions between embodied, experiential knowledge and institutional framings. By engaging citizens as meaning-makers rather than data collectors, this study contributes to STS scholarship on microbe–soil–food–body relations.