When William James Beal crept out under cover of night and buried 20 uniform bottles filled with a mixture of soil and seed in 1879, he lit the fuse on agriculture’s longest running experiment. Each bottle was scheduled to be dug up at a set year in the future, farming’s version of a time capsule chain. Beal passed in 1924 and as 2016 rolls by, five of his bottles remain hidden.
By tilting 20 narrow-necked bottles downward to ensure moisture-wicking, and covering them with several inches of dirt on the campus of Michigan State University (MSU) in Lansing, he was attempting to answer an age-old question: How long do weed seeds remain viable in soil? Beal’s quest, started 137 years back, is still packed with relevancy for modern agriculture.