Daily Dose of Adorable

For the past three weeks, I've been going into a local K-12 charter school to teach Horticulture to 3rd and 4th grade students. Our 3-week long project was growing microgreens in each of the classrooms to teach kids about germination, parts of a plant and how we can eat plants in different ways to make meals healthier for us. The first time we went into the school and explained to the kids what we'd be doing and that we'd get to eat the microgreens on the last class day, there were a few "Well...I probably won't eat them..." mutters from a few of the kids. They think green, they think vegetable and they immediately throw up the red flag. However, you will probably hear this from anyone who grows food with kids, but if the kids grow something themselves, they have a MUCH larger chance of eating it. And I found this to absolutely true. The last day came, we harvest the microgreens (peas and sunflowers) and they went to town. They devoured the microgreens, going back for seconds and thirds. They were so excited at how good the greens tasted. "I didn't know you could eat sunflowers!" they squealed and some grabbed handfuls asking for a plastic bag to take them home in. I would consider that a success. 

So, for the second part of my cute story, here's all the thank you notes me and my teaching partner received. They're great artists, and I was so happy to see some of them say that they were more inspired to garden. This solidifies my opinion that kids are more likely to garden when they have a teacher or mentor help them along. Do you help any of the kids in your life work in a garden and grow plants? I'd love to hear about it!

Thursday Lab Update

Since we're coming up on the end of the semester, we aren't really starting too many new projects in lab anymore. Today, however, we all tried our hand at approach grafting to make "Spudmatos", a combination of a potato and a tomato. The way this works is your shave off a piece of the outer layer of stem on both plants, line them up against each other, wrap with para-film and hope for the best. After you're sure the graft is successful, you cut off the top of the potato plant and the root system of the tomato plant and you get one plant, potato on the bottom, tomato on the top. And yes, this plant will grow both types of veggies. Just be warned that, since the plant has to spread nutrients around much more, you won't get as many tomatoes or potatoes as a normal plant of either of these will grow. This is mostly a project that results in a novelty plant that can grow both. That, and it's just fun to say you can actually get plants to do that.

 It's a bit hard to see with the blurriness of the picture, but here's what you wrap up in para-film. The stems need to be pushed together much more than this, leaving no space between. It was just hard to take a picture while pushing them together without my fingers getting in the way. 

 After it's wrapped in para-film, it's potted up in the hopes that the graft will take. The tomato will begin to wilt if the graft is unsuccessful. 

What the whole plant looks like.

The micro-greens took off like chia-pets and all but the basil were ready to go home. Living in a dorm, I don't have much use for micro-greens, but thankfully I have a friend who loves cooking and said he'd gladly take them off my hands. :)

Last week... 

...and this week! :)

I checked my hibiscus plants that have been rooting and found evidence of a little bit of root growth, but I think me pulling them up to examine them might've stressed them out a little bit. I probably should've just left them to root in peace for another week or so.
The grocery produce are still coming along nicely. I'm excited to take one or two of the kumquat trees home. I'll probably keep it as a small ornamental tree, seeing as the north isn't the best place to grow kumquats, but I'm hoping it survives until then.

The baby kumquat trees.

I also found a little coleus plant growing where it shouldn't be in a pot full of goldfish plants. Nearby was a coleus that had just dropped seeds, so I think we found the perpetrator. But it was a different variety than the green coleus I have, so I plucked it out and potted it up.

It's so cute!

The philodendron (which my TA says is a type of peperomia) is also doing really well now that I've taken it out of the mist-house and put it in real soil.

The new shoots are getting really big! :)