26 October The Marvelous Adventures of the Green Thumb Ambassadors October 26, 2016By Greenhouse Ambassador Wind 0 The Green Thumb Ambassadors planted tiny seeds called basil. We planted five rows and named each row that we planted. They were called Apple,Bob,Tom,Sam, and Tristan! It was hard to space them out evenly, because they were so tiny. They were 20 times smaller than peas! We watered them daily and made sure they were moist.When they finally started growing they were white and furry. They grew rapidly and we were all astonished. On week 4 we thinned the majority of them, but transplanted some of them because we didn't want them to go to waist. For a couple of days in week five we had a gigantic and dangerous drought! We were unable to water poor and pitiful plants. They suffered greatly and were badly damaged.Tuesday we harvested the basil plants and took pictures of them. Then, we washed them. Now we plan on eating them with pizza and spaghetti and chicken. Maybe even ice cream ! We all had an amazing time in the The Marvelous Adventures Of The Green House Ambassadors! Related Posts Welcome to the Ambassadors Program Guided by Missouri’s Next Generation Science Standards, a team of five children in grades 4-6 from each Alliance School will undertake challenging, hands-on projects in an after-school program that willthe meet once a week for the entire school year. Besides acting as ambassadors to their own schools, presenting what they learn to classes of their peers, children will create blogs and videos, offering lessons in sustainability, science and technology on-line, as seen through the eyes of children. The method of instruction will be experiential and exploratory, with children helping to develop hypotheses, design the experiments to test them, carry out the experiments, and present their results. The sixth graders will help the younger children on each team in the most challenging tasks, and the entire team will develop simple teaching materials—art work, banners, and filmed skits—to help even younger children learn from their experiences in the program. Hands-on shared activities will also result in team-building and networking between Alliance Schools and SLU, which is a priority for future activities of the Green House Venture. Rainbow Plants Aquaponics are basically ecosystems where fish and plants help each other and work together. The fish produce waste for the plants, and the plants add oxygen to the water and kept them hydrated. How tall will they grow, what is the difference in height, are some of the questions we have about plants grown in store bought soil, and in the gravel of our aquaponics system. These can have a different impact on how the plants grow. The Aquaponics systems made our plants spontaneously better and healthier. Beautiful's plant is tall and yellowish red. Janya's is pink on the end of the green leaves. Ireland's plants in the gravel tray are tall and a vibrant pink. Maddie's plants were also yellow, orange, green, and red.The chard seemed to be the tallest and prettiest plants in the gravel tray, and had really long roots. The water in the fish tanks changed color depending on what tray was above them. The water in the aquaponics system was green-ish yellow, and the fish seemed to die more easily in that one. The water in the tank beneath the soil tray was pretty clear and not a lot of the fish died. We had a lot of fun and difficulty at the same time keeping the project going: making sure we feed them on the right days, measuring them, etc. EcoBattle We have two trays of plants. One Gravel and one soil. In which tray do you think will do better? The aquaponics tank is not connected to the soil tray. On the other hand, the gravel tray is connected. That is very important for the plants in the gravel tray. Here is why: We have been learning about fish environments, plants, pH, nitrates, nitrites, KH, ammonia, bacteria, molecules, and macronutrients. We learned that our goldfish give off ammonia, and that is good for plants when the ammonia bacteria eats it and turns it into nitrites. Then, the nitrite eating bacteria eat the nitrites and turns into nitrates which is beneficial for the plants. The gravel and aquaponics environment produced healthy, enormous, gigantic, beautiful plants compared to the soil only environment Our main focus was on the kale in both trays. We watered, measured, and took care of them. When we first received them they were very tiny. Over time they began to grow very quickly. The gravel tray with the kale grew quicker than the soil ones. Our kale is green and it has a tint of purple. It has ruffles in the leaves and it is very similar to the mustard. It is very difficult to tell the two apart, they are both green and purple. On March 8,2017 we harvested our kale plants. We dug the kale out of its trays with forks. It was hard to dig them out , because the roots were connected. After we dug them out we measured them. We measured the roots and the plants by themselves. It was fun to watch them grow and harvest them. this has bbeen a n amazing journey. I absolutely cannot for whats next. Lettuce tell you about last week Last week we learned about a couple of things. We learned that frost is mainly found in the countryside and dew is mainly found in the city. In aquaponics we learned that fish waste helps give nutrition to plants and plants help clean the fish's water. We learned that PH is a measure of acidity and it hurts fish and plants if it is out of balance. This week, we harvested lettuce. We found that the lettuce had a lot of roots, and it was hard to get the gravel out because the roots were so long and tangled. In the tray with the soil, the roots were hard to get out because there was so much soil in between. We had to use 2 rulers to measure the lettuce. The lettuce was purple and green and it had spots on it. The lettuce grew better in the tray with the gravel. We washed the lettuce then weighed it. We put the lettuce in a bag, which some of it will be taken home. Comments are closed.