Intraspecific Competition and Radishes

Welcome Back

I measured my radishes and Hammerhead123's radishes. The average height of my radishes were 5cm and the leaf length was 8cm, Hammerheads123's radishes were 2cm and his leaf length was also 2cm.

My radishes are 2.5 times taller than his. Also my longest leaf is 4 times bigger than his.

Term of the week: Intraspecific Competition

Hammerhead123's radishes are smaller than my radishes because his radishes are close together because he did not thin his radishes right away. His radishes showed intraspecific competition, which means members of the same species are competing for food,water,light,space and nutrients. Click on the link above to learn more about intraspecific competition.

The opposite of intraspecific competition is INTERspecific competition. That is when two different species are competing for the same resource, like a carrot and a radish.

Cloning Tomatoes in the Square Foot Garden

This is a photograph of our recently cloned tomatoes.

In the past week, I have replanted melons and tomatoes, cloned tomatoes from my mom and dad's garden and I have one strawberry that is red. I also added mulch to the top of my garden to conserve moisture.

The word of the week is cloning, which means copying an organism.

The tip of the week is how to clone tomatoes. The reason to clone tomatoes is that you can make an exact copy of your favorite tomato variety for little or no money. Did you know that most tomatoes you buy at the store are actually clones?

Here are some simple directions for cloning. If you would like more information on cloning tomatoes, click here.

Step one: Cut off a three inch branch that is still growing. This is called a "cutting".

Step two: Stick the cutting in damp soil in the shade.

Step three: Cover in plastic and wait until roots begin grow.

Cloning is that easy!!!!

Square Foot Garden Fractions and Percents

Today we headed out to the garden to collect data.

MCS, in fourth grade, focused on fractions.  She found that:

• One-third of her garden is radishes, one-third is cucumbers and one-third is beans.
• 32 out of 41 of her radish sprouts have at least one leaf missing (slugs???).
• Two-thirds of her cucumber sprouts are still alive without insect damage.

Hammerhead, in fifth grade, focused on percents.  He found that:

• 11% of hisstrawberries are already ripe.
• 11% of his garden is beans.
• 56% of his garden has already sprouted.

Later this week we will upload photographs of our Square Foot Gardens!

Fraction Toast: The Best Activity to Introduce Fractions

Do you need a quick activity that will help your students understand fractions? 

This year one of our most successful (and best tasting) activities was Fraction Toast.

This activity only takes one hour and is perfect for students from 4th grade through middle school.

FRACTION TOAST

Numerator equal to the number of pieces of toast with jelly, avocado, peanut butter, etc.

Denominator equal to the number of pieces that the toast is cut into.

Our picture shows two-thirds.

Materials:  a toaster, bread, spreads (peanut butter, avocado, jelly), butter knife, paper towels, paper and pencil, camera

Method:

1. Decide on a few fractions to visualize.  Choose denominators that are easy to cut out!
2. Toast the bread.
3. Cut the bread into pieces equal to the denominator.
4. Apply spread to the number of pieces equal to the numerator.
5. Make a label using paper and pencil and place the label near the fraction toast.
6. Photograph your edible work of math-art.
7. Eat the Fraction Toast.

 This activity was designed by Limelight Education in San Diego!

 Square Foot Garden Updates:  MCS and Hammerhead123 will post later this week.  We have new growth, new pests and new seeds sprouting in our gardens!
 
SEE YOU NEXT TIME!!!  WBD

California Homeschool Photo Gallery by Limelight Education

Here is a photo slideshow of some projects that we did this year.  These pictures were posted by Limelight Education, LLC.

Projects:
Fraction Toast
Blueberry Eggs
Square Foot Gardening


Extra special thank you to Learning with Love Dog Training and Shelter Dogs to Dream Dogs.
Please click on their links above if you would like to rescue a dog or train your dog to stay out of your Square Foot Garden!

Projects and Activities Photographs

I created a photo gallery of projects from the 2009/2010 school year.  Click on the photo above to visit the photo gallery.

Educational Website Review Spelling City www.spellingcity.com

This is our review of the website http://www.spellingcity.com

You can get there by clicking here: Spelling City

Overview: At Spelling City a student or teacher can type in words to be learned and choose to play a game, take a test or be taught by a computer voice. The best we found game was "hangmouse". A student must know what the words are before beginning and also must input the spelling correctly.

Rated on a Scale of 1-10

Appearance? 6.5/10

Kid Friendly? 8/10

Would I use it again? maybe

Comments:

MCS - "It is good because it doesn't let you learn words that were misspelled from the beginning."

Hammerhead123: "The voice talks to me like I am a second grader"

Do you have any suggestions? Please comment on our blog!

Square Foot Garden Math 5th and 4th Grade

Are you ready for some Square Foot Garden Math?

Here is the data from our gardens at 10 am today, May 19, 2010.

MCS average plant height:
Radish 2.8 cm
Basil 0 cm
Tomato 0cm

HammerHead123 average plant height:
Strawberry 11.1 cm
Radish 4.5 cm
Cucumber 3.9 cm
Beans 5.5 cm
Melon 0.0 cm
Tomato 3.7 cm
* The 0.0 cm data means that the plant didn't sprout.

4th Grade Square Foot Garden Math

(by MCS)

WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE IN HEIGHT BETWEEN CUCUMBERS AND BEANS?

5.5 cm - 3.9 cm = 1.6 cm

5th Grade Square Foot Garden Math

(by Hammerhead123)

WHAT IS THE MEAN, MEDIAN, MODE AND RANGE OF ALL PLANT HEIGHTS?

MEAN: 2.8 +4.5+0+0+3.7+11.1+3.9+5.5+0= 31.5 cm

31.5/9= 3.5 cm

MEDIAN: 0,0,0,2.8,3.7,3.9,4.5,5.5,11.1 = 3.7 cm

MODE: 0

RANGE: 11.1-0= 11.1 cm

Thank you for reading our blog!

If you have any tips, please leave a comment!

Posted by WBD and Hammerhead123

Bulbs, Radishes, Thinning and More!

MCS garden (above) was planted with less seeds than Hammerhead123's (below). You can see that MCS's radishes are larger than Hammerhead123's. MCS's radishes are larger because they have more space to grow. Click here to read why both gardens were thinned to 16 radishes per square foot - WBD

WELCOME BACK

I have learnt that companion planting is very important because some plants need other plants. Basil needs tomatoes because it repeals bugs away that want to eat the Basil plant.

Last week, I planted the seeds and put a black trash bag over my garden to make sure my seeds would grow and they actually sprouted two days early!!!!

The radishes that i planted will harvest on June third because i planted them on may seventh.

The word of the week is bulb and the definition of bulb is any plant that stores its complete life cycle in a underground store structure.

Why Thin your Square Foot Garden?

(source: http://flickrfanstan.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/square-foot-garden-box.jpg)

Welcome back to my square foot garden blog.

In the past week I have dug, leveled, planted, watered, covered with black plastic then waited while the plants germinated. In 3days I have my radishes all sprouting and 1 melon sprouted 2 days early, because we put the garden black plastic down which kept the soil warm and wet.

(The melon that sprouted early had insect bite marks on the leaves a few days ago and was missing today! Maybe I should start melons indoors?)

Today I thinned the radishes. the word of the day is thinning. Thinning means removing extra plants. Gardeners thin their plants so vegetables will grow larger.

Tip: Don't over plant your seeds or they will compete for space, which will result in smaller plants. My crowded radishes began to turn yellow!

Do you have any idea what ate my melon sprouts?? If so, please leave a comment!

MCS Garden Photo

MCS holding a giant onion that has been growing for almost a year.

Square Foot Garden Math

Today we solved and explained two problems related to our square foot gardens.

How many square inches are in a 9 square foot garden?

by MCS (4th Grade)

1. To find the area of a square multiply the length times the width (in a square, these numbers are the same!)
2. In one square foot, each side is 12 inches, so you would multiply 12 by 12 and get 144 square inches as the area.
3. My garden is a 9 square foot garden and to find the total area of my garden you would multiply 144 square inches by nine.

There are 1296 square inches in my 9 square foot garden!

How many square inches does each plant get in my square foot garden?

by  Hammerhead123 (5th Grade)

Step 1 you find number of inches in a square foot. 12 inches x 12 inches = 144 square inches

step 2 you divide the number 144 by the number of plants per square foot.

Plant	Plants per square foot	Square inches per plant
Tomato, strawberry, melon, cucumber.	1	144
Basil, oregano.	4	36
Beans.	9	16
Carrot, radish.	16	9

This blog is maintained by San Diego based Limelight Education

 

Square Foot Garden Tip of the Week

Hi this is HammerHead123, welcome to the Square Foot Garden Blog! This is my first official blog and I am super exited to plant my veggies.

Each week I will chose one new square foot gardening term and define it . Our first word is" legume". A legume is a member of the bean or pea family . Legumes are important to the organic gardener because they have a symbiotic relationship with bacteria that add nitrogen to the soil.

This week we bought seeds including cucumber, honeydew melon, radish, carrot, and tomato. We also bought strawberry plants . We redesigned our square foot garden so that each square foot has one plant variety. We did this because we are starting from seeds and this will give us the greatest germination percentage.

The tip of the week is to water your garden cover you garden with poting soil then immedtely after cover with plastic when you are planting frome seed.

Covering your garden with plastic will keep your seeds evenly moist (and warm) so that they will sprout.

Check back next Friday to see pictures of my garden.

Square Foot Gardening Companion Planting

This picture is us getting ready to plant our garden.

Hi ,this is MCS and welcome to the Square Foot Garden blog, where we will learn new things about planting and maintaining a Square Foot Garden. I am very exited to learn about Square Foot Gardening and teach you in the process.

WORD OF THE WEEK: Each week I will choose one new gardening word and define it. The word of the week is “taproot”!!!
A taproot is a root that is goes straight down in the ground. Some taproots,such as carrots store food and water. That's why carrots taste so sweet!!!

GARDEN JOURNAL:
This week I designed my garden and researched on companion plants, to plant in my garden.
I learnt that some roots have chemicals and battle other roots for there space.
That is why you have to make sure you plant companion plants next to each other.

TIP OF THE WEEK: The tip is the week is that if you are planting basil and tomatoes they help each other by repelling bugs for each other so you should plant them right next to each other, if you are planting them.

Well I better go get ready to plant my garden,so tune in next week when i will post pictures of my garden!!!!

Square Foot Gardening: Companion Planting

Welcome back to the California Homeschool Blog. We are working on STAR test practice, Blogging and preparing our Square Foot Gardens for planting.  

This picture of a Square Foot Garden was found on wordpress.

Here is a link to the Square Foot Gardening Foundation:

Today Hammerhead123, MCS and myself, WD, are making a tough descision about our garden layout.

Originally we had planned on transplanting vegetable starts into our garden in a dense layout that would give us two things: shade on the topsoil to reduce evaporation and benefits from companion planting. We have decided to start our gardens from seed, which is an added challenge in the heat of early summer.

Today, the students will decide how to change their garden layout based on this new information.

Some potential changes:

• Adding plastic over the soil to keep it evenly moist during germination.
• Covering the soil with mulch to slow evaporation during germination.
• Starting some seeds indoors.
• Changing to a "monoculture" style square foot garden so that each square foot can be managed individually.  This would mean planting radishes in their own square foot with no other veggies.
• I am excited to see what the students decide to do!

Thank you for reading The California Homeschol  Blog!!!

Check back for Square Foot Gardening posts by Hammerhead123 and MCS later this week.