Mean Radish MCS

Welcome back it is MCS!

Yesterday, I measured my radishes and the mean height was 11 cm. The mean leaf length was 13 cm. Hammerhead123's mean height was 5.5 cm.The mean length of his longest leaf was 6.8 cm.

My growth rate of the height is 1.0 cm/day and the leaf length increases by 0.8 cm/day.

My radishes are growing faster than Hammerhead123's radishes because his radishes were in competition with each other (called: intraspecific competition) from right when they came out of the seed. When they got above the soil they grew thin and tall like a small tree. My radishes did not have to fight for food or light so they grew bushy with big, long leaves.

If you have any more information about growing big radishes or questions for me please leave a comment.

MEAN RADISH (HAMMERHEAD123)

This is a pic of a ground view of my beans with radish and strawberry plants.

Welcome!

I measured my radishes six days ago they were two cm high and the leaf length was two cm long. Now the mean height is 5.5 cm tall and 6.8 cm is the leaf length. My radishes are growing at a rate of 0.91 cm taller per day and the leaves are growing 1.10 cm/day.

On a side note, I was checking out Lance Armstrong's blog. Did you know that I train for triathlons when I am not in school?

You can follow Armstrong's training and more by going to this url:

http://www.livestrong.com/lance-armstrong/blog/

You can also follow him on twitter:http://twitter.com/lancearmstrong

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.

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!

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.

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.