Soil Facts at Minsterworth 16th May 2008

Today at Minsterworth we talked about soil - how plants need a combination of things to grow. We measured the veggies. The non-dig bed is lagging behind - the potatoes in the dig bed are HUGE already. I reckon, judging by the amount of crockery we are digging up that the dig bed is on the site of an old domestic rubbish heap and that years of waste has enriched the soil splendidly.

We also did a soil separation test and will see how the layers settle next week.

We are pleased that Rob Rees, the "Cotwold Chef" has accepted our invitation to view our project in July.

Meauring up at Minsterworth 9/5/08

At last we have something to measure! A lonely pea and some tiny carrots! We did a short session on how to measure plants with rulers and then went out to record some facts. Were the plants happy? How tall were they?

Afterwards we finished our huge bean picture and added some details...like five suns and some green lightening.

What is soil? Horton 13/5/8

Today we did two experiments with soil. Firstly, we took soil samples from different areas of the garden and put them in jam jars with water. Next we shook them and then left them to settle. It was immediately clear that the different sized particles were separating out. We chose a good, safe spot outdoors and left them - we will check next week to see what has happened to the layers. THEN we got some more soil samples, wet them if they needed it and did soil-net's "Hand Texturing Experiement." Using their ID key we worked out what kinds of soil we had
at Horton. The children then did a really good job at discussing what soil is made from, and the need for many elements to be present to create a medium for plants to grow in. Good work!

Peas Please 25/4/8

Minsterworth spent some time thinking about how we can measure the differences between the plants in the different plots and enjoyed acting out farmers, healthy potatoes and really horrible sickly potatoes. We had lots of mad fun throwing imaginary potatoes around the room. Maybe you had to be there.



We then went outside and discovered that...NOTHING had grown yet. But we did set the worms free and plant on some peas I had grown in pots. One of the girls went snap happy with the camera so lots of pics for you this week!