On Tuesday, 19th of November, our horticulture class did some work in the Sensory Garden. We did some cultivating and also we looked at our onion sets we planted in pots 2 weeks ago.
The onions we planted 2 weeks ago had grown a lot. We had watered
them everyday and they stayed in direct sunlight. We cut the chives up and got to bring them home.
After this we went out into the garden. We tossed the soil in all the flower beds to mix the nutrients. We then covered all of the beds with flattened cardboard to protect the soil.
We then did a general clean, we-deeded the soil and surrounding areas of the beds. And we also racked up all of the leaves in the courtyard as well using a rake and putting them into a black bag for compost.
On Tuesday, 5th of November,
our horticulture class went on
a trip into Dublin City Centre
to the 'Grow Your Own' Exhibition.
We got a tour of the exhibition
and we were told about the pieces around.
In this piece, the scientists took cigarettes off the ground of Dublin and used them to extract DNA, they then used that DNA to figure out what the smokers looked like. When they did, an artist created moulds of what they looked like.
This is a video of a plant factory, the factory is not like every other stainless steel one. Its made of just plants but they are grown using other plants DNA. They are only grown in this desert because of the climate.
This piece is chemical equipment used to make golden flakes. It uses chemicals to make gold but it is a very, very slow process and after a few weeks of this, theres only one tiny nugget of gold made so far.
We then did a DNA test ourselves. We swished a drink around our mouths and bit down on our checks to get DNA cells. We put the drink into the test tube and shook in to mix it even more. We then each added ethanol onto of the drink in the test tube, we had to make sure they didn't mix.
We rolled the tube between our hands at a slight tilt to get a better chance of getting the DNA. When the ethanol became whiter with the clump of DNA, we had to try and take it out. We used a dropper to suck the clump of DNA into a separate container.
On Tuesday, 22nd of October, our horticulture class did some indoor work. We spend the class making sunlight boxes for our onion sets. We did the following to make the boxes;
Construction:
The first thing we did was cut the cardboard boxes, so that the front was open and the sides were slanted.
Then we covered the entire front of the box with glue and cut some tin foil and covered the whole front and sides with it. This tin foil is used so that the sunlight bounces around the box and gets to every angle of the onion sets.
When we finished making the sunlight boxes, we then started to make decomposable plant pots. We used three strips of newspaper per pot and one strip of masking tape. We used the end of a bottle as a mould to get the newspaper to stay round.
These boxes and the pots with soil and more onion sets were then kept in the back of the science room in our school, as this classroom gets the most sunlight in the window which the onions sets need to grow.
We checked the onion sets a week on and seen progress, they were watered everyday and were in direct sunlight all day.
After this we went out into the garden. We tossed the soil in all the flower beds to mix the nutrients. We then covered all of the beds with flattened cardboard to protect the soil.
