Garden Science

Garden Science

Through our years of homeschooling with eight kids we've found that scientific thinking and a love for science often best come to children through hands-on science activities. While some youngsters may enjoy sitting down with a worksheet or reading a science text occasionally and many children enjoy homemade science experiments, our kids really love getting outside and touching the natural world, which has been their introduction to what science is about, investigating the universe in which we live. Biology, botany, entomology, astronomy, geology, paleontology, herpetology, ornithology, meteorology, and animal husbandry are among the fields that our children have first begun investigating through fun, hands-on, outdoor science activities. Nature can be a child's first and most potent teacher of science and it truly is a parent's ally in helping to open up a lifelong fascination with the realm of science.

Walking through your neighborhood observing the daily and seasonal activities of local wildlife or the way that your surroundings change from season to season as well as changes in the weather can spark an interest that a child may want to pursue later. Laying out in the yard at night watching seasonal meteor showers or scanning night after night for a comet, tracking the planets, noticing how the positions of the constellations change with the season, even simply watching storm clouds roll in overhead or noticing the way that the sun rises and sets in a slightly different spot as the seasons move from one into another have caused some of our children to investigate other areas of astronomy and meteorology. And something seemingly as simple as gardening, whether it involves a full-scale effort with many large beds and composting or several pots of beautiful flowers on your patio, is appealing to many children and can generate an interest and passion in subjects related to more than just food and flower production.

We've found some garden-related science activities that have been enjoyable for a variety of children over the years and I'd like to share them with you. These activities definitely are not only for country kids. These can be adapted by families living anywhere: country, suburbs, town, or even the city. At this time of year, seed catalogs are beginning to show up in our post office box. It's a good time to think about gardening. Many seed catalogs are a *free* educational experience in themselves! I like to sit in a sunny window, looking out over the cold winter Mojave Desert with a warm beverage and dream about the new things I'm going plant in a few months. Many of my kids enjoy browsing and thinking about planting too.

Garden Tipi

Form a tipi frame by driving three long sticks into the ground at the corners of a triangle that you've drawn in the dirt and tying them together at the top. If your tipi is very tall, you may want to place another stick on each side for support, making sure that one side has a wider opening for a door. Take pole bean seeds and plant four or five around each of the sticks, about 1 inch deep. Water and watch the seedlings begin to grow, twining around the sticks. The plants will cover the sticks with leaves, blossoms, and eventually beans pods. Inside the tipi the kids will have a green, leafy retreat. Picking the beans (for salad or dinner!) will encourage more to grow. Some people build their tipis with scarlet runner beans, which produce brilliant red blossoms all summer long. If the scarlet runner beans are picked young they are supposedly tender and delicious. Constructing and planting a garden tipi gives a child an experience with solid geometry right along with her garden science!

Sunflower House

This is similar to the garden tipi, but uses no sticks, only plants, to construct. Begin by drawing a square or rectangle in the dirt, the size you want the house to be. Plant sunflower seeds (the large, tall variety -- Mammoth Russian or Giant Graystripes are good) about one inch deep (spaced maybe 9-12 inches between plants -- they can be spaced closer together but the flowers tend to get smaller with closer spacing) all around the perimeter of your square, leaving an opening wide enough for a door on one of the sides. Water the seeds as needed. After the sunflowers have a head start, just outside of each one, plant bean seeds in little circles around the sunflowers, three or four bean seeds around each sunflower plant. Water as needed. As they grow the beans will climb up the sunflower stalks and create a wonderful playhouse for the children. As with the garden tipi, keep picking the beans to encourage more to grow. Some families rig string supports for the beans that go across the top of the house, making a roof! Simple or elaborate, this is a fun project for everyone.

Sunflowers

My kids and their friends love sunflowers. We have a spot along our fence where we plant the really big ones every year. The kids have been fascinated by the way that they turn toward the sun like natural solar panels.

They are easy to grow and it's fun to watch their progress by the week, it's fun to harvest and taste the seeds in the fall. They are a fun and inexpensive bird feeder, and our chickens love them. Every seed-eating variety of bird in your vicinity will enjoy your sunflowers.

Sunflowers don't mind poor soil, as long as they get plenty of sun and adequate water. There seems to be a nearly infinite supply of types and sizes of sunflowers, from small plants suitable for patio pots to the Giant Graystripes which grows upwards of 8 feet and produces a single flower on its tall single stalk the size of a dinner plate.

There are a couple of ways to harvest the seeds, if you want. I usually leave a few plants leaning against the fence for the winter birds to pick at and harvest the rest of the seeds. When the center of the flower heads begin to dry out, you can cover the ripening heads with paper grocery bags (keeps the birds out!) and actually cut the heads and dry them in the bags. After three weeks or so the seeds will begin to fall off into the bags. Or you can cut the heads off of the stalks as the backs begin to yellow and hang them upside down to dry, in a warm, dry place over boxes or newspapers. The seeds will fall off and can be shaken off. I've heard that a good way to harvest the seeds is by cutting the heads in two and rubbing the two halves together. Our first try at harvesting sunflower seeds was pretty comical. My six year old daughter and I sat on the driveway with piles of sunflower heads and rubbed seeds out, brushed seeds out, and tried finally plucking seeds out. We did get enough seeds to try salting and eating them but then we gave up and tossed the rest to our chickens. They were glad. And they had no problem separating the seeds from the flower heads. I think that we hadn't let the seeds dry enough and we haven't harvested sunflower seeds that way since. Letting them drop into paper bags is much easier!

If I lived in an apartment in the city I think I'd still include sunflowers in my planting routine. I'd get a couple of the deepest patio pots I could find and plant them in a spot of sunlight on a patio, my balcony, wherever I could fit them!

Amphibious Friends

Frogs and toads are really a gardener's friend. They consume huge quantities of harmful insects, upwards of 15,000 in one season. If you live were they are common, it should be fairly easy for the kids to catch one in the spring or summer from a damp place. Even in the high desert we have the occasional toad visitor. When you've caught one (or two) and selected a spot in the shade near your garden and away from the lawn mower and any pets that might like to take a bite -- keep it (them) penned for a couple of days (with water!) to get them used to the new environment.

Meanwhile set up a shelter for them. You could use one of the specially designed toad houses that gardening catalogs and garden supply stores sell, or you could take a clay pot and turn it over after breaking a chunk out of the side for a door. Stick it into the ground, place a shallow pan of water nearby, and bring your amphibious friends to their new home. Keep their water pan filled and let them go to work, doing their organic insect control. I have to say that high desert toads are an independent bunch and never stick around long. Still, they're fun to watch while we have them.

Some families that we know like to grow their own frogs from eggs to tadpoles to frogs, either by collecting frog eggs from ponds and lakes nearby or by ordering a complete frog hatchery set ($21.95 from Insect Lore, information at the end of the article).

Ladybugs

These are my nine year old daughter's favorite. She requested mail-order ladybugs for her birthday last year. At the end of this article are sources for ordering these critters if you have someone in your family who is also enamored of the little cuties. Ladybugs are truly the gardener's friend. A ladybug is actually a ladybird beetle (Hippodamia convergens) and there are over 600 different kinds of ladybugs. Besides the familiar red and black ladybugs, there are white, yellow, pink, and orange ladybugs.

Ladybugs are one of the most common beneficial insects, one ladybug eating up to 5,000 aphids in her lifetime. She can lay 50 eggs a day and up to 1,000 in her lifetime (about a year).

An interesting ladybug fact: they clean themselves after eating. :-)

We became intrigued with ladybugs when we bought a package of 1,500 of them one year at a local garden-supply center after hearing about their aphid-eating potential. We'd had enough of the aphids taking over our gardens, enough of curling leaves and plants being sucked dry. We'd sprayed with the hose, we'd sprayed with soapy water, we'd sprayed with natural pyrethrum spray from our local nursery. Nothing worked. Ladybugs took care of the problem for us. This was a great way to show the kids the use of natural pesticides instead of chemicals that may harm the environment! Ladybugs are wonderful for pest control around your edible plants and there's no need to worry about toxicity when it's harvest time.

That first batch of ladybugs we brought home overwintered in our vicinity and many were there in the spring to start over again. When cold weather arrives, the ladybugs seek shelter and hibernate. Sometimes, they hibernate under a loose piece of tree bark, inside a house, or under a rock. When the weather turns warm again, the ladybugs become active and emerge to go back to living in the trees, bushes, grass, and brush.

Butterflies and Butterfly Gardens

Your sunflowers will attract birds and your garden tipi will draw butterflies but if you decide you want to observe more butterflies you can create a butterfly garden. This can be as simple or as large and complex a gardening project as you want.

There are many good reasons to plant a butterfly garden: It's beneficial environmentally, helping to bring flowers and plants into urban areas and helping to reestablish native plants that have been eliminated by commercial varieties and nonnative plants. It helps to preserve many species of butterflies which are threatened by continuing destruction of their habitat (your kids learn about entomology and ecology in one fell swoop). It's fun! It's easy!

Butterflies possess a highly sensitive sense of smell. Some of the right kinds of flowers will draw them and encourage them to make your garden their home. Butterflies can identify their favorite plants from miles away and travel for hours to taste the nectar of the flowers. They will lay eggs and remain nearby as long as you tend to your garden, keeping it healthy and blooming. I've heard that butterflies will actually arrive within hours of the blooming of the spring's first flowers!

Even a simple window planter or a couple of patio bowls will bring several butterflies frequently during the day. They may be living in a nearby park or tree but find your planter the right spot to come and feed regularly.

Each different species of butterfly has its own favorite flowers and this might make an interesting study and something worth experimenting with if you or your kids want to really delve into it (most libraries have books about butterflies and the Internet is packed with good, informative sites), but as a general rule flowering nectar bushes and healthy clumps of impatiens or alyssum, as well as zinnia, aster, and nasturtium are attractive to them. Naturally, butterfly bush, which resembles lilac but blooms later (July or August) attracts throngs of butterflies. Dill and parsley are said to attract Black Swallowtail butterflies and feed their caterpillars and milkweed serves as a food source for Monarchs. If you happen to live where there is abundant milkweed, you might be able to find some monarch caterpillars if you search among the leaves.

Raising caterpillars to butterflies

The flowers you plant will attract the adult butterflies and provide a food source for their caterpillars. You and your children might find some caterpillars or even eggs if you look under and around the butterflies' food sources. If you do, you can place them in bug boxes (ordered from Insect Lore or homemade) with good air circulation so that they don't suffocate. If your bug box is homemade be sure to make it with plenty of air holes. Feed the caterpillars daily (they like their food fresh :-) ) and watch them progress through their life cycle!

The life cycle of the butterfly, from egg, to caterpillar, to chrysalis, and finally, to the emergence of the adult butterfly generally takes a few weeks. When the butterfly hatches if it's a local species (found in your garden) it's probably a good idea to release it into the wild within about two days. My kids would prefer this to having the butterfly die on our hands. At any rate, adult butterflies are not terribly long-lived. Most live for only a few weeks. The longest living butterfly we've read about has an 18-month lifespan. If a couple-day-old butterfly is released into your garden this gives it a chance to mate and increases the chance of finding more caterpillars.

If all of this is just a little too homegrown buggy for you but you or the kids would still like to try your hand at raising some of these critters Insect Lore (contact information below) has quite a few self-contained kits for raising butterflies. Not to mention their books, videos, and other fascinating science items!

In the Winter

We haven't tried any fall or winter planting in our high desert climate since it's so extreme and unpredictable but I think what's left of a garden in winter, under a drift of brown leaves or snow is intriguing. It has a barren kind of beauty that holds a promise of life. It's also a smorgasbord for our local rabbit population. When winter comes to the high desert and there is less food available in the wild, jackrabbits and especially cottontails find a way under our fencing and visit early every morning and in the evening. We've discovered a chipmunk living in a cinder block wall, nibbling at the remains of a small bed of vegetables. Birds are everywhere, poking among the leaves, the decimated flowers, the herbs. Some hardy herbs attract the rabbits with tiny green tips of leaves even in midwinter. All of this has been fascinating for the children to watch. We have several bird-identification books within easy reach and we've spent years identifying the comings and goings of different species. We've put out bird seed and rigged up different kinds of feeders, but we get a lot of avian visitors at our chicken feeders too. It's fun to identify which birds are migrating and which are year-round denizens of the neighborhood, which is easy to do using a bird manual with color pictures and range maps, telling you where various birds live during different seasons and sometimes show migration patterns.

Where to find useful information

*Your local public library, naturally :-)

*Seed catalogs (for a butterfly garden)

*Insect Lore

Box 1535

Shafter, CA 93263

(1-800-LIVE BUG)

Online visit www.insectlore.com

Insect Lore has a wonderful free catalog with all kinds of fascinating science materials: books, videos, models, software, games, and plenty of hands-on science materials not limited to just insects. You can order live frog embryos from them and even a habitat to grow them in or materials about marine biology and space and the atmosphere.

*The Beneficial Insect Co.

137 Forrest St.

Fort Mill, SC 29715

803-547-2301

Online visit http://bugfarm.com/

If you are interested in ordering large quantities of garden-friendly insects the very best source we've found is The Beneficial Insect Company. They have wonderful service and are more than happy to chat and share their considerable knowledge and insight into using insects as environmentally friendly pest control. Last year we ordered 9,000 ladybugs from them for about $20.00. They have praying mantid egg cases at the bargain price of 3 cases for $8.00. Keep in mind each case hatches hundreds. Not for those who have bug fear, still these are very helpful insects for gardeners and most children love to observe them.