Wandering Jews in Baggie Terrariums

For the past couple of weeks, we've been learning as much as we can about the house plant called the Wandering Jew. We got cuttings of the plant on our trip to the green houses at C. O. D. We put them in plastic baggy terrariums. Today we opened some of them up because they were too wet or growing too tall. Here's what we've found out about Wandering Jew plants. They are tropical tender perennials which means they like warm climates and grow over a period of several years. It grows between 36 and 48 inches tall. It doesn't have seeds. It is a popular house plant. It can be found outdoors in eastern Mexico and South America. They need 24 to 36 inches between them to grow the best. It is related to the spider plant. The leaves can be 2 inches long. Make sure you don't over water them. It is also known as an inch plant. It prefers a combination of sunlight and shade. It likes humid environments. It will turn white when it's all done growing.

C.O.D. Green House Field Trip pictures

We had a GREAT time at COD Green House today!

Pulling up Evil Thistle (and other bad weeds)

Today was a nice day. So, we went outside and went on a thistle hunt! We saw a lot of evil thistle and twisty vine-like weedy things. We know that weeds are bad because they take in minerals from the dirt. Plants that are planted near them do not get all the nutrients and can die! Some weeds can choke the plants by wrapping itself around the stems of a plant. The weed's leaves cover the plant's leaves and block out the sunlight and the plant can die. That's what the twisty vine-like weedy things were doing. Some weeds grew and spread out in a circle on the ground. Then they put down more roots and kept on growing. This blocks the sunlight from the ground and can stop plants from growing up. One of us found a thistle root with 2 thistles growing out of it! Amazing and terrible at the same time. 2 thistles for one root! AAARRRGGGHHH! The good news is that the cold weather is starting to kill the thistles, too! Some of the thistles we saw (and pulled out) were turning yellow.
Next week we're going on a field trip to tour a greenhouse!

How to Make our Gardens Better

Today we had a visitor from C.O.D. Miss Britt is the manager at the greenhouses there. She brought a HUGE verigated spider plant with her. Verigated means it is different from the original plant. Most plants, when they first start out, are all green. When they get sick, they can get streaks of white in them. When this happens, growers may try to make more of them because the leaf is pretty. We learned that plants like this or with lighter colored leaves need more sunlight, or they'll turn back to mostly green!
Then we went outside to look at our gardens with her. She showed us a poke weed that was covered in baby aphids. Aphids are mean little bugs that eat plants and kill them. We also learned that bees eat aphids! We didn't know that! We learned that bugs like aphids can survive through the winter, sort of like hibernating. When they wake up in the spring they can start eating all our good plants! This is not good news. So we're going to pull that weed and throw it and all the baby aphids away.
Miss Britt also told us how to move the tall grasses in front of the 3rd grade classroom windows. We'll have to wait until March or April, before they start to regrow for the spring. Then we'll have to dig them up and plant them somewhere else. Then she gave us some suggestions for what to plant in our outdoor classroom that will survive the shade, be pretty and cover up the beds. Finally we looked at our hosta garden. She had some good ideas on how to prevent thistles from growing there in the spring. Hopefully we'll get to try them out.
We're going to go tour C.O.D. green houses in 2 weeks! We are really looking forward to that!

Thinking for Spring

Today we planted flower bulbs in the reading garden. They'll be blooming blue and yellow in the spring! Here's the plan we came up with! S is for scillia, H is for hyacinths, C is for crocus, MD is for mini daffodils. All our blooms should be in blue and yellow. The crocus might be purple and white, so we'll have to wait and see.


We also found lots and lots of grubs in the soil! Yuck! They are short fat little worms with legs and they eat roots. Our bulbs are roots! So we picked as many of them out as we could and threw them in the garbage! We feel very accomplished and can hardly wait to see the sprouts in the spring!

New Homes for Our Plants

Yuck! Slugs are sooooo gross, but soooo cool! They are bad for plants because they nibble on roots and leaves. This makes it hard for the plant to grow. We found a slug today when we were re-potting and splitting one of our tropical plants. We got rid of him.
It is important to re-pot plants because some plants use all the nutrients in the soil and need more soil. Re-potting them is healthy for them. Sometimes the roots take over the pot and take the shape of the pot. This is called being root bound. If we don't re-pot, the plant won't grow any larger.
We re-potted our two avocado trees today. We call them Big Brother (he's been alive for 2 years) and Little Sister (she was planted last summer). We hope that they'll be big and strong and grow avocados. We really like guacamole!
We also learned the term "back-filling" today. This means we put soil back over the roots and tamp it down to protect the plant's roots. It was awesome today! :)

We're Back!

We have finally started school again! We have new 2nd graders. Our old second graders are now 3rd graders. We are back at taking care of our gardens at school. Last week we picked evil spiky thistles. We are pulling them to make our gardens look better. The first place we pulled up thistles was in the reading garden out front. We also pulled out weeds in the gardens outside the 3rd grade classrooms. Today, we worked in our hosta garden. It had a bunch of weeds, like dandelions and baby trees. We picked and picked and picked all the grass that had grown in there, too! Some of us got to use snippers. They got to cut off all the dead flower stems off the hostas. The weird plant that we noticed last year has continued to grow. We decided to let it stay.