P.L.A.N.T.S.

Ask a member of our 4-H Junior Master Gardener Day Camp and they can tell you what P.L.A.N.T.S. stands for. If you need a clue, it is the six essential things any plant needs to grow: Place, whether it is in the ground or the appropriate pot and living conditions; Light, every plant needs some type of light source, preferably the sun; Air, every plant needs to breathe and help turn carbon dioxide into oxygen; Nutrients, every plant just like humans needs food; Thirsty, plants need water just like any living thing; Soil, almost all plants need soil to grow in. This is just one of many little things are soon to be certified Junior Master Gardeners learned.

Our youth were very fluid today, focusing on all things water for much of the day. They learned that their bodies are made up of almost 70% water and did the math to figure out how many pounds in each of them is water weight. They also learned about the water cycle and know that when it rains plants drinking of rain water is called transpiration while the water they don’t drink is called run off. That water then evaporates back into the air and comes back down as rain. It sounds complicated, but the youth actually used cookie sheets, bowls, and ice to create their own weather system and even created a cloud. We certainly didn’t stop there, we had to grow with our knowledge and conduct a science experiment on how water moves through flowers by soaking carnations in colored water and watching them change colors. We also made our very own creative rain gauges to measure how many inches of rain we have in the next rain fall.

If you think weather systems and water cycles are all wet there were plenty of other things that we accomplished today. Do you know the parts of a seed? Or why plants and roots grow the way they do? Do you know what insects that have eyes see when they are looking at the world? Our Junior Master Gardeners know the answers to these questions and many more after a day of making bug eyes, recycling two liter bottles into terrariums and repurposing pine cones into feathered friend feeders.

If you think today was busy just wait. We still have our trip to the zoo tomorrow and final activities on Friday before our big graduation! So much more to do before we can graduate. Stay tuned as we share our adventures with you via our blog and our Twitter page.