Planting the Seeds of Science

    The monthly meeting of the DirtyRascal Junior Master Gardener 4-H club took place tonight at the 4-H office.    Club members started the meeting with Keiren Hatcher and Layla Locklear leading the pledges.  After an update and quick member introduction for all the new club members it was time to have fun and accidentally learn something.

   This meeting we learned all about capillary action.  Capillary action is when liquid can flow in very narrow spaces.  Using capillary action we made our own self watering planters out of two liter bottles.  Some friends of Mrs. Tanya's donated the bottles that we used for our project.  She drilled holes in the caps, cut the bottles in half, and cut string.  We threaded the string through the hole and knotted it with a little bit hanging on one end and a whole bunch hanging on the other end.  The we lined the top with newspaper.  The next step was a little tricky as we feed the long end of the string through the newspaper at the top.  We spread the strings out and added dirt.  Then it was time to add the seed.  We added basil seeds to our planters.  We will put water in the bottoms and it will wick up the strings to water our seeds which will grow into plants.

    This is an awesome project and we hope to tell you all about our basil plants during our next meeting.  Speaking of which...our next meeting will be February 12th at 5:30 pm.