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Homeschooling Adventures at the Maxwell's
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
The $64 Tomato
I just finished a great book titled "The $64 Tomato" by William Alexander, and I just wanted to write a little review of it to hopefully encourage other wannabe gardners like me to check it out. I picked my copy up at my local library.
Here is a review by Joyce Wadler, writing in the New York Times:
It seemed a safe assumption to William Alexander that growing his own food would be cheaper than buying. A pack of tomato seeds costing $1.79 had the potential, he estimated, to produce "fifty, a hundred, maybe even two hundred dollars' worth of tomatoes."
"Try getting a return like that on Wall Street," he said. Then he checked the math...
Alexander, by vocation a technology guy, is a home gardener for the love of it... So it seemed fitting, on a day when it was still too early for planting, to ask what advice Mr. Alexander — the sort of fellow who buys a few books and builds his own kitchen when the estimates come in too high — might offer those gardening naïfs who are just starting to muck around...
"The biggest problem Anne and I had when we were trying to figure out what to do, a mistake we would encourage other couples to avoid: we gave each other garden books. Great Victorian gardens, small period gardens — garden porn. And what we failed to realize, though it should have been obvious to anyone, was that one of the things that made great Victorian gardens great was that they came with great Victorian gardeners..." |
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Tuesday, April 3, 2007
Tomatosphere Project - Day 0
We received our seeds in the mail yesterday for the Tomatosphere project and we planted them today. Here is an exerpt from the website, this will explain what we are doing and why.
"" Seeds will be provided in the spring of 2007 for spring (or fall) planting. The tomato seeds for 2007 will be in two envelopes – labelled ‘R’ and ‘S’. One envelope contains the control group; the other group has been exposed to a simulated space environment with temperatures of negative 80 degrees Celsius and low atmospheric pressure for a period of 18 days. This simulates a breach in the space vehicle’s storage system on a long-term journey in space.
The basics of Tomatosphere will remain; a “blind” test in which you and your students will not know the origin of the seeds until completion of the germination process and submission of results. Students will learn how to conduct a scientific experiment and compare the germination rates of the seeds. They may also report on the growth and development of their plants... and may be inspired to pursue further education in science and technology. ""
So, in addition to all the other plants and seedlings we've started in our kitchen (which are not in this pic as I moved all of them outside to get some fresh air and sunshine), we now have 40 more cups with tomato seeds in them. Each cup is labeled 1 through 40 for both the R seeds and the S seeds. We've started our journal pages, labsheets, and growth charts and will monitor them daily until all seeds have germinated, or for about three weeks whichever comes first. The kids are real excited about this project, and I may have 80 more tomato plants that will need a home, I already have around 100 or so started from seeds I purchased! I'll try to keep posting updates on this project.
ps. check out my wall-color behind the table. I just painted it, this color is called "Earth tone" and it is our accent wall. The rest of the walls in the kitchen/dining area are being painted "Clamshell" and I think it's going to look great when I finally get it all finished. Just doing one wall at a time, trying to not disrupt my entire kitchen! |
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Friday, March 30, 2007
What My Kids Spend Their Allowance On
My kids get an allowance every month at one dollar per year of age, and they are permitted to spend it however they choose. They can buy candy, toys, videos, or save it. This past month, Spencer and Lindsey spent every penny they had and bought a variety of cacti and succulents.
The plant in the terrarium is a venus fly trap. I think they made some great buys this month. They claim that their allowance this month will go to even more cacti, but we'll see, the candy may win out after all! It's also funny trying to get them to say cacti instead of cactuses like they want to, I usually let them say it either way, just make sure they know the "correct" way. |
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Friday, March 23, 2007
My Future Orchard and Garden
My kids and I have been starting a variety of seeds here in the kitchen in some mini-greenhouses that we picked up at Wal-mart a month or so ago. Today we also picked up a few other seeds and today I'm going to order the few others I want from www.jungseeds.com and then that will be finished. I also picked up raspberries, blackberries, grapes, and blueberries. My parents picked me up two weeping willow trees at Walmart yesterday for only $10 each and they are at least 15' tall already. I'm going down with my dad's truck tomorrow to get at least 6 more fruit trees, they are only $10 each right now too. I need to have my hubby look at where I want the berries planted and see what grand design he can come up with for trellises, his design may just be me going to buy some already made! It is only March right now, and normally I'd not buy plants for outdoors this early, definitely not with our indecisive weather patterns, but I had a feeling if I didn't take advantage of the great deals right now, I'd miss out on them in another month or so. That happened last year with strawberries, when I wanted to buy them in mid April, nowhere had any, I had to order them form a seed catalog and I wound up going through about 5 companies before I finally found one with some in stock! So lesson learned, buy when you see them, then try to keep them alive until ready to plant outdoors. I planted 6 fruit trees last year and they didn't do much of anything, I think the deer kept eating the leaves off of them. So I'll leave them where they are for this year, and pray for some sort of growth, but I'll also be planting at least 6 to 12 more down below them, I hope to have a huge orchard one day. I'm so pleased at all the gardening possibilities we have right now, I can't wait for the weather to warm up some more so I can get my hands dirty! |
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