Botanical Gardens

On Tuesday rm18,rm 20 and rm 16 went to the Botanical Gardens. We looked at natures recycling in the bush with Susie. When leaves drop to the ground, it's all like a leaf life cycle which keeps going and going. When a leaf dies it gets eaten by worms, then the worms drag it under the soil for bacteria to help break through the leaf and turn it into fresh soil. Then the soil makes more plants and trees, when more trees grow more leaves fall off, and worms and bacteria do the same thing again and again. When a leaf falls off the tree it's green, but when it's yellow it's kind of starting to die but when the leaf is brown it's dead then it will be turned into soil by what Susie calls them decomposers. We would need a microscope or a magnifying glass to see bacteria, but it does alot to help save our world from harmful pollution.

Next we went and made worm farms, first we talked about making compost heaps. We thought it was quite yuck to put horse poo in. Susie showed us how to make a worm farm, it went like this:
1. Get a container with a hole at the bottom so the worm wee can drain through.
2. Put pumice stones at the bottom so the worm wee can drain. Then put a layer of guave on top of the pumice stones, sothe worms can wriggle through and have a little swim.
3. Put a little bit of soil and tiger worms on top of the guave.
4. Put your left over food scraps on top of the tiger worms.
5. Put wet newspaper on top of the left over food scraps or you could put a old carpet on the container, because the tiger worms like the dark and so they don't get eaten by birds.
6. Feed your tiger worms often with left over food scraps, but don't feed them too much because they might be too full. Watch your worm farm grow!

We had a wonderful trip to the Botanical Gardens, but we did not like the cold weather but even though it was cold we learnt alot!