5 Fun Bee Facts

Today we will be talking about the five facts of bees, let’s get on with the blog.

1. Did you know that one bee has to fly about 90,000 miles, three times around the earth, to make one pound of honey?

2. The bee’s brain is oval in shape and about the size of a sesame seed, it has a shocking capacity to learn and remember things. For example, it can make complicated calculations on distance traveled.

3. When a bee finds a good flower with nectar it flies back to the hive and shows its friends where the flower with nectar is by doing a dance which positions the flower in relation to the sun and hive. This is known as the “waggle dance”.

4. The queen bee can live up to 5 years and is the only bee that lays eggs. She is the busiest in the summer, when the hive needs to be at its top strength, it lays up to 2500 eggs per day.

5. A colony of bees consists of 20,000-60,000 honeybees, a one queen. Worker honeybees are female, they live for about 6 weeks and do all the work.

Those are the Top 5 facts you need to know about a bee and its capability.

By Lily Mecum

Gardening While Quarantined

Hello reader,

Due to government and school procedures schools are currently not in session, Phoenix included, and we are all recommended to practice social distancing. Do not worry! Even though school is not in session the garden coordinator and other Phoenix staff are making sure to maintain the garden and animals during the student’s absence. We are also making sure that we keep the garden blog updated! It is our intentions to have the students write the posts as it gives them the ability to show off their writing skills and garden knowledge that they are getting at Phoenix, but, due to the circumstances, staff may be writing some of the blog posts as we wish to keep the blog updated and current. Our intentions are to continue having at least one post come out every week going into the future!
All that being said, I just wanted to take the time to remind all of you that are self-quarantining that now is a wonderful time to work on your garden! Or, if you have not started one, to begin your garden! We are beginning to reach the planting season so now is the perfect time to prepare your garden and begin planting those seeds! Spending time in the increasingly nice weather and spending time amidst plants has been proven to help increase your physical and mental health so get planting!

By Troy Boozer – Healthy Futures AmeriCorps

5 Tips for Keeping your Garden Healthy during a Heavy Rain Storm

In gardening you must prepare for all types of weather, good and bad, so today I will be writing about the 5 good tips on what you should do when heavy rain wants to ruin your garden.

Tip 1: Before the storm starts, try to remove any damaged shoots and limbs, to reduce the chances of a plant breaking.​

 

Tip 2: During this kind of weather it is best to cover your most delicate plants, because you don’t want to have them damaged.

 

Tip 3: After the rain storm clears up, check all your vegetable roots, basically to make sure nothing gets damaged from the heavy rain.​

 

Tip 4: After the rain stops, pick your lettuce because it will be sweet and tender after a nice shower. ​

 

Tip 5: Moist weather is desirable for slugs and snails so be prepared to keep the slugs and snails at bay.

 

This is what I think are some of the most important tips to protect your garden during heavy rain, I hope you agree. ​

BY: Tanner Stone​

Composting

Ever struggled to find good soil? Have you ever thought about composting and making your own kind of soil? You might be wondering what is compost?

Composting is a very good thing for your garden. Composting is recycled veggies and manure. There are different things that you could put in composting, but there are some things that you don’t want to decompose when you’re making a compost pile. Something you don’t want to put in your compose pile is different types of meats and cheese, these could cause unwanted animals to get into your compose pile.

Decomposing is very useful to a garden. It’s great for growing plants because the soil and nutrients in the soil help grow the plants faster. Compost is full of nutrients because the veggies and manure provide different nutrients to the soil which helps the plants grow healthier and stronger.

Our school garden using compost a lot during gardening. We use it because we know that the soil will provide the plants with better nutrients for the students within the school. We also know that the compost will provide are garden with healthier and stronger plants.

Compost is great for gardens! It provides a lot of great things for you and your garden like healthy plants and better tasting veggies!

By: Beyliegh L. Mullins

Hydroponics

Ever wondered what a hydroponics system was? A hydroponic system helps grow plants more efficient by providing food, water, and nutrients without the use of soil.

A hydroponics system is very useful in the green house! It is a more efficient way to grow plants, growing them faster and healthier.

There are so many more advantages to using a hydroponics system. Some of those advantages are growing plants faster and more efficient, less fertilization, and less need for soil throughout the garden.

Some of the equipment you’ll need to make a hydroponics system similar to ours is long black or white plastic drain pipes. You’ll need a water system to provide water for the plants, so a nice garden hose will help provide the water system. Also, you’ll need a big black fish tank to provide the water flow and the fish are great to have for hydroponics system as they help provide nutrients to the plants with their waste.

What we’ve been doing in our school garden is we built a hydroponics system to help grow more plants faster and more efficient. So far we’ve got a few baby plants starting to grow.

by: Beyliegh L. Mullins

7 things you can do with dog fur

Ever wonder what you could do with dog fur? I bet you have never thought about dog fur being useful, have you? In this blog you learn 7 things you can do with dog fur.

Dog fur has always been an irritating to pick up and throw away, but what if i told you that dog fur could be really useful to yourself and the environment! Dog fur could be used for some many things, for example knitting clothes or to clean up oil spills.

Here are some uses of dog fur:

1. Most of the dog fur that will be knitted is usually spoon like sheep wool. Sometimes dog fur is mixed with other animal animal hair, like alpaca fleece, to make sheep wool.

2. Most people don’t think about dog fur when it comes to the environment, but did you know dog fur is really useful to birds? Most birds can use the dog fur to build their nest so they can keep the young birds warm. Now I bet you are way curious about dog fur now.

3. Did you know that you could actually use dog fur to make three-dimensional crafts? Dog fur can actually be used to make felt. By using soapy water you can rub the dog fur together until it tangles into a sheet. This sheet can we sewn together and used like any other felt you would buy at a craft store!

4. Have you ever had a problem with your dog ever chasing the pest out of your backyard? Most people use dog fur in their yard to warn the pests that their is something that is much bigger than them and the pests tend to leave the yard.

5. Ever struggled with oil spills and never had a way to clean it up? Well if you didn’t know this, then I guess you learned a cool new way to clean an oil spills! When an oil spill happens the dog fur is great for soaking up the oil spills!

6. Wanna know how to make a pillow with dog fur? A lot of people usually wanna make beds or stuffed toys for their dogs, but I bet those people struggled to find good stuffing for their four-legged friends. Why would you wanna take the risk of using stuffing that could harm your four-legged friends, when you could actually use dog fur to make dog beds and stuffed toys!

7. Dog fur is also great for growing plants in your garden. Dog fur has a lot of nitrogen in it. So when the dog fur decomposes it actually releases nitrogen for the plants to grow. It also helps maintain plant temperature.

Next time you find dog hair laying around your house why don’t you do something creative with it!!!

By: Beyliegh L.Mullins

Winter Gardening Tips!

Ever had troubles trying to grow something in the winter time? Here a few tips on how to provide protection, food, and enough water during the winter season.

Tip #1 – Clean out all the weeds.

It’s not a fun job, but it’s got to be done-along with dead leaves and plants. This will help discourage pests and animals.

Tip #2- Prepare soil for spring.

Use this time to amend your soil and improve drainage in your garden. This will help you prepare for the busy spring season.

Tip #3- Plant winter crops.

Planting cover crops and other winter crops will not only provide you food during the winter but also provide nutrients to the soil and protect against erosion. Check which crops grow best in your region.

Tip #4- Watering.

Water plants when the first inch of the soil is dry. Plants growing in the winter need dramatically less water then you should in the summer garden. The soil does not need to kept moist.

Tip #5 Planning for the next season.

During this time you will have gathered information in order to plan for next season. You’ll need to plan ahead on what to plant and what materials you’ll need to plant or harvest the plants you’re will to plant for next season.

Written By: Kaylee J. Robbins and Beyliegh L. Mullins

Asexual propagation is created a new plant without using a seed. There are many different types of asexual propagation. The types we have used in the garden so far is called cutting and dividing. To do cuttings all you need to do is have one plant already grown, cut a small part of it off with a root and replant that in soil and water. dividing  is a bit different,to divide you dig up a root or rhizome and break it into many different pieces and replant those pieces. Other types of asexual propagation include grafting, layering, and budding.
We used asexual propagation to make tiny succulents.  We took a small cutting from a bigger plant and replanted those smaller plants in small white buckets. These cute plants were used as gifts for an event held at our school. I think they turned out really great and I enjoyed making them and seeing how small they could get, I thought they were really cute.

Sunflowers JH

Sunflowers are pretty amazing to me. They follow the movement of the sun throughout the day. They are also one of the fastest growing plants, and they grow a lot. They grow about 10 feet in 6 months, and the tallest one recorded is just over 30 feet. Each sunflower can grow up to 2,000 seeds on its head. The scientific name for sunflower, helianthus, literally means sunflower.

 

Not  only that, but sunflowers are very useful to a garden. They help plants like lettuce thrive with the shade they provide.  Their nectar has good protein in it that attracts bees. They also add nice aesthetic to the garden that makes it more beautiful. As you can see sunflowers have many great things to them and that’s why they are my favorite flower.