Category: Find Out More (Page 12 of 20)

Plants Are Growing

After the posts last week about pumpkins, I received a question about whether a fresh pumpkin seed (that came directly from the pumpkin) would grow if you planted it. Here is the answer:

pumpkin growing

I planted these seeds last week after I took them from a fresh pumpkin. Looks like they are more than capable of growing. They are planted in moist potting soil in a newspaper pot.

By the way, the question was a good one because some seeds, for example apple, pear and blueberry, need a cool period ( a winter dormancy) before they will germinate.

November is a good month for gardening in Arizona. We plant many what we call “cold season crops” at this time of year. Lettuce, broccoli, cabbage, brussels sprouts, carrots and chard can all withstand the slight frosts we get here in the winter, and so go into the ground now.

brussel sprouts

The basil in this photograph does better in the warm summer months, but will make it through if we don’t get a heavy frost or if someone remembers to cover it.

herb garden

Hope everyone has a good week. I think I’m going to go make a salad.

Growing With Science Website Reveal

After several months of heavy construction, the new Growing With Science website is ready for reveal.

The website has science activities organized by age and theme. I’ve tried to keep the pages simple and direct. There will probably occasionally be a few typos and oddities as I develop it over the next few months. Let me know if you have major difficulties with anything.

Here is the URL address:  http://growingwithscience.com/Welcome.html

The first theme is growing plants from kitchen scraps, or other items found around the kitchen. Most of these activities can be carried out indoors for little or no cost. Simply click on the science activity link and then pick one of the links listed under your child’s age level.

The second theme is Weather for Kids. If you like pretty photographs of clouds,  visit the cloud classification activity and try the slide show.

Hope you find a fun activity that you just have to try.

Do Apples and Pumpkins Float?

Some questions came in from the previous post on apples and pumpkins about whether apples and pumpkins float. If you can, you should try floating them yourself, because it is fun.

If it’s too cold where you live to be outside playing in water right now, take a look at how our experiments turned out.

floating pumpkin

What about pieces of pumpkin?

floating pumpkin

What about apples?

floating apple

Edit: Find out more about why pumpkins float in the next post

and also this video of a huge pumpkin made into a boat.

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