Closer Looks Under the Microscope

Picture of the sigma under the microscope.

This is the sigma part of the flower.

This is a picture of the ovaries where the eggs are kept.

Picture of the ovaries and eggs under the microscope.

This is a picture of the anther under the microscope.

This is a picture of the anther. 

Story of the Seed Blog Post #4

We are experimenting with Brassica. Our plant is Kohlrabi, it is a type of cabbage and it’s usually purple. The plant descends from the seeds that the “parent plants” left after they reproduced. We can predict that the baby plants traits are going to be the same as the parents cells. Their offsprings will be a combination of the mother and the father. Meiosis is the process that a cell goes through to make sex cells, used for reproduction. They will combine there and DNA with there partner and form a similar type of plant(s). Their offspring will look similar to their parents, they will have traits from both the mother and the father. They look different because when there parents mate they make a new type of DNA that’s similar to both of them but their combination makes it different from other.

Picture of a Kohlrabi garden from online.

Recently taking picture of our kohlrabi in the Willow Glen High school garden.

Kohlrabi Failure Investigation

Introduction

            A few weeks ago my biology class grew some plants in our schools garden. We got the vegetable Kohlrabi, which is a type of cabbage. We let them grow for more than two weeks, and once they got a few inches we planted them into the grown. A few days after we planted them, they were completely gone. We discovered that someone ate our plants. Based on our evidence and background knowledge we formed a hypothesis and a testable experiment, to find out what ate our plants.


Question

(1) What ate our Kohlrabi plants?

(2) How can we find out what ate the plants?

Hypothesis

Based on the evidence that we have collected, we think that earwig bugs are the reason for the disappearance of the Kohlrabi. Earwig bugs are all over the garden. We did some research on, earwig's and there cabbages are apart of there dietary. Kohlrabi is a type of cabbage, therefore it makes sense that the earwigs would be eating on our plants. Although we cannot form any conclusions yet, because our plants were surrounded by other plants that were not Kohlrabi's and those plants got eaten as well. This mystery still has a lot of thought, and with clues we'll figure it out!

Background

            Kohlrabi is an annual vegetable, and it is a type of cabbage. It can be eaten raw or cooked. We decided to use an earwig for our experiment because earwigs eat cabbage, so it would make sense if earwigs ate our plant. Another reason we think earwigs ate our pants is because in the Willow Glen Garden, there are a great number of earwigs that are in the dirt. We also used caterpillars because, they eat leaves and kale is a type of leaf. 


Purpose

            The purpose to do this experiment is to find out what happened to our plants. We already made an experiment  but the reason why we did this is to see what the cause of these missing plants was? We also did this experiment to show our investigation on these missing plants. By planting these plants we wanted to help out our willow glen  garden and to see how it can help out our enviornment. Next many people today are not eating health especially kids there aren't enough vegetables and fruits. But that is not their fault, there isn't enough nutrients to provide fr them . there are a lot of fast food restaurants and there parents aren't aware that what they are eating is not good for their children. In conclusion, our plant can help recognize the obesity in this world.

Materials

• 1 Earwig bug
• 

  2-4 pieces of fresh kale
• 1 caterpillar
• 2 rubber bands
• 1-2 small jars
• Tape
• Net Paper
• Calender (optional)

Procedure

For our experiment we bought Kale from the grocery store and tested a earwig bug and a caterpillar bug to see whether one of the bugs would eat the kale. Originally we were going to grow more of kohlrabi but we didn’t have enough time and the plants were going to be big enough to test so we decided to just use kohlrabi. Kale is the closest thing to kohlrabi we could find. For four days we kept an earwig and a caterpillar in two separate jars with 2-3 pieces of kohlrabi to see whether they would eat the plant. We kept watch every two hours to see how much of the kale was eaten. We then compared data to get our results!

Independent Variable

The independent variable is the thing in the experiment that is being tested. In our experiment the kale was being tested.


Dependent Variable

Dependent variable is the thing in the experiment that you can change. In our experiment, our dependent was the earwig and the caterpillar. We could have tested the experiment with other bugs and got different or the same results.

Controlled Variables
A controlled variable is something that you cant change for all the experiments tested. Are controlled experiment was the kale. We used kale for both the earwig and the caterpillar.

Detailed Steps

1. Go to grocery store and buy a pack of kale (smallest pack you can find).
2. Buy 2 small glass jars, with or without top.
3. Buy rubber band, tape, and net paper or wax paper.
4. Collect an earwig from outside somewhere.
5. Rinse of Kale before putting it into the jar.
6. Once rinsed off put 2-3 pieces of Kale into one of the glass jars.
7. Then put the earwig bug into the glass jar, right away put the net paper or wax paper on top of the glass jar.
8. As soon as you have the paper on top of the jar put a rubber band around the jar and paper to keep the paper in place.
9. Put a few pieces of tape around the jar just to make sure the paper is in place.
10. If you choose to use wax paper, make sure you poke a few holes on the paper so the earwig is able to get air.
11. Once done putting the jar together, watch the bug for four days, to see whether or not the bug eats the kale.
12. Record your data every two hours to see how much of the kale was eaten.
13. After the four days are up and you’ve collected your data, collect a caterpillar from outside.
14. Grab the second glass jar you purchased and rinse off 2-3 pieces of kale.
15. Put the caterpillar into the glass jar, then put the net or wax paper on top of the jar.
16. Wrap a rubber band around the jar, to make sure the paper stays in place.
17. Also put a few pieces of tape around the jar just to make sure.
18. If you used wax paper make sure you poke a few holes on the paper so the caterpillar will have air.
19. Watch the bug for four days to see whether it eats the kale.
20. Record your data every two hours to see how much of the kale was eaten.
21. Put the earwig data and the caterpillar data together and form a conclusion.

Summary

            For our project we tested an earwig we put the earwig in a jar with kale, 2 to 3 pieces and we watched the earwig every 2 hours for 4 days, to see if the earwig will eat the kale. We discovered that after one day the earwig did not eat the kale our hypothesis was wrong and we had to start all over and find a new bug to test. We did some research and we found out that caterpillars chomp on leaves of tree, and plants with flowers. Therefore, we decided to test a caterpillar. We put the caterpillar in a jar with kale and watched the caterpillar every 2 hours for 4 days to see if it ate it. The caterpillar did eat the kale, the caterpillar in total ate one whole leaf. We concluded that the caterpillar ate our plants, but the caterpillar may have not been the only bug that has eaten our plant.

Data and Results

Discussion

            In our experiment we wanted to figure out what ate our plants. We did but it took a few obstacles getting there. Our hypothesis was that an earwig(s) ate our plant, because cabbage is in there diet. We were wrong and had to start all over again. We decided to use a caterpillar because caterpillars eat leaves. One reason are experiment didn't turn out the way we wanted it to is because we used kale instead of kohlrabi. Are experiment was based on kohlrabi but we could not regrow me kohlrabi because we didn't have enough time. It would have took 3-4 weeks to regrow kohlrabi and we started our experiment late, therefore we weren't provided with enough time. We were going to purchase already grown kohlrabi at the grocery store but we couldn't find any. Because of time we decided to use the best next thing which is kale. Kale could have effected our results because earwigs eat cabbage and kohlrabi is a type of cabbage, but kale is not a cabbage it is a type of leaf. Caterpillars do not eat cabbage they eat leaves and flowers, that's why the caterpillar ate the kale. But based on research and facts earwigs and caterpillars could have been the predator. There's also a lot more bugs in the garden that could have also ate the plants. If we were to do this experiment again we would take the time to grow more kohlrabi to have accurate results. We would also test more bugs and animals in or near the garden, because more then one thing could have ate the kohlrabi.

Conclusion

In conclusion, our hypothesis was wrong the earwig did not eat the kale and we had to start over and test out the caterpillar. the caterpillar did eat the kale and we concluded the caterpillar could be the one reasons that our plant was eaten but other bugs or animals could have contributed.

Sources

• lep_black_swallowtail_caterpillar772.JPG (1154×781)
• kale.jpg (1000×669)
• kohlrabi.jpg (1513×1227)
• earwig-earwigs.jpg (3839×2559)
• What Do Caterpillars Eat

Kohlrabi Mystery

Where Did the Kohlrabi Go???

Where the Kohlrabi use to be.

         

Evidence/Hypothesis 

                  We are sadly to announce that all of our plants have past away. But me and my partners are going to find what ate or made our plants disappear, we our going to crack this case!
             Based on the evidence that we have collected, we think that earwig bugs are the reason for the disappearance of the Kohlrabi. Earwig bugs are all over the garden. We did some research on, earwig's and there cabbages are apart of there dietary. Kohlrabi is a type of cabbage, therefore it makes sense that the earwigs would be eating on our plants. Although we cannot form any conclusions yet, because our plants were surrounded by other plants that were not Kohlrabi's and those plants got eaten as well. This mystery still has a lot of thought, and with clues we'll figure it out!


Experiment
          For our experiment were going to grow more of our seeds but not in the dirt, were going to grow them inside a cup first so nothing happens to them again. Once there grown enough we'll collect a few of the earwigs and put them in the same container as the kohlrabi. We'll leave them in there for a few days or weeks and if the kohlrabi disappear we'll know what happened to them!

 My name is Fatima and this is our story of the seed. A few things about me are that i was born here in San Jose ca and  California is the only place i have lived mt entire life but on some vacations i have been to Nevada.

 I have gardened before and as a matter of fact i have a garden of my own. Me and my family grow tomatoes, scalions, strawberries, rosemary, cactus, grapes, chiles , melons ,and a few other types of teas. The reason we have a garden is because one day we went to this place i forgot the name and they gave my mom seeds and they told her to grow them and see if she liked it . It was sort of a program thing and one day they came with cameras and people and they started interviewing her and asked her how she liked it and we ended up expanding it and my dad made little ''beds'' for it and then we bought more plants and seeds.

well one person that i know about gardening and cooking is my grandma. She has so many plants and fruit trees. She has a cherry tree ad this other fruit tree that's really good. She also has a lot of tea plants and other stuff that i don't even know what it is. and her cooking is amazing no one makes food like her no one. I remember when she made tamales and she showed me how to make them and they turned out really good. so when ever she makes food i like to ask her what she uses and how she makes it. And i hope i can learn a lot from this seed project.

 My name is Emily Sanchez and I live in San Jose, California. I've lived in San Jose my entire life but mother originated from Mexico and the rest of my family came from Mexico as well. I also have some family that lives in El Salvador. 

 I love to garden, I use to garden a lot because my parents always planted fruits, vegetables, and flowers in our backyard. I used to cook the plants we grew afterwards too but, my parents made amazing dishes from the vegetables we grew. I remember gardening cantaloupe and it was very tiring to take care of the plant but it was also fun watching it grow from a seed to a melon. The cantaloupe was very fresh and tasted much better than GMO melons  My dad knows a lot about gardening and horticulture, he mostly likes to plant vegetables like corn, chilies, and tomatoes because he loves to eat them afterwards and cook them into tasty dishes. My dad also used to plant vegetables and help garden other plants in a community garden I would come along too and observe how he tended herbs and other plants.

                Hello my name is Maricarmen Arizaga tho prefer  being called Mari for short.I live like 7 min away from here so technically I live in San Jose. I've never gone out of the country tho maybe going to travel to London.I have some experiences with growing seeds and plants when i lived in my own house we use to grow our food most of it tho were fruits, we never grew flowers.When i think of gardening i think of my mom she loved gardening  even when we moved to an apartment she would still grow small flowers because she wanted the  house to look nice. Tho I haven't seen my mom that often  any more, each time i go visit she'll always be watering her plants or taking care of them.