Habitat & the Scientist Gardener)

Hi, I'm Jared. Welcome to Fun Science Demos. Most of us have gone into supermarkets and seen aisles and aisles of fruits and veggies. And all of those fruits and veggies come from plants. Some of the fruits in the supermarket, like pineapples and bananas and oranges and even this neat fruit called the dragon fruit, they grow in the tropics. Now the tropics might be far, far away from where you live, but the tropics are actually the perfect place for these fruits to grow. It has just the right conditions. Other fruits and veggies might grow in our backyard. And that might have the right conditions for those fruits and vegetables. Things like strawberries and beans and peppers and corn and zucchini or brussel sprouts. All plants need the right conditions to grow. And today we're going to take a closer look at this incredible garden behind me and meet the person who created it. A lot of people don't think about it, but gardeners are really scientists. And we're going to have the chance to ask this gardener scientist some questions. So I'd like to introduce you to our gardener scientist, Laura. Hi, welcome to my backyard garden. So we said that plants need the right conditions to grow and scientists call that habitat. Can you tell us a little bit about the ingredients that make this garden the perfect habitat for your plants? Well obviously, we're standing on the most important thing. We have to have the right kind of soil. Then from above, we need the right amount of light and sunlight all around us. We need warmth, that's why in this part of the country we grow in the warm months of the season. The most generous thing we get is water. And for instance, we haven't had a lot of water lately. We had to put the sprinkler on last night for the first time. So Laura, you said one key ingredient is soil. Can you tell us a little bit about your soil or the soil in your garden that makes it so important? Yeah, so rich. Well first of all, it's really soft. It's dark and rich and just built up over the years. We add compost that we make from the leftover vegetable matter of our garden and we incorporate that in the garden. There's lots of earthworms. You'll find if you dig down a few inches, lots of earthworms and they're really important because they aerate the soil near the roots. Their earthworm poop is compost in the garden which is really important. And lots of other microbes come into the garden but it's all that is the foundation to grow anything. Soil. So I look around your garden and I see just all this rich, dark soil and I can see what you're talking about. Tell us a little bit about the second ingredient, the warmth. Well, we live in Pennsylvania and so we have a pretty long growing season but we can plant from April, May through October, November. That's a long time to be able to eat food from your garden, from your backyard. It's really great. But you have to start slow with little plants and grow little seedlings, plant them in the ground and then throughout the season I do, it's called subsequent planting. I plant some seeds like every two weeks. For instance, lettuce. We have lettuce here and it gets too hot for some lettuce. So it does something called bolt and then it's too bitter to eat so if I plant little seeds every two weeks then I'm always having a fresh crop of lettuce. So it's summer and your garden is really growing but when does your garden really start? When do you start the growing of the garden? The garden is a barren ground in the springtime but around March we plant little seedlings inside the house to get a few of the plants going ahead of the time. And then in April, May we lay out the garden and we start to put all the seedlings that have already grown a few inches gotten a head start in the ground and then we put the seeds also like lettuce and carrots things that can go straight in the ground so really April, May is when we get going in the garden in full earnest. So you put the garden in April, May and now it's July and look at how much these plants have grown. Isn't it great? It's awesome. It's awesome. So you've talked about soil you've talked about warmth and it's kind of fitting that it's starting to drizzle because I think our third ingredient is water. Right. How often do you water? What's so important about water? Can you over water? Can you under water? Talk about that ingredient. We're really lucky. They say you need an inch of rain for your garden every 10 days to 2 weeks and some years we've been really lucky and especially starting the garden in May, June you really need to have the water consistently because it helps the seeds open up and then start their growth process. We have not had a great spat in the last month we've only had like less than half an inch in the last 2 weeks. So we watered last night for the first time. So we have a great sprinkler system that does the whole garden. We did it for 2 hours. Well, when if you want rain it doesn't come and here we go it's raining now. So we're so lucky and it's supposed to rain tonight and we're really hoping for a big rain because that will carry us over for another 10 days or 2 weeks. So if I wanted to start my own backyard garden I need to pay attention to the soil. I need to pay attention to the temperature or the warmth. I need to pay attention to the amount of water. There's one more ingredient you mentioned. Please talk a little bit about light. Light. Natural sunlight is really important. And this garden looks like it's all out in the open but actually we have trees around it so we get some morning shade on one side and afternoon shade on the other. So you see our corn this gets total full sunlight most of the day. Lots and lots of sunlight. It's really great. It's really tall. It's tasseling. You can see it's almost ready to start setting in. But just right behind me Is this planted at the same time? Same exact time. And the only difference is it's underneath the pines it gets probably 2 hours less sunlight a day. Wow. That's all. That's the difference. It's really crazy to see how important sunlight is. Full sun. Less sun. Even less sun. And then all the way down here less sun. I would say sunlight is really an important ingredient. So Laura we can see that sunlight is really important in the garden. But why is sunlight really so important to plants? It's amazing because it is plants are the only living thing on this planet that can take sunlight and all these ingredients we talked about and turn it into energy that creates the food that we eat. It's a natural process but it takes the right habitat and environment. And we're so lucky that we have all 4 of them in this garden. So plants take that sunlight and they turn it into food and energy for the plant itself. Exactly. So Laura the science in this is really amazing. The energy from the sun is captured in the plant the plant uses that energy to make its own food and then we can take that food eat that food and we get that same energy from the sun to the plant to us. Perfect. And it tastes wonderful. And that process scientists call photosynthesis. And we wouldn't have the food we eat if photosynthesis wasn't at work. Laura thanks for showing us and opening up this amazing garden. We really appreciate it. And now we're going to go back to the table where we started and take a closer look at the fruit and veggies on your table. Most of the fruits and vegetables you find in the supermarket come from really far away. But how cool would it be to step into your own backyard a few steps away and create your own backyard garden. Be a scientist and grow your own food. It's great for us, our family, our neighborhood and it's really great for the whole planet. Science is so cool, gardening is so cool. Science. Stop and try to wonder why.