Coolest thing ever by far

Today Tali Weinberg - farm manager - had me prepare and plant grapevine cuttings so we can grow grapes! So Evan and I took each grapevine cutting/branch/shoot and picked a good section of it to use. After cutting out a section of each shoot we scraped some of the skin off the bottom of it, and then dipped the end in this pink smelly liquid that is supposed to stimulate root growth. Here is a link to an example of such a product: http://www.metrop.net/3_uk_root%20stimulator.html

Then we shoved each grapevine cutting into a gallon-sized container filled with a specially prepared-by-me mix of some potting soil and lots and lots of Pearlite. Pearlite, if you do not know, is blown up rock bits that are white and crumbly and remind me of styrofoam. The point of adding Pearlite to the soil - especially for baby plants - is that the blown up rock pieces have tiny spaces in them to hold air, creating air pockets in the soil. These air pockets allow for better water drainage, holding oxygen in the soil, and for the dirt to just be lighter - a more hospitable place for delicate baby plant roots.

I hope our grapevine cuttings take to their new homes! We planted 22 of them and maybe tomorrow I'll get to work on doing this to fig tree cuttings! I think it is insanely cool that we can create new trees by cutting, stimulating, and replanting cut off pieces of tree branches or whatever we want!

Also this week we are running a half-day day camp - waaaay different from the week of full-day day camp we ran over a month ago. So now there are fifteen kids running around exploring and playing on the farm in the afternoons this week. Also, us fellows got to plan and implement educational farm activities for these little people. Evan and I prepared an activity about the plant life cycle where we talked about cycles, had the kids organize - in a cycle configuration - beautifully prepared plant photos of ours, played Simon Says (act like various plant parts), and then had the kids go out to the planter beds and see which parts of the plant life cycle they could find. I think they learned at least something. Maybe we will run the activity again tomorrow :)

Also, I don't know if I said this already, but we are growing Royal Purple Burgundy Snap Beans and they are the said color and are delicious and amazing! we also have some yellow beans and green ones.