6B-4b Repurposing the Worm Bin

        For our project, we repurposed the worm bin in the school garden. We wanted to do this because it will help the school garden. In seventh grade, we plan to refill the worm bin with soil and worms. This is important because we can reuse our compostable scraps, and it will help the school garden by creating healthy fertilizer. We repainted and cleaned the worm bin. The fresh coat of paint makes it more approachable. One challenge was that we are both very afraid of spiders, and the worm bin had basically become a spider bin.

        Our first priority was to clean the worm bin out. It was filled with old hay and paper, which was the old bedding. After we cleaned out all the bedding, we got rid of all the critters and cleaned it. Then, we painted it green. We hope this will help the school by giving the garden fresh soil.


       Before                                  After

6B-4a Easy Gardening? Let's Get Cracking: Egg Shell seed starters. August and Charley

          We wanted to do something that involved gardening using everyday stuff. Some people buy plastic trays to start their seeds and then just throw the plastic away so we wanted to find a way to make compostable or reusable seed starters. At first we wanted to turn egg cartons into seed starters, but we realized it wouldn’t work. We did some research and decided to make seed starters out of eggshells instead. Using eggshells as seed starters is a good idea, because once the plants are ready to be re-planted, you can plant the eggshell with the plant. The eggshells decompose in the soil, releasing nutrients that the plant can use to grow faster. The project costed us nothing.

        Over the weekend, we ate a lot of eggs so we could have shells to work with on Monday. When we got back to school, we washed the shells, and poked holes in the bottom for drainage. Then we picked out our seeds, which were parsley and thyme, and planted them. We had 11 shells to use. We put the carton on a windowsill and waited for them to grow. But we came across a problem: the lid of the carton kept on falling down over the eggs. So we took two popsicle sticks and taped them to the bottom and top of each of the sides of the carton to keep the lid up. The solution worked perfectly.

        Throughout the process we learned a lot about gardening and improved on our egg cracking skills. If somebody else was doing the process we’d definitely recommend being really careful when you crack the eggs. If you crack them to high, they’re hard to put soil into and their hard to water, and if you crack them too low, soil falls out and you can’t use them. We wish we could’ve planted more kinds of plants, but we didn’t have the seeds and shells to do so.
Here is a link that helped us out a lot with our project: https://www.southernliving.com/garden/flowers/how-to-start-seeds-in-eggshells-video