Growing with the help of student scientists!

Owen's project findings

Owen and Ari, third and fifth graders at Bear River Charter School in Logan, have been growing plants at Hope Community Garden for the past two years. When the elementary students were asked to develop a project for their school science fair, they looked to partner with a local community organization that could benefit from their hard work. We are so grateful that they decided to do some cool science at HCG to help us better understand how our new passive solar greenhouse can be used for overwinter gardening.

Ari installed thermometers that record daily minimum and maximum temperatures inside and outside of the greenhouse to help us better understand how the temperature inside the greenhouse changes with the outside temperature and weather conditions. She was super surprised to learn that the greenhouse can warm to over 120 degrees Fahrenheit on sunny days, even when it is very cold outside. At night though, the greenhouse temperature falls to match the outside temperature. Ari helped us to understand that we need to devise methods to moderate temperature changes in the greenhouse during the winter to garden successfully. Check out Ari's full project findings on her awesome science fair poster below:

Ari's Project Findings

Owen built on Ari's experiment to see how temperature extremes affect the survival of winter crops we are looking to grow in the greenhouse. Owen planted broccoli, cabbage, carrot, kale, kohlrabi, lettuce, rutabaga and spinach starts in two seed trays. He kept one seed tray in his bedroom window and placed the other in the greenhouse. Each day, he counted the number of live plants in each tray and explored how the maximum and minimum greenhouse temperatures affected the number of plants that survived. Owen didn't expect to find that only cold temperatures, not hot temperatures, killed plants. He was also surprised by his green thumb. Owen managed to keep all starts from the broccoli, cabbage, kale, and rutabaga alive in his bedroom for the entire experiment! Owen helped us to devise a plan to keep our greenhouse from getting so cold with black, water-filled barrels to moderate heat loss. You can see all of Owen's findings on his amazing poster shared at the top of this article.

When asked what the most fun part of the experience was, Ari responded, "Using science to help plants grow...and spraying my mom with water when we were supposed to be watering plants". Thanks Ari and Owen for helping us to better understand how our greenhouse works during the winter! We are looking forward to partnering with more student scientists in the future. Please reach out if you would like to do a project with us.