Spring Peepers

We are still waiting for these little guys to start singing around here, but it is always a good sign that spring is well on its way. During the winter they hibernate under logs or loose bark and are usually found near swamps or ponds.

Here are a couple books to take a look at:

You can borrow this book from archive.org – Tree Frogs

Research:

Find the answers to these questions or any others you may have and write them in your nature journal.

1. How do tree frogs make the noise that they do?
2. What do they eat?

Draw a tree frog in your journal and a diagram of their lifecycle.

Spring Clean Up

This time of year, when the snow is finally gone but the ground cover is still brown and dead, it is so disappointing to see all the garbage littering the sides of the road and the ditches. However, it is also the perfect time to clean it up.

This was from only a short walk down our road and back up, and we need to go down the other way tomorrow. Most of what we found was plastic: bags, yogurt cups, packaging, cups, straws. And then there were the Tim Horton cups, chip and candy packaging, and a few other things we will just label disgusting.

Of course, throwing it all into a plastic bag and sending it off to the local dump doesn’t really get rid of the problem, it just relocates it. So we have decided to figure out how we, as a family, can stop contributing to the problem of garbage.

Nature Walk:

Get yourself a trash bag, some gloves and take a walk in your neighbourhood. Pick up any trash you come across and take note of what you find.

Nature Journal:

Draw the various items you found in your clean up walk and brainstorm ways you can avoid these items. Here are some of our ideas:

Plastic shopping bags: Make a cloth bag that you can fold up and keep in the car or purse to use for odd purchases. Use reusuable bags for grocery shopping.

Straws: Do I really need a straw? Just drink right from the cup. If a straw is really necessary, then find some biodegradeable paper straws to keep on hand.

Plastic food bags for lunch boxes: Make some cloth sandwich wrappers. Use reusable containers or bento boxes.

Plastic cups: Find a good quality reusable water bottle. Make our own smoothies or iced cappucinos instead of buying them in plastic cups – cheaper that way too!

Paper coffee cups: Use our own travel mug at Tim Horton’s or ask for a china cup if  dining in.

Snack packaging: Stop buying individually packaged snacks. Make our own granola bars. Use yogurt from a big tub that can be recycled, and reusable smaller containers.

Other plastics: Find out what plastics can be recycled, be sure to recycle them, and don’t buy the ones that can’t be.

Start Some Seeds

Many people start to feel the desire to get things growing again when the snow has melted and the sun is shining. However, although it is still a bit too early to plant anything outside, it is a great time to get a head start on plants like tomatoes.

The first thing to do is to determine the last frost date for the area that you live in. You can check that out here: Canada Hardiness Zones.

Tomatoes shouldn’t be planted outside until two weeks following the last frost date. So in order to give them a good headstart, but not too much of one, you want to plant the seeds inside about 6-8 weeks before then.

There are two different types of tomato plants: determinate and indeterminate. It’s a good idea to choose a kind of tomato that is suited to where you want to grow it. Are you going to grow it in a pot on your patio (determinate), or somewhere that you can tie it up to a post or fence (indeterminate).

Determinates are bush type plants that you can easily grow in a pot with a tomato cage or stake. They stop growing when the top blossoms set into fruit and the fruit tends to all ripen together which is great if you want to do canning or make a lot of salsa. Examples of this kind of tomato are regular slicing and roma.

Indeterminates keep growing all season, and need to be supported as they will grow six feet or taller. They tend to be blooming, setting fruit, and ripening fruit all at the same time which is great if you want to be able to pick a few every day or so for dinner. Examples of this kind are cherry tomatoes or beefsteak.

Once you have decided what kind of tomato plant you want to grow, find:

• some small pots (yogurt containers with a hole poked in the bottom)
• potting soil (dampen it with a bit of water first)
• popsicle sticks (write the kind of tomato on it and put it down the side of your pot)

Plant three seeds in each pot and cover with about 1/4″ of soil and pat it down. Water them and if you want cover the pots with a bit of plastic wrap to keep them from drying out while the seed is germinating. Set them in a sunny window and wait – it takes about 5-10 days for the seeds to sprout. Cut out the smaller plants when they have grown for a while so that you only have one plant to a pot. Keep them watered and turn them every day so that they don’t grow lopsided. When they get a couple inches high, transplant them into a bigger, deeper pot, letting the soil cover some of the stem (they grow roots out of their stems which help to anchor them).

Nature Journal:

Write the date at the top of a page and draw the tomato seeds you are planting. Keep checking the pots every day and draw them as they sprout and grow.