Way to Water!

By Davon, Devin, Gregory and Tyree

Our class wants to start a garden. We wanted to learn about how much water plants need and how to water plants. The question we spent a lot of time investigating was: How can we get water to the garden? This is a real problem because there is no hose or outside water where the garden will be. We decided to try to invent a way to water the garden.

Before we started our experiment we read some books and got some information on the Internet about how much water plants need. You can check the soil with your finger to see if it is too dry or wet. You can also look at the plants to see if they are growing okay. We also planted our own seeds in a cup in the classroom and we watered them to see how much water we needed. Some people watered them too much and the plants didn't grow.

Our first idea for the garden was to use buckets of water but we thought that we might put too much water in some places. Then we thought about using big cans that would have holes in them that we could fill up and let the water go into the soil more slowly. We made a small garden in a large plastic container and used different size cans to see which one worked better. We punched different size holes in the cans too to see how the water came out of them. Some of the holes were too small and not all the water came out of the can. The can that we cut the whole bottom off let the water go out too fast. A tall can with two big holes worked the best.

When we plant the garden outside we are going to use big cans with two holes in the bottom. We will put the cans in the middle of the ground so the water will come out on both sides to water the plants. We will carry water out in a bucket and fill the cans to water the garden. We will watch how long it takes for the water to empty out of the cans and check the soil to see if it is getting enough water. Then we'll know how often we need to fill the cans back up.