Thursday was a busy day last week with the start of our second year doing the Tomatosphere tomato growing project. The students were all excited to get planting. As this is a multi-year project, our class was automatically signed up to do the tomato seed project again this year. As I told the students, this experiment is an actual live experiment with our results being combined with class across Canada in a test to see the viability in growing plants in a zero gravity environment. This year is very special as these seeds have actually been in space!

To start, we discussed why this experiment was important and why we might want to find the answer to this questions. We learned that the amount of food needed to go to Mars would be too great an amount to fit comfortably on the space shuttle packaged as it is now. However, if astronauts were able to grow their food on the way, it would not only save space, but also help provide clean air and water and give the astronauts something to do on the way.

We then used the links (you can find them on the left hand side) to learn more about Mars and compare it to Earth. We also had fun learning how old each of the students would be if they lived on Mars as well as how much they would weigh! I have to say, after all my wife’s wonderful cooking, Mars is looking pretty good right now!

Next, we learned about the tomato seed and plant and ended the morning by planting our seeds! Students planted two types of seeds: regular seeds and space seeds. As this is a real life experiment, we needed regular seeds to compare. However, WE DON’T KNOW WHICH ARE WHICH!!!!! In order to make sure there was no favoritism, we are not told which seeds are which until the end of the experiment! I LOVE SUSPENSE!!!

As the days go by we will be making observations. The success point for these seeds is whether or not they grow two leaves. We hope they will grow more of course but we need at least two leaves from each plant in order for the plant to be considered successful. At the end, students will be able to take the plants home. Hopefully students will get to take both types home but we will see.

I found some video on plant seed growth and germination. The first one is from the book The Carrot Seed, which is a very old book and not having anything to do with tomatoes but just substitute carrots for tomatoes in your head.

The second video is a neat animation of the journey of a seed which is kind of neat and is theoretically one way a seed can move from place to place.

The next video is a neat time-lapse showing the growth and germination of radish seeds; again nothing to do with tomatoes other than the same growth a tomato seed would go through if we could see our seeds from the side.

Enjoy and check tomorrow to see if there has been any growth in our tomato seeds!