Theme: Honing Math Skills in the Garden

Q&A: How else to use math in the garden?

Question: Which plants would be best suited for mathematical investigations?

Answer: To focus on math in the garden, you must first identify which mathematical principles you want to address. If you are interested in
real-life measurements and graphing, you may want to grow a variety
of sunflowers, which grow quickly, but also come in many shapes and sizes. The students will observe how plant varieties differ and how those differences can help the farmer meet his or her production needs. If you are interested in weight measurements, you may want to use plants
such as bush beans, pumpkins, or tomatoes that produce significant harvests for weight measurements and graphing. Or, if you are interested in practical computation, you might compare plants with low fertilizer needs (leaf lettuce, spinach, or radishes) to plants that need more
fertilizer (broccoli, cabbage). Using a soil test recommendation, students can try out how farmers use math to determine fertilizer needs and costs.

 

Question: How can I connect math learning to the garden experience?

Answer: Many aspects of gardening require mathematical computation.
In fact, the nice part about mixing gardening with mathematics is that
it gives students a look into how classroom number crunching is used
in a real-life setting. Farmers use math to compute pesticide and
fertilizer rates, decide on the amount of seed that needs to be
purchased, price their products, buy and sell equipment, compute fuel needs, measure square footage, and graph rainfall. The student will
use math principles for many of the same reasons. Students can use math in a school garden to:

• Measure the garden area and lay out garden designs;
  
  
• Calculate seed or transplant needs based on garden area;
  
  
• Keep and balance garden accounts;
  
  
• Measure and graph plant growth, rainfall, and insect population, over time;
  
  
• Calculate the volume of mulch your garden needs;
  
  
• Estimate harvest volume in pounds.

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Contents

1.	Introduction
2.	Native Intelligence
3.	Prairie Visions
4.	Learning Takes Flight
5.	Creating a Habitat
6.	Petal Attraction
7.	Harvesting Seed
8.	Across the Curriculum
9.	Weedbusters
10.	Resources

Pressed Flower Bookmark Kit
Includes blooms already pressed and instructions for preserving your own.

Pollinator Journal
Explore the connections between native plants and their pollinator partners.

Native Plant Stories Book
Rich text and illustrations inspire explorations of the roles and value of plants.

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