In lesson 100 I will make beeswax candles using only a few inches of string, a bunch of wax, and some essential oils for scent! I will take the beeswax and melt it in a pot. once its melted I will por in the essential oils for the smell, take it off the heat, and pour it into a jar with the piece of string tied to a pencil sitting on top of a jar. once its all in the jar and it has hardened, it is a good idea to trim the wick to about an inch above the level of the wax. after this, light the candle and enjoy the scent.
Category: Plant Science
S6 L95 Project – Strawberries!
For lesson 95 I will grow strawberries in a planter that I’m going to build! I’ll utilize the already-built planter that our family used a long time ago, I’ll refill it with dirt and plant the strawberries and water them once every two days! Then in the middle of summer, I’ll be rewarded for all this work with some large, juicy strawberries!
S6 L66 – Field Botany Project
In the first half of my field botany project I spent 30-45 minutes in my back yard observing plants and making notes. I found the common and botanical names of three of the plants using an identification book or an online source. I will sketch an overhead view of my backyard and indicate where I found the three plants, shown at the bottom. I answered the following questions about each plant on a printout sheet I created:
Does this plant produce flowers or fruit? What do they look like?
What is the shape and texture of the leaves?
What characteristics does the plant share or not share with other plants close by?
What is the soil like? Does it tend to be moist or dry, gravely or sandy?
Is the climate normally windy, sunny, or shaded?
Is the soil acidic (pine trees, pine needles nearby)?
S6 L56 – Seed Germination Project
In this lesson I got to take out ten seeds of five different plants and put them in wet paper towels to test germination. I used Romaine Lettuce, Jalapeno peppers, Beets, some yolo peppers, and a few radishes. in about a week I’ll hop in and produce the results of each test. The point of the test is to find out the germination rate, from 10% germination to 100% germination. When the test is done I’ll count the seeds that germinated and multiply that by ten and I’ll have the germination rate for each plant. How to make it is get ten seeds of five choice plants each, then wet five paper towles and put one plant’s ten seeds on one, another’s on another towel, and so forth until they’re all organized. Make sure they don’t touch and then fold one half of the towel over the other and put them either in Ziplock bags or on a plate in the sun to germinate. That’s it for today, see you in a little while!
S6 L49 – Chocolate (syrup)
In the lesson a while ago, I was supposed to make chocolate – and I didn’t. And now, once I passed it, I made it – and screwed it up. Here’s the ingredients to follow along:
- 2 cups (220g) cocoa powder
- 3/4 cup (170g) butter, softened at room temperature
- 1/2 cup (100g) sugar
- 2/3 cup (150ml) milk, room temperature
- 1/4 cup (30g) powdered sugar
- 1 cup (235ml) water
Alright. First we put the water into a pot and heat it up to almost boiling but not quite boiling. Then take the cocoa and put it in a mixing bowl. Now here was my mistake – I forgot that 16 oz. is a pint not a cup, and so I accidentally put in 32 oz. Then when Mom came in to check, she noticed the problem and said, “Great. Now we have to double the recipe.” So I doubled the recipe which meant two times everything. Don’t do that. If you bought the pint Hershey tins use only one. Otherwise you end up with syrup, and it will feel like syrup. I tried to dish it out but it seemed to just melt super fast, and then my brother tried using a spoon and determined it to be chocolate syrup. We then bottled it so we could use it as syrup. Turn the mixer on to 2 and slowly drop in butter to thicken chocolate. Should roll up into a ball and unstick from the sides. After a while of that, you should have a thick creamy paste. take this pase and pour it into the pot. While you heat this up, sift the sugar into a separate bowl. When you have all the sugar sifted, pour the sugar in with the chocolate. After this take the mix off the burner/heat element and pour in the milk. After stirring this in, take small spoonfuls and put them into a silicone moled and put the mold and chocolate into the fridge to dry.
Enjoy!
S6 L20 Review – Cocoa Diseases & Pests
Diseases
Vascular-streak dieback (VSD)
- caused by the fungus known as Oncobasidium theobroma
- distinguished in the 1960s
- caused heavy losses of trees in mature plantations
- chlorosis of one leaf on the second or third flush behind the tip
- restrict transport
Witches´ Broom
- attacks only actively growing tissue
- sensitive to light and drying
- Moniliophthora perniciosa
- disease in the region of Bahia caused a decrease in production of almost 70%
Pests
Mirids
- major insects that affect cocoa worldwide
- recognized as a serious pest since 1908
- Distantiella theobroma and Sahlbergella singularis, Helopeltis spp, Monalonion
- can reduce yields by as much as 75%.
- clones with low water content in their stems are unattractive to mirids
Cocoa pod borer (CPB)
- Conopomorpha cramerella
- noted in 1841 as a serious threat
- developing genotypes with harder walls in their pods
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