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Hints from your colleagues

Over the past five Tomatosphere projects, teachers have made many suggestions which may be of assistance to you when conducting your Tomatosphere experiment with the students. These hints are helpful for both new registrants and those experienced with the Tomatosphere project.

• Next year, I will know better and keep them moist.
• Some of our plants in each group withered after germination that I believe was due to over watering. Next time, I'll know to pay closer attention to the moisture level.
• Next time I would use a larger pot to begin with so the plants would not have to be disturbed again.
• I used the instructions on the Jiffy Pots container.
• Don't worry about the number of seeds. Plant as many as possible. When you submit your results, you will be asked for the number of seeds planted and the number of plants germinated.
• I let my students design their own greenhouses using the same material (clear plastic bags cut open, straws, popsicle sticks and masking tape) so I also got a technology component to the test.
• It is unfortunate that weekends fall in the way as our initial germination occurred over a weekend (between Days 3 and 5 and so we were unable to identify exactly when the seeds sprouted/germinated.
• We have to make sure next time to not run the experiment over the Easter weekend. That is when many of our seedlings really started to grow.
• We had a bit of a problem with the weekends and the pots really drying out over the two day period (suggestion - do not plant the seeds within 5 days of a school break or holiday period).
• We planted on Monday and as a result saw nothing on Friday and many plants on Monday. Next time, I would plant on Wednesday or Thursday so we could see a more staggered growth.
• We complimented the experiment with a video by Canadian Geographic called "Mars on Earth." I would recommend this to other classrooms.
• My class makes booklets where we create charts, pictures and graphs.
• I had the students use cups left over from a community event. These cups allowed the plants to grow quite large before needing transplanting and required less watering (drying out over the long weekend was no longer a problem!) Note: we still recommend peat pellets and then transplanting.
• Our class decided to use the clear plastic egg cartons as mini greenhouses and they worked very well, germinating in 6 days.
• I would suggest that the same group of students do the reading each day instead of selecting a different student each day. I think consistency is important to get accurate results.
• I had to keep a very close watch over the students collecting data - they would read the thermometer incorrectly, or try to over-water. They were sometimes not gentle enough when making their observations.
• My students publish their reports in a web page format! We take pictures of the plants with digital cameras. It is the perfect fit for the grade 9 science curriculum (Ontario).
• Some students did not properly label their pots, so I could not count those, and some students planted more than one seed in a single pot, or sometimes even none at all, so I'm sure our numbers are out a bit because of this.
• This project tied in beautifully with the data analysis and graphing unit in the Alberta Education curriculum, in writing a logbook in the language arts curriculum and in maintaining variables in the science curriculum.
• The children were quite good and I supervised the watering and data collection but even then occasionally a plant would be watered twice by mistake.
• We planted our seeds as a Buddy project between our grade 3 and our grade 7 classes. The students enjoy planting and watching for the seedlings to sprout. Unfortunately we were well into the project before I downloaded the many fine suggestions/extensions for recordkeeping that are available on the tomatosphere site.
• Upon submission of results, it would be great if you could email a certificate of thanks acknowledging the school that participated in the project. The certificate could have the tomatosphere project symbol, school name, date it was emailed and maybe the signature of the organizers of this project. The teacher could then print it out and display this in the classroom. It would be very meaningful to the kids when they hear that they have been acknowledged for helping out in a project that would benefit mankind! And, of course, this is what we now do - the certificate is sent to the registered teacher upon completion of the project.
• We used the cover of half slab cake covers and a rubbermaid cover to act as a greenhouse.