Rock Hill High School in Rock Hill, SC, is a

    Green Steps School!


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Plants in the Classroom 

Succession

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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 We Recycle!        

  •  Paper is collected from classrooms every week by students.....

     
  •  Drink bottles (aluminum, plastic, and glass) are collected in large containers throughout the campus as well as in each classroom, then gathered weekly.

     
  •  Any discarded bound material (old books)
    are collected for our county to pick up and recycle...

 

  • This student led initiative has, as of June 2010, completed its sixth consecutive successful semester!  A big thanks to the classes that have involved themselves with such a noble service.  What an example you have set!  We are now filling up an 8 cubic yard dumpster every two weeks with recyclable paper products.  Six large roll-out carts of bottles are also being recycled every two weeks.  That's a LOT of plastic, glass, and aluminum being saved from the landfill and being reused.  BRAVO!

 

 Composting 

  • The natural decomposition of organic matter is essential for nutrients to be returned to the soil for plants and other organisms to use.  Bacteria are the workhorse of this process.  This vital function of nature can be harnessed and used quite efficiently with just a little education on how to expedite the process.  The following sources are recommended:

  • Vermiculture:  Other organisms like to get in on the eating, too.  Along with the regular composting material like food scraps, red wiggler worms (Eisenia foetida) just love to eat paper.  Yes, paper.  Newspaper and cardboard are their favorite!  Their castings, combined with the decomposed organic matter, create the best garden soil nature can provide.  Read about them here:

 

 

  Constructing our own worm bins:

At the beginning of the fall 2009 semester, students in groups of about 5 started their own worm bins, with a plastic tub, strips of wet newspaper, a smidgen of soil, a few food scraps, and about a pound of red wigglers.  Throughout the semester, they have been keeping care of the worms, adding scraps of food to vary the worms' diet.  Now that the semester is almost over, we're going to do two things:
   a) harvest our worms to find out which groups have created the best environment for the most reproduction (who has the most worms!)
   b) collect our compost to use in the potting up of rooted houseplants we began at the beginning of the semester. (see below)

On December 17th, we harvested our worms and  collected the compost material.

  

 

  • Black Soldier Fly:  Now we're talking about a critter with a serious appetite for garbage!  The larvae of this beneficial fly (Hermetia illucens) can reduce a pile of vegetation scraps by 95%.  Not only that, but the presence of this species can actually drive away nuisance flies.  The life cycle is fascinating for these creatures.  The adults live only about a week and don't even have mouth parts.  They just mate, lay eggs, and die.  It's the larval stage that does the work...

    Oh yes....These larvae are quite marketable.  You could make some money selling these masses of protein and fat to feed fish, poultry, and other wildlife.  They can be frozen and kept for later use.

 

  • Bokashi:  Problem:  When you read enough about composting, one warning keeps popping up...don't put any meats, cheeses, etc. into your compost bin!  Why?  Because it takes a long time for these materials to decompose.  In the interim they will become putrid and quite malodorous.  Also, unwanted pests and vermin will be attracted to it.

    Solution?  Dr. Teuro Higa developed a way to "ferment" these type products, making it suitable to then compost.  Learn about good microbes/bad microbes and how you can do this yourself.  My friend at VermiDirt Farms has the scoop (and starter cultures).  Use a standard 5 gal. bucket.  A Gamma Seal lid makes opening/closing easy while maintaining and airtight anaerobic environment.

Plants in the Classroom  

  

To add plants to more classrooms in our school, we propagated houseplants during the fall 2009 semester. 
They were grown under grow lights in the back of our class.  We used recycled vegetable cans from our cafeteria and from home, along with the compost from our worm bins, to pot up these plants and give to the teachers at RHHS.  This helped provide some greenery along with some fresh oxygen in the classrooms!

Our focus turned from clean air to clean food in the spring 2010 semester.  Students grew their own vegetables from seed and took home.


 


Succession (Reforestation) 

  • Do you know what happens when a piece of property is allowed to "revert back to nature?"  That is, if you quit mowing it, or keeping it paved or built on or whatever you would do to manipulate it...... just let it go..... what would it look like one year later?  Five years later?  Fifty years later!?  This process is called SUCCESSION.  Rock Hill High School has created a demonstration of this phenomenon right in its own front yard!  Students will chronicle each semester how this property is changing; what plants and animals appear, how adjacent property is affected, etc.


 On September 29, 2009, the Biology 1 Honors classes conducted the first field  
 study of the first plot area.  The next day, September 30, 2009, most of the area was tilled.
Later, we roped off the area to establish boundaries.  This helps show people that it's not to be walked in or mowed.

Download Field Study Form for succession plot...

Field study reports of fall 2009:     Report 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

Field study reports of spring 2010:   (Coming the week of May 17)

 

Scroll through the following pictures to see who was involved for the past two semesters...

 
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Fall 2009, block 1

Measuring and staking out the first succession plot