At Home With the Cullens...

Science Club is building two 3-chambered bat houses to accommodate up to 200 local bats!
These bats are insectivores that eat a huge amount of insects, including mosquitoes and other pests.
Bat populations are declining world-wide, due to habitat destruction, so we are happy to supply these helpful mammals with a home.

Bat Conservation Issues

Bat House Builder's Handbook

How to Install a Bat House

Bat house parts

All the parts

Assembly

Assembled Bat House (unpainted)

More plants!

Cultivated duckweed and pond lettuce were added to the pond.  We now have a healthy selection of floating plants.  Our lilies are dormant and will re-emerge in the Spring.

Guerilla Gardening!

Science Club and AP Environmental Science made seed balls (marble-sized clay balls rolled in native wildflower seeds), and launched them into the swale to create a wild flower meadow!

Healthy Azolla

Our pond Azolla is doing well.  It has doubled in amount over the break and turned a beautiful (and healthy) burgundy color.

Red Azolla, Pond lettuce, and Parrot Fern

Healthy Azolla

Azolla has an interesting history and interesting future.

Research on Azolla

Dual application of duckweed and azolla plants for wastewater treatment and renewable fuels and petrochemicals production

Eocene Arctic Ocean sediments deposited at a time of large Azolla blooms contained glycolipids typical for heterocystous cyanobacteria presently living in symbiosis with the freshwater fern Azolla, indicating that this symbiosis already existed in that time. Our study thus suggests that heterocystous cyanobacteria played a major role in adding “new” fixed nitrogen to surface waters in past stratified oceans.

Traditionally Azolla is maintained and propogated in slow-flowing creeks or overwintered in protected beds, then introduced into paddies between plantings of rice. The fern can then be either incorporated before rice seedlings are transplanted, or left to be shaded out as the rice canopy develops. The low C:N ratio of the fern ensures rapid mineralization after incorporation, with yields in the subsequent rice crop enhanced by up to 1000 kg ha-1.

Water quality!

We are so lucky that Ms. Wendy Wert, Environmental Engineer, has been with us to do Sewer Science this week!  We learned about water quality and how to make, test, and treat sewage!!

Making sewage

Adding toilet paper

Testing pH

Testing turbidity and COD

Testing Ammonia levels

Microorganisms!  Ciliates, Rotifers, Water Bears!

What a fantastic day!  Students from PCC delivered two aquaponics systems today!  What an amazing gift!  The systems will allow Alverno students to grow all sorts of plants; larger plants with extensive roots systems, like tomatoes, and smaller salad plants, beets and onions in the shallower beds.

The system contains two fish tanks.  We will think about what kinds of fish we want to have.  We will start with goldfish and then think about Tilapia for later.  

Prof Cat’s wonderful students have a lot of expertise and are kindly willing to share their knowledge and time with us.

Alverno students learned new skills today, like using a power drill!

Azolla!

We are having success growing Azolla (Azolla filiculoides) in our pond nursery and have been transferring it to the villa pond.  The fish seem to love it, so it is a race between them to see if the Azolla will increase over time.  Azolla has a variety of uses in farming, so it seems to be a good choice for our aquaponics project. It is native to California.

These websites have a lot of interesting information about the biology, uses and issues of Azolla:
Natural History Museum, London
Theodore Payne Foundation
UC Weed Science