On the 13th October 2023, footsteps International School’s Young Farmers Club participated in the Mission Better Community (MBC), neighborhood clean-up and tree planting expedition. The event was highly successful and had other volunteers from outside of our school community, even an advocate of the UN Sustainable development Goals (SDG) in Nigeria. At the end of the event, the young farmers Club was saddled with the responsibility of managing the trees and ensuring that they thrived.
By the end of the first week, we observed that two out of the nine trees that were planted were not doing so well, their leaves were turning brown. under the instruction of our club instructor, we decided to observe them for another week while continuing the morning and nightly watering process.
To our delight, one of the trees picked up at the end of the second week of observation, we realized that the browning of the leaves was as a result of the shock the plant went through during the transplanting process. Our investigations revealed that the original sac as well as the soil sample from the florist in which the plants were brought in were removed and discarded just before planting. This cause the plant to experience a shock as it was exposed directly to a strange environment.
Gratefully, one of them pull through and acclimatized to the new environment. However, the other tree was not so fortunate, as it continued drying up at the end of the two weeks period. After our investigations, we discovered that there was an infestation of termites, the termites ate the roots of the plants and the tree eventually died as can be seen in the video above.
We were forced to replant but this time took certain precautions in the
maintenance of our plants. one of the precautions we used was plant rotation,
- Plant rotation is when a plant or crop is moved from its original position to a new one. We moved the new plant and it started growing.
- The use of Salt in the treatment of the soil before replanting. This precaution involves mixing the salt with soil, This helped remove the termites from the treated location and
- Of course this time, we planted the seedling with the soil and sac from the florist to avoid the shock the other experienced the last time.
The experience gave us ample opportunity to carry out a research that led to valuable discoveries. We are still observing the replanted tree as well as all the others, and we will keep updating you on their progress.
As reported by:
IKE DANIEL IKECHUKWU (SS 1)
PRINCE KWELELE (JS2)
ABUTU PRECIOUS (SS1)
SOLIKONG DAVID CONFIDENCE (SS1)
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