Here are some pictures from my garden. Several of the plants are featured on the Nature's Pantry Web page that I'm helping develop for the Field Museum of Natural History.

Welcome! Food & Fitness has always been one of my favorite subjects and I've collected some things I think you'll be interested in. So, please take a look around and enjoy yourself. I add new material regularly to keep my site fresh, so check back often!

Looking at the stars and planets. Playing Ice hockey with my sons and grandsons. Growing things that I like to eat!

In the summer, I don't get to play much ice hockey, so I use my hockey sticks to hold up plants in my garden. I use a hoe to cut weeds, loosen soil and keep my arms strong. Hoeing weeds is almost as much work as shooting pucks.

If you want to have fun and hoe some weeds, you have to learn what a weed* is.

*My dictionary defines a weed as... Any plant regarded as useless or worthless. A rose would be a weed in a dandelion farm.

I have placed number markers on 5 hockey sticks. See if you can be a plant detective and identify the following plants: Watermelon Peppers Tomatoes Cucumbers Weeds

See clues and close ups below, then click here for the answers.

The plant below is a watermelon, with a weed (Rounded leaves) in the middle. You can't hoe that weed without damaging the watermelon, so you have to pull it by hand. If you don't remove it, it will take water and nutrients from the watermelon.

The Next plant is a California Bell Pepper. If you look closely, it is starting to flower and tiny pepers are starting to form behind the dried up flower. (See close up in the next picture)

The next picture is a closeup shot of the same pepper flower in full bloom and two peppers that are starting to form. The flower measures about a centimeter.

The next plant is a cucumber. It likes to attach and climb on surrounding objects, just like the watermelon. This plant will flower soon. I will post a picture when it does.

The plant below is a descendant (offspring) of a space tomato. Randolph students have been germinating space tomatoes for years. This plant is a 9th generation of a NASA space tomato. Tomato plants are similar to pepper plants. They are flowering now (see picture below) and will soon produce delicious fruit.

The tiny tomato flower (magnified 150%) below will produce a big red tomato if it gets some pollen delivered to it by the wind or a busy bee.

Go to Answer page Go to Randolph School

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