Tomato plant nursery

I decided to study the tomato plant from its seed until it bears fruit hopefully it would be within the period of the first semester. The seeds of the tomato plant that I planted had a size of around 2 mm by 2 mm. This is an outline for the events that occurred for the observation period of this week.


Planting of seed on the 15th of June 2008.















Seedlings starting to erupt from the ground on the 19th of June 2008















Seedlings have completely erupted from the ground on th 20th of June 2008














What I noticed is that the weeds (unwanted plants inside my plastic plant box) also erupted around the same time as my tomato plants. I tried to measure the size of the tomato seedling. Its around the height of a 1 peso coin placed upright (24 mm). The seed covers are still on the tips of some of the plant leaves.

I finally got my specimen

My first attempt on obtaining a specimen cockroach was quite disasterous. I had been looking around the house for possible candidates and found two very usual roaches. One stayed near our dogs feeding plate were it munched on leftovers, the other stayed in the house. I managed to catch the house roach by placing a plastic bowl over it and inserting a cardboard plate underneath it. It was really struggling to get out and managed to slip out of the cardboard plate and frantically ran across the room.

The next specimen I managed to almost caught was man handled a bit. I used gloves and my own hand to catch him. But I under estimated his ability to scuttle while climbing. The roach climbed out of my specimen jar before I could cap it.

So I decided to step back and rethink what I needed. I couldn’t open the cap to feed it our let it drink without letting it out. What should I feed it and where should it stay. So I did a search and found this link. http://template.bio.warwick.ac.uk/staff/amillar/andrewM/CBT%20tutorial/ROACHSETUP.html

It basically told me that dog food was the best food for the cockroach and cotton with water was also needed to supply him with water. Another site from the University of Kentucky http://www.uky.edu/Ag/CritterFiles/casefile/bugconnection/petbugs/exotic/exotic.htm basically told me that to keep the roach from fleeing my container I should place a 1 inch swat of petroleum jelly.

So I found a new larger container placed petroleum jelly in its mouth 2 inches thick just to make sure that the roach didn’t get out. Placed dog food inside and a wet cotton ball. I went about and found the last roach I could see that was a regular at the house hanging out by the wall. I donned my gloves and man handled into the container. Unfortunately for the cockroach I bent its left antenna and managed to break its hind right leg. But it still managed to try to scuttle out but the petroleum jelly did its job. The roach front legs couldn’t manage to grasp the plastic. When it finally settled down and perhaps knew that it couldn’t escape it started to clean its antennae. Curling it up and pushing it into its mandibles.

I also found an old poster from Leads Agrichemicals on Harmful Pests and it lists my specimen as an American cockroach I just looked at the markings near its head.

Welcome

Hi to everyone this is my journal for the animal and plant logs for Bio A. The animal I want to study is the all loveable (or detested) cockroach and the plant I want to study is the tomato plant. I choose these two items for two reasons I like tomatoes particularly like their taste and we commonly use them in our day to day cooking. Tomatoes also provide me with enough time for monitoring their maturation typically around 65 days according to some sources. I also choose the cockroach since we commonly live with them around us and may affect us in some manner. I'm still making decisions whether the american cockroach or the german cockroach should be studied. I'll take precautions in doing the job so no worries since the origins of the subjects may be quite nasty.