Getting ready to go

It was time to start thinking about leaving Israel--so that also meant it was time to start thinking about finishing up this experiment, which I guess is the primary reason I came over here




The first step was to get the biomass of all my plants measured. Although I had assumed correctly that it would be easier to get the density of my plants (i.e., count them all) as I clipped them for biomass weights, it still didn't make it easy.

Essentially what this job involved, was going through and clipping the plants stem by stem (with manicure scissors, and tweezers. If you've heard at all about my experiments, you'll know what common experimental implements these are for me). So I had to count the stems for each species, and then seperate them into bags....especially hard because these plants were so dry (they matured nearly instantly!) that when you touched them, the seeds would spring off....making the grasses that much harder to identify.

It was once I'd gotten all those big grasses out, and got down to a situation like this, that I started wishing for a tub full of grass again....sifted through a lot of leaves with tweezers, identifying small brown bits of plant.





Finally the job was finished though, all the plants clipped, and stress levels were dropping. All the plants were clipped, bagged and drying....We were finished with time to spare !




But knowing me, what does time to spare mean? Find something else to do! So, I decided to measure the below ground biomass as well...



Because the tubs all contain about 70 L of sand, and I didn't have all that much time to spare, I only collected the roots from a quarter of each tub (I was quite impressed with our ability to get only 1/4 of the sand out....took some skill I had to say.

So, the 20 L of sand from each tub (all 120 of them) was washed through a small screen and I collected all the roots. As you can see, it was pretty classy work.


But in the end, everything got finished, all the sand that I hauled in last year got hauled back out, tubs were cleaned, and the greenhouse left empty. My work here, and I guess my time for play here as well, is done...