Growing Understanding

To fulfill requirements to become a Master Gardener, interns are required to complete an educational component with passing grades. So it is back to school for me. 

As my first course,  I chose Soils and Plant Growth, from the University of Guelph. One of the assignments is to observe plants over a period of weeks as they transform from seed to flower. I was looking forward to planting something in the dead of winter and headed to the East End garden centre to pick up supplies.

The shelves were bare, so I wondered how long the seeds had been on the shelf and hoped my Red Gems were viable. It would take 7-10 days for me to find out, as the seeds took their time to germinate.

I positioned the pots in my kitchen where they would get the morning sun. Through the window I could see my back garden buried in snow. Were the pots too close to the cold?

Ah! The seeds eventually worked their magic and eight days later sprouts were emerging! During the second week I took photos of each seedling as they made their first appearance.

They doubled in height within a day; and then again. 

Meanwhile, the course progressed. I haven't taken a science course since high school and to say it's not coming easy would be something of an understatement. Do I really need to know the formula for respiration? Details of cell division? 

Yet the way the stems were growing and splitting reminded me of the complex cell division and reproduction, (mitosis and meiosis), that was taking place within the plant membranes. I learned most plants have between five and 30 chromosomes. If we were to measure the length of DNA in all the chromosomes of a single cell, they could be 10-20 meters long. Wow!

Respiration and photosynthesis are essential to all life on earth. Plants would not exist without them, and we would not exist without plants.

I diligently memorized the formulae for respiration and photosynthesis, and then woke up one morning with the realization that the six carbon dioxide molecules and six drinkable water molecules (C6H1206 + 602) that resulted at the end of photosynthesis were the same string that began the process of respiration. Revelation! How did people figure this all out in the first place?

As Robin Wall Kimmerer so eloquently puts it in her book Braiding Sweetgrass, “The very facts of the world are a poem… Respiration - the source of energy that lets us farm and dance and speak. The breath of plants gives life to animals and the breath of animals gives life to plants.”

While it’s true you don’t need in-depth knowledge of biology to plant a seed and watch as it pokes its way through the soil, learning more about how plants grow only increases my wonder.