thank david suzuki (my version of god) things are sprouting!

 passing on my love of Coleoptera!

 poor guy was on his way out

 first time i saw him want bites of a sandwich so i just gave it to him! his taste in food changes drastically from week to week

one of the 3 zucchini seeds i planted has started! all i need is one!

I noticed the seeds on the ends of the baby shoots and i think these are the spinach rather than the lettuce.  the smaller round leaves could be the lettuce. oo i just googled it, it is the lettuce!

some of them are quite large already

these are carrot seedlings and that big thing might be a weed again...

put some eggshells down around my tomato plants..supposed to provide nutrients and ward off slugs. my poor tomatoes...not sure how many are going to make it. i didn't "harden them off" properly...they got bleached in the sun. i was leaving them out too long too soon. mostly out of forgetfulness and being busy and scatter brained. i still have a couple in pots inside that i can try again with if these all die

leeks

onions

then i saw a few flying insects landing on the garden...and decided to get my tulle out to protect at least some plants. the wire was from the dollar store and this stretch of tulle was 8 bucks so I think I will get 3 more for the other rows and cover them all like this

I start my experiment tomorrow! We are still doing it, just without the tanks. Instead we gave the ammocoetes a refuge to hide under and sectioned off the tank so that they can either swim around in this small area or hide under the refuge. The swimming time and their behaviour before and after the stimulus is released will be the deciding factor as to whether they can be behaviourally controlled by chemical repellents

after running trials with tanks and no refuge and sand and no sand and lights on and lights off we finally came to the conclusion that this was the best way because they felt safe under the refuge AND we can see them, which was a problem in even 2 cm of sand...they would dig in and completely disappear.

I will most likely be defending the fact that this experiment is artifical and not what they do in the wild, but all we are looking for is a VISIBLE response to a chemical repellent, and this is the only way to find out. Many experiments have tested animal responses in artifical environments and been published, such as one my professor showed me about crabs and their response to predators, which was conducted in a large plastic tank with no substrate.