Continuing my journey at the Shedd, I finally get to the core of why I'm here: my project. The first few weeks there was talk of individual projects between the interns, but it was mostly an extensive orientation to familiarize ourselves with the operations of the Shedd. Finally, I get to dive into my personal project. I've mentioned that I have two garden beds-- one amended with natural fertilizers, and one left to its own devices. To be honest, I don't even know which of these beds is the amended and which is the unattended! I'm sure that if I asked my boss she would tell me, but I really want to see if I can tell which bed is amended just by visual assessment over time.
In these two beds, I planted a variety of vegetables, most of which have been similarly planted by the previous Fellows from DePaul. Amoung this variety was zucchini, parsley, tomatoes, peppers, and--most importantly--kale. The kale is most important in this study because that is the main crop that. will be fed to the fish of the Shedd. Yes, some will eat the chopped zucchini, but tomatoes tend to be too acidic for the animals and honestly, who thinks of feeding peppers to a fish?
The interesting part of my study, that definitely does not come easy to me, is that I actually won't be collecting any data until the very end of my time at the Shedd. While tending my gardens through weeding and watering is a daily task, I do not collect any actual data until the end of the summer. This is because what me and the rest of the team are interested in is the nutritional content of the same crops across the two different beds. And to find this out, I really only have to take a sample of each crop once! This makes my collection methods much easier, but by no means does it make the future analysis of my results any less valuable.
While I'm hypothesizing that the amended bed will produce more nutritious crops, it'll be interesting to see how much the additives increase the national content compared to unattended crops. Not actively collecting data makes me a little nervous, especially compared to my constant influx of data in my experience last year, I'm so excited to see what this summer will yield (pun intended!) and seeing my hard work in the gardens pay off in visible growth is already extremely rewarding.