Grand Opening: April 22, Earth Day and Arbor Day Celebration

After ten weeks of research, constructing, and planting, this is the final sensory garden (left). We were not able to construct the second (desert variety) garden before Earth Day, but the EEC plans to do that later on. The grand opening was so much fun, and the community loved it. A lot of people came by to take pictures ask about the future of the overall demonstration garden.



The mayor of Chandler, Jay Tibshraeny, came by for the ribbon cutting at 9:30 along with council members Sam Huang and René Lopez. My friends Jessica and Pauline also came out to support me, and we had a lot of fun enjoying all the Earth Day activities. We even pulled some money together and donated to the Weeders Garden Club's pollinator garden that will hopefully be built by next year at Tumbleweed Park.



Jessica and Pauline were especially excited to meet Sam Huang. Jessica was proud that she voted for him last year, and Pauline let him know that her mom voted for him as well.

Planting

On Wednesday, April 19th, Ariane and Dexter painted the planter and filled it with dirt so that I could come in on Thursday and do the planting. When I walked in the next morning, Ariane had only purchased a handful of plants, and so I went to Lowe's to buy more. I ended up buying them with my own money (rather than using the money from our budget) and spent $120 in total. Luckily, Max came out to help me move all the transplants and so we finished in just a couple of hours.

Succulent Propagation Progress

Because I love succulents so much, I decided to conduct two separate propagations: one at home and one at the EEC. The cuttings at home are thriving much better and there are about seven budding and rooting, but only one at the EEC. Initially, I started two just because I wanted more succulents, but I'm glad now because it taught me a lot about successful propagation. At home, I placed a handful of cuttings across a paper plate lined with soil and left it by a window. At the EEC, they stayed on a cart inside a classroom. Not only did more grow at home, but they also grew faster. I see progress every morning. At the EEC I've only seen one start to bud in the last week, and this is probably because they were kept too far from light for so long. But that's okay, because I'm just going to donate my buds to the EEC anyways. 

Garden Updates #10

On Thursday, April 13th I finished mortaring the cinder blocks together, and Dexter started filling some of the holes with cement for extra support. I also started mortaring the caps on, but we didn't have enough cement to fill in all the blocks we wanted to, so I have to wait for more to come in before I can put caps on all the way around.

Garden Updates #9

This morning, I arrived at the EEC at 8 AM to start work on the garden with Ariane and Dexter. We mortared the first layer and started on the second. The foundation should be done by the end of the week, so then next week I will be able to fill it with soil and put in the transplants. We are cutting it close, but if we also start leveling the land for the second garden, I think I could finish laying the cinder blocks for it to be mortared next week. Earth day is less than two weeks away, and I'm not sure if it'll be done, but hopefully it will.

Distillation Progress

On Friday, April 7th, I went to school and starting my distillation. Unfortunately, it didn't go so well, and a some of the biomass ended up in my product. Usually essential oil steam distillations are set up as such:
In its simplest form, boiling water is placed underneath the biomass so that the steam will travel upwards, cook the plant matter, and carry the essential oils with it as it passes through. The water and biomass are held in two bulbous pieces of glassware that only allow a small stream of steam to pass through. Once through the biomass, the steam travels through glass tubing upwards, and then is directed back down through a condenser, that re-liquifies the steam and oil. This product then collects in a flask for later separation. The reason for directing the steam upwards and then downwards through a condenser is so that the hydrosol (water, essential oil, and various volatiles) stays pure, since it is separated from cooked plant matter. As the distillation progresses, the boiling water often turns a dark brown color because of the plant matter that is falling back down as it cooks and is too heavy to continue to the collection flask with the steam.

My distillation set up looked like this:
Because the biomass and the condenser were so closely connected, and the condenser pointed at a downward slope directly from the biomass, some of the cooked biomass leaked into my product. I prevented the boiling water underneath from turning brown because I packed glass wool in between to give the biomass a place to sit. I thought about placing wool between the biomass and condenser, but I was concerned that it would catch a lot of the oil. The distillation itself already produces such a small yield that I didn't want to risk minimizing it further. I'll have to re-distill my product, but I am also looking to build a better initial set-up.

Distilling Essential Oils

Essential oils are aromatic, hydrophobic liquids produced in all plants. When extracted, they can be used in all kinds of industry. They are also used in aromatherapy to relax patients. As a part of the 'scent' and 'health benefits' portions of my research, I am distilling my own essential oil from a spearmint plant. Luckily, I took organic chemistry earlier this year as an elective and have experience in distillation, so I talked to my chemistry teacher, Dr. Pete, and he is letting me use the lab. However, I've done some research into distilling essential oils, and it requires much larger glassware than we have in the lab, since the yield of oil per gram of biomass is so low. But I'm still going to try my best to distill the oil using our micro scale glassware.