Vitenparken

Stage: 1st – 2nd stage

Difficulty: Easy

Time required: 6 – 8 hours. From just before frost in the fall, or just after the frost has passed, until August.

Competency goals:

• Wonder, explore and ask questions, and connect this to your own and others' experiences.
• Present your findings and describe how you arrived at them.

Learning objectives:

• Be able to observe and record changes in the growth of garlic.
• Know how plants reproduce using bulbs.
• Know what garlic can be used for.

Concepts :
A plant, onion, leaf, clove, root, set onion, sprout, grow, observe, record.

Rating :

• Be able to draw observations of the onion and the changes in the plant during the season.
• Be able to discuss the observations.
• Could write a book about what garlic can be used for.

Equipment: Garlic cloves – either fresh or from the store, and a magnifying glass.

Area : 1 m2 bed, planter or 3 large pots.

Activity

1. Get some background knowledge about onions and talk a little about them.
2. Look at the different types of onions we use in cooking, cut it up and taste it
   on them. Fry them and taste the taste then.
3. Talk about flower bulbs that are poisonous!!
4. Talk about what we use onions for, i.e. to eat or plant.
5. Study the garlic under a magnifying glass and draw it.
6. Leave the garlic in the classroom for a week and see what happens.
   with it.
7. Place the bulbs outdoors or in a flower box or pot. Notes
   the date they were set.
8. Wonder with your students what is upside down on the onion. What happens
   if we turn it upside down?
9. Observe and take pictures when the onion sprouts in the spring. Note the date of germination.
   Compare with other plants in nature. How far have they come?
   Calculate how long it has been since the garlic cloves were planted.
   Observe and take pictures at regular intervals. Pick up one onion each time to
   Look what has happened underground since last time.
   Wonder with the students about what affects the timing of germination.
   When can we know that the garlic is ripe?
10. Take out all the garlic right after the summer holidays. It has probably been sitting for a while.
    long. Then the cloves will fall off when you pick up the onion.
11. The students make garlic butter and garlic oil and use this and fresh garlic in
    dishes, possibly making garlic braid.
12. Write a book about what garlic can be used for.
13. Pass the garlic clove on to the next class.

Expansion options

• Garlic is often associated with folk medicine and superstition. Research this further.
• Wonder with your students why you cry when you peel onions?
• Try to have a lit candle near where you are cleaning the onion. What happens then?
• Why do you only know the garlic spirit of a person if you yourself don't have it?
  have eaten garlic.
• What is garlic called in other languages?
• The skin of yellow onions and red onions can be used to color eggs for Easter, for example. The color
  is not permanent.

Garlic, shallots and bulbs reproduce vegetatively – with side shoots,
while yellow onions and red onions are propagated by seed. Watch the video: How to grow garlic!