Environmental protection in the garden: Campus to World with do-it-yourself experiments

Environmental protection in the garden

Learn to understand your own garden with do-it-yourself experiments

Do-it-yourself experiments are fascinating and can help us to better understand and protect our environment. One example from the Campus to World project is the CitizenLab: Environmental Lab. Citizen science is a well-proven approach to involving citizens in scientific projects. Interested people can get actively involved by developing questions together with the researchers, collecting data and, often, analysing and applying the results together.

Under the motto “Gardening for the Environment”, citizens are regularly called upon to participate. In 2020, they collected soil samples and sent them in for analysis, and in 2021 they got involved hands-on with do-it-yourself kits. Support was provided in digital workshops. In addition to theoretical knowledge, the participants received practical tips on how they could make their gardens more site-appropriate and sustainable in the future. In 2022, the series will continue with workshops at the campus in Sankt Augustin.

The gardeners use pH test strips to determine the pH value of the soil. The pH value provides information about the acidity and enables an assessment of whether plants and organisms in the soil are thriving.

Another way to roughly estimate the pH value is to mix the soil with vinegar essence or baking soda and distilled water. In this way, the soil can be divided into acidic, neutral and alkaline pH values.

Determining the tea bag index: Several bags of green tea and rooibos tea are buried in the garden for three months. The difference between the initial and the final weight suggests how active the soil life is. The lower the final weight, the more active the soil life – an indicator of healthy soil.