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Why Sweden's Top Students Know Less About The World Than Chimpanzees
Big TED talk, great statistics, brilliant presenter ... it's like the nerd Super Bowl!
07.04.12
Can you grow vegetables in a cardboard box?
In the era of supermarkets and wholesale clubs, growing your own food isn't a necessity for most Americans. But that doesn't mean it's not a good idea to try.
A household garden can be a great way to reduce your grocery bill and increase your intake of nutrient-dense foods. It can also be a good source of exercise and a hobby that gets you outside in the sunshine and fresh air more often. However, not everyone has a yard where they can grow a garden or much outdoor space at all where they live. You can plant things in containers, but that requires some upfront investment in planters.
Potted plants and herbs can thrive in a container garden.Photo credit: Canva
Or does it? Gardener James Prigioni set out to see if an Amazon shipping box would hold up as a planter for potatoes. He took a basic single-walled Amazon box, lined it with dried leaves to help with moisture retention, added four to five inches of soil (his own homegrown soil he makes), added three dark red seed potatoes, covered them with more soil, added a fertilizer, then watered them.
He also planted a second, smaller Amazon box with two white seed potatoes, following the same steps.
Two weeks later, he had potato plants growing out of the soil. Ten days after that, the boxes were filled with lush plants.
- YouTubewww.youtube.com
Prigioni explained how to "hill" potato plants when they grow tall enough, which helps encourage more tuber growth and protect the growing potatoes from sunlight. Hilling also helps support the plants as they grow taller so they don't flop over. He also added some mulch to help keep the plants cooler as the summer grew hotter.
After hilling, Prigioni only needed to keep up with watering. Both varieties of potatoes flowered, which let him know the tubers were forming. The red potato leaves developed some pest issues, but not bad enough to need intervention, while the white potato plants were unaffected. "It goes to show how variety selection can make a big difference in the garden," he explained.
The visible plants have to start dying before you harvest potatoes, and Prigioni checked in with the boxes themselves when they got to that point.
Freshly harvested potatoes are so satisfying.Photo credit: Canva
"I am pleasantly surprised with how well the boxes held up," he said, especially for being single-walled boxes. The smaller box was completely intact, while the larger box had begun to split in one corner but not enough to affect the plants' growth. "This thing was completely free to grow in, so you can't beat that," he pointed out.
Prigioni predicted that the red potatoes grown in the larger box would be more productive. As he cut open the box and pulled potatoes from the larger box, they just kept coming, ultimately yielding several dozen potatoes of various sizes. The smaller box did have a smaller yield, but still impressive just from two potatoes planted in an Amazon box.
People often think they don't have room to grow their own food, which is why Prigioni put these potato boxes on his patio. "A lot of people have an area like this," he said.
"I will never look at cardboard boxes the same," Prigioni added. "There are so many uses for them in the garden and it's just a great free resource we have around, especially if you're ordering stuff from Amazon all the time."
Do you see a box or do you see a planter?Photo credit: Canva
People loved watching Prigioni's experiment and shared their own joy—and success—in growing potatoes in a similar fashion:
"I have been growing potatoes in every box I can find for several years now. I have had excellent success. I honestly think potatoes prefer cardboard. And yes, most of my boxes were from Amazon."
"I live in an upstairs apartment with a little deck and I have a container garden with containers on every single stair leading to the deck. I grow potatoes in a laundry basket. It's amazing how much food I can get from this type of garden!! Grateful."
"I literally got up and grabbed the empty boxes by our front door, the potatoes that have started to sprout, and soil i had inside and started my planting at 1am. Lol. I will take them outside today and finish. Thank you James!"
"I grew potatoes and tomatoes on my tiny balcony in Germany (in buckets and cardboard boxes). Now I have a big garden here in America. I so love to grow my own food."
"I grew sweet potatoes in cardboard boxes. It’s so much fun."
Next time you're stuck with an Amazon box that you don't have a use for, consider whether you could use it as a planter for potatoes or some other edible harvest. Gardening doesn't have to be fancy to be effective.
You can find more of gardening experiments on The Gardening Channel with James Prigioni.
A map of the United States post land-ice melt.
Land ice: We got a lot of it. Considering the two largest ice sheets on earth — the one on Antarctica and the one on Greenland — extend more than 6 million square miles combined ... yeah, we're talkin' a lot of ice. But what if it was all just ... gone? Not like gone gone, but melted?
If all of earth's land ice melted, it would be nothing short of disastrous. And that's putting it lightly. This video by Business Insider Science (seen below) depicts exactly what our coastlines would look like if all the land ice melted. And spoiler alert: It isn't great. Lots of European cities like, Brussels and Venice, would be basically underwater.
I bring up the topic not just for funsies, of course, but because the maps are real possibilities.
How? Climate change.
As we continue to burn fossil fuels for energy and emit carbon into our atmosphere, the planet gets warmer and warmer. And that, ladies and gentlemen, means melted ice.
A study published this past September by researchers in the U.S., U.K., and Germany found that if we don't change our ways, there's definitely enough fossil fuel resources available for us to completely melt the Antarctic ice sheet.
Basically, the self-inflicted disaster you see above is certainly within the realm of possibility.
In Africa and the Middle East? Dakar, Accra, Jeddah — gone.
Millions of people in Asia, in cities like Mumbai, Beijing, and Tokyo, would be uprooted and have to move inland.
South America would say goodbye to cities like Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aires.
And in the U.S., we'd watch places like Houston, San Francisco, and New York City — not to mention the entire state of Florida — slowly disappear into the sea.
All GIFs via Business Insider Science/YouTube.
Business Insider based these visuals off National Geographic's estimation that sea levels will rise 216 feet (!) if all of earth's land ice melted into our oceans.
There's even a tool where you can take a detailed look at how your community could be affected by rising seas, for better or worse.
Although ... looking at these maps, it's hard to imagine "for better" is a likely outcome for many of us.
Much of America's most populated regions would be severely affected by rising sea levels, as you'll notice exploring the map, created by Alex Tingle using data provided by NASA.
Take, for instance, the West Coast. (Goodbye, San Fran!)
Or the East Coast. (See ya, Philly!)
And the Gulf Coast. (RIP, Bourbon Street!)
"This would not happen overnight, but the mind-boggling point is that our actions today are changing the face of planet Earth as we know it and will continue to do so for tens of thousands of years to come," said lead author of the study Ricarda Winkelmann, of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.
If we want to stop this from happening," she says, "we need to keep coal, gas, and oil in the ground."
The good news? Most of our coastlines are still intact! And they can stay that way, too — if we act now.
World leaders are finallystarting to treat climate change like the global crisis that it is — and you can help get the point across to them, too.
Check out Business Insider's video below:
- YouTubewww.youtube.com
This article originally appeared eleven years ago.
From Your Site Articles
Photo courtesy of Kerry Hyde
Do cat buttholes touch every surface they sit on? Science answers.
Cat owners sometimes have unique questions that even Google doesn't always have the answer to. This is probably the sole reason cat forums exist, but one kid who needed a 6th grade science project decided to skip the cat forums for answers and instead use the scientific method. Kaeden Henry, a sixth grader living in Florida, bravely pondered a question few (if any one) has been brave enough to ask: do cat buttholes touch every surface they sit on?
Since cats do whatever the heck they want, training them not to jump on kitchen counters is a feat even Hercules struggles to complete. These fierce felines don't care if you're cooking dinner or trying to get comfy in bed. If they want to sit somewhere, they're going to do it. The thought of cat butts on that expensive Serta pillow designed to feel like you're sleeping on a cloud can gross people out, but thanks to Kaeden, you no longer have to wonder if the butthole itself is also making contact.
Courtesy of Kerry Hyde
The curious sixth grader is homeschooled and well-versed in the scientific method thanks to her mother's PhD in animal behavior with a concentration in feline behavior. And, since they own cats, the science experiment was pretty straightforward (and directly impactful).
To complete the experiment, Henry and his mom, Kerry Hyde, bought non-toxic lipstick and applied it to each of their cat's anuses. Then, the cats were given commands.
Courtesy of Kerry Hyde
"Non-toxic lipstick was applied to their bum-bums, they were then given a series of commands (sit, wait, lie down, and jump up. Side note: Both cats have been trained since kittenhood with a variety of commands, they also know how to high-five, spin around, and speak.), they were compensated with lots of praise, pets, and their favorite treats, and the lipstick was removed with a baby wipe once we collected our data in just under 10 minutes," Hyde wrote in a Facebook post.
The results? Turns out that, no, cat buttholes do not touch every surface cats sit on. Now, let's all take a collective sigh of relief while we go over the details. Kaeden's experiment covered long-haired, short-haired, and medium-haired cats (if your cat is hairless, you better stock up on Clorox wipes just in case).
"His results and general findings: Long and medium haired cat’s buttholes made NO contact with soft or hard surfaces at all. Short haired cats made NO contact on hard surfaces. But we did see evidence of a slight smear on the soft bedding surface. Conclusion, if you have a short haired cat and they may be lying on a pile of laundry, an unmade bed, or other soft uneven surface, then their butthole MAY touch those surfaces!" Hyde shares.
Now every curious cat owner can rest easy knowing that as long as their cat has hair, their bare bottom balloon knot is not touching the majority of surfaces in their home.
Courtesy of Kerry Hyde
The amusing experiment caught the Internet's attention. People laughed and commented, with one person writing, "This is probably the most useful information I’ve learned from a science fair project."
"Good to know!...I can now eat my sandwich left on the counter with confidence!" another writes.
Courtesy of Kerry Hyde
"A+++!!! Whew!! I am very grateful for your sciencing on this subject. My fears from walking in on my cat sitting on my laptop keyboard and subsequently being grossed out and cleaning furiously in a hyper-ocd manner have been somewhat allayed and now maybe I won’t have to use QUIIITE so many wipes." someone chimes in.
"Finally.. Someone answers the important questions!!"
Angelo Merendino
Angelo Merendino with his late wife Jennifer
When I saw these incredible photos Angelo Merendino took of his wife, Jennifer, as she battled breast cancer, I felt that I shouldn't be seeing this snapshot of their intimate, private lives. The photos humanize the face of cancer and capture the difficulty, fear, and pain that they experienced during the difficult time.
But as Angelo commented: "These photographs do not define us, but they are us."
In his photo exhibition, Angelo wrote:
"Jennifer was diagnosed with breast cancer five months after our wedding. She passed less than four years later. During our journey we realized that many people are unaware of the reality of day to day life with cancer. After Jen’s cancer metastasized we decided to share our life through photographs."
All images by Angelo Merendino, published here with permission.
Angelo and Jennifer drink beersassets.rebelmouse.io
On his website, Angelo writes:
"With each challenge we grew closer. Words became less important. One night Jen had just been admitted to the hospital, her pain was out of control. She grabbed my arm, her eyes watering, 'You have to look in my eyes, that’s the only way I can handle this pain.' We loved each other with every bit of our souls. Jen taught me to love, to listen, to give and to believe in others and myself. I’ve never been as happy as I was during this time."
Jennifer holds Angeloassets.rebelmouse.io
"People assume that treatment makes you better, that things become OK, that life goes back to 'normal,' Angelo wrote. "There is no normal in cancer-land. Cancer survivors have to define a new sense of normal, often daily. And how can others understand what we had to live with everyday?"
This article originally appeared thirteen years ago.