Pot Sampling - Day Two

Today we began collecting samples. We split into two groups. Some people collected samples from the large pots, others collected samples from the field. I was part of the pot sampling group.

First of all, we opened up one of the large pots. In this picture you can see the cylinder of soil that was inside and some of the roots of the plants. Nico is taking a small soil sample from different depths inside the pot.

This sample is then weighed. Once it has dried it will be weighed again so that we can work out how much water was in the soil when we opened it.

 Here are all the glass jars that were prepared for collecting samples. As you can see there is a lot to do!

After these small soil core had been taken, we dug into the soil to remove small cylindrical meshes that had been put in there before the plants grew. This is so we could collect small samples of soil with roots in. Some of these will be x-rayed to see how the roots interact with the soil. Here are the mesh cylinders before they were filled with soil and one after it had been dug up.

The samples that were not being x-rayed were washed so the roots could be separated from the soil. This was my job. Here is the washing station. There is a hose attached to each tap. I emptied each of the mesh cylinders into a sieve and then used the hose to wash the soil away from the roots. I then put the roots in ethanol - a chemical that preserves the roots until they can be studied.

I'm not very experienced at this sort of thing and I had a big mistake - I let go of the hose while the tap was on. Water went everywhere including all over me! Here is a picture of me looking bedraggled!

 Tim to do the same thing as me, except he had to do it for the rest of the soil in the pots, so he had big buckets of soil and roots to clean up.

 In every experiment it is important to have a control. This is a sample that you don't do anything to. I our case this meant a pot with no plant in. In the control the soil looks really smooth.

 It took all day to wash out all the root. But my favourite part was cleaning up at the end of the day because we had to get rid the soil that we had washed away. And what do you get if you mix soil and water? Lots of lovely sticky mud!