The Stephanie Powers or Katie Price of Science?

After my major triumph of not being evicted in the first round of "I'm a scientist - get me out of here!" I have now been evicted. Nonetheless, I view it as a major triumph not being evicted first. Looking at the "I'm a celebrity - get me out of here" Wikipedia entry (yes there is one!) I see this puts me in the same company as Stephanie Powers, Limahl, Sheryl Gascoigne, Nigel Benn and Katie Price (second time around) amongst others. August company.

Stephanie Powers (with Robert Wagner) in Hart to Hart, a long time ago

Meanwhile back in the real world, grass is growing in our soil columns (or at least in the ones where we want plants to be present) and Hongling has put in the earthworms. The challenge of course is knowing that the earthworms are still in there!

A column with grass

One of our grass free columns with (honestly) an earthworm burrow in the centre

 

The grey rings in the centre of the columns are where we put the smaller bit of kit for measuring gas flux - you can see photos of it in earlier blogs. By having two rings we can get gas flux from the soil with and without vegetation (from our columns with grass). The thing coming out of the middle of the soil is a rhizon sampler for sampling soil solution. Next up (next Monday) is to do our first batch of gas collection since the grass started growing and we introduced the earthworms. Hopefully we'll see some differences.