♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Pam Halstead: Here we are at the Humboldt Botanical Garden, and this is "Field Trip."

Let's go see if we can find a gardener.

♪♪♪ Pam: Hi, I'm Pam.

Terry Kramer: I'm Terry.

Welcome to the Humboldt Botanical Garden.

It's Humboldt County's largest garden right here, next to CR.

We have 44½ acres to explore today.

Pam: I'm excited.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Pam: Where are we now, Terry?

Terry: We're in the Sun Valley Floral Garden greenhouse where we propagate many plant flora to plant out in the garden and also for our plant sales and nursery sales.

Pam: Nice, and when you use the word "propagate," what does that mean?

Terry: That means starting seeds or taking cuttings.

It's making baby plants and growing them into bigger plants.

Pam: So you're saying that you can actually take a plant and cut off a piece of it and put it in the ground, and it will grow?

Terry: Certainly.

There is a process to it first.

Then that's what the function of the greenhouse is.

Terry: So what we're going to do here is we're going to start a plant from a cutting.

We're gonna use a material called perlite.

It comes from volcanoes.

Pam: Oh, nice.

So, volcanic rock?

Terry: Yeah, it's heated and expanded and the plants like that.

The plants like it.

It's very sterile so what we do, we take the perlite and we put it in a nice clean new container.

Everything's very clean.

We take a little water and we, first, we fill and there are lots of ways to do this kind of propagation, but this is what works for us best at the garden.

Pam: And I notice that water is flowing through this.

And that's a good thing, right?

So if we had clay in this, maybe it would just stick in there and it might make--not be good for the plant?

Terry: Right.

This is very porous.

The roots need water but they also need air.

So, and again, this is very sterile.

We take the perlite, after we wet it, and we kind of make it like a snow cone.

Pam: You're squeezing it.

Terry: Yeah, I'm fluffing it up here.

Pam: Oh, fluffing it.

Terry: That is a very quick way.

Pam: That is cool.

Terry: All right, and then we take a cutting and this is a mimulus.

This is a California native.

Pam: Ooh, I have some of those in my garden.

Terry: So I'm gonna take a little snip, and I snip just below where two leaves come together, and that's called a node.

Pam: Oh, good.

Terry: So we snip that off.

Pam: And is that a place where new growth will come out?

Terry: Yes, I'll show you in a minute, but the roots, what will happen is this will callus off a little bit and the little roots will come out.

I have in here a little rooting hormone that's liquid.

Pam: Cool, so this is a hormone and that will stimulate roots to grow?

Terry: Yeah, it's not a true hormone, but they call 'em auxins but plants produce these, but this is a little material that we use to stimulate plant growth.

Pam: Oh, I see.

Terry: Take the little cutting and we place it in, like, 10 seconds.

Pam: So you're saturating it in there, or you're covering it?

Terry: Yeah, and it's soaking into the plant a little bit.

And I'll just poke it right in there.

Pam: You're using a pen, which works great.

Terry: A little pen or a little piece of bamboo.

Pam: Yes.

Terry: Something like that.

Okay, and then I give another little drink.

And then, in a few short weeks, here's some mimulus.

See, these were several in a different potting situation, but it's still in the perlite.

I squeeze it out like this.

And what I'm gonna do is, do you see the roots?

Pam: Oh, I do.

Terry: A little bit of perlite, but the-- it made a little callus there.

Pam: Wow, that's amazing.

Terry: And then the roots come out.

And then I get a pot with some potting soil.

Pam: Okay.

Potting soil.

Terry: Take a little potting soil here.

And this light seed mix is very good, yeah.

So--and this is sterile potting soil also.

It's--this is made out of peat moss and some tiny, tiny perlite.

Pam: Okay, no germs.

Terry: And we pop that in there.

Pam: That looks kind of naturally fluffy when you were pushing it down.

Terry: Yeah, it's a very nice light.

And then, in about 6 weeks, this is gonna fill out, and 8 weeks later you can grow one of these.

So this came off of this and then, in a few weeks, this is gonna be like this, a little mimulus.

male: Field Trip Trivia.

female: Making a new plant from a cutting is called asexual propagation.

But sexual propagation requires the union of pollen and eggs to make what?

Is it a, Petals; b, Seeds; or c, Stems?

♪♪♪ female: The answer is b, Seeds.

♪♪♪ Terry: Now we're going to go out to the Rose Garden and we're gonna see about how we mulch and irrigate in a garden and also some garden safety tips.

♪♪♪ Pam: Sometimes, you gotta just stop and smell the roses.

Terry: Thank you.

We have coming close to 70 roses in this garden.

We don't have a whole lot of volunteers and staff to always water everything and mulch everything and weed everything, so we depend on mulch and we depend on what's called drip irrigation which I can water 30 roses at a time.

Pam: Excellent, and this, you said, was mulch?

And so this is mulch, and what is this?

Terry: This is fir bark mulch.

Pam: So what is the purpose of this stuff?

Terry: Well, this mulch is so important, especially when we're in a drought situation where mulch will keep the soil cool, mulch will suppress weeds, mulch also conserves water.

So if we didn't have this bed mulched and we had a big windy afternoon like we did the other day and we've already had some rain, that can really dry out the soil.

So if I look in here, down here, and I get down under a little bit, see how it's nice and moist, this mulch?

Pam: Oh wow, it sure is.

Oh, my goodness, and it's pretty deep, isn't it?

Terry: It's--this is very deep mulch, yeah, so-- Pam: There is soil under this?

Terry: A few surface weeds will come through like the sheep sorrel.

Like, that comes from the lawn, they kind of creep out.

And they're very--that's another thing when you-- Pam: Easy to pull?

Terry: Yeah, when you have mulch, thick mulch, and you pull weeds, they come up pretty easily, as opposed to-- Pam: If you just had the soil?

Terry: Hard ground or rock, yeah.

Pam: That makes sense.

Terry: So here we have this fir bark mulch and we have it around our roses here and, again, I'm not going to bend.

I'm gonna get on my knees.

You can buy knee pads or some people squat, but-- Pam: We're wearing long pants so that's a good thing.

Terry: We keep a nice mulch so when the drip irrigation--the irrigation is on and this is called drip and these are like a little mini sprinkler.

When it comes to irrigation, you have to take in consideration the slope and how much water the soil can accept in one sitting, so here we're kind of on a slope.

If we ran this irrigation for an hour, there would be a river running down there.

Pam: And this is a good way to conserve water, to have a drip irrigation, correct?

Terry: Conserve water and keep the weeds down.

Pam: Keep the weeds down, okay, awesome.

When you're out in the garden, you wanna wear the right kind of clothes because you have sun, you might have some rain, you might wanna wear a rain jacket.

But if you're just out in the garden and it's sunny, you wanna wear probably long sleeves because one thing that might happen is you might get cut by--we're in a rose garden and there's thorns, and so you want to avoid that.

You wanna wear long pants because the long pants will help you when you have to bend down.

So you're bending down and the long pants will help cover your knees.

And then you also want to wear some sturdy shoes.

Those sturdy shoes will help you as you walk over uneven surfaces in the ground.

And the last thing is, on top of my head, I have a hat, and that hat is to protect me from the rays of the sun, so that I don't get sunburnt.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Pam: Hi, I'm Pam.

How are you?

Mark Moore: Hi, Pam.

I'm Mark, nice to meet you.

Pam: Nice to meet you as well.

This is such a beautiful garden.

Can you tell me more?

Mark: Welcomely.

Welcome to the California Native Plant Garden.

It's called the Lost Coast Brewery Native Plant Garden.

It encompasses about an acre and a half.

It has plants from throughout the California floristic province.

All the plants that you see in here, of about 200 species and cultivated varieties, are from somewhere in California.

Pam: What can you tell me about this plant, Mark?

Mark: So, Pam, this is a Matilija Poppy.

It's native to the mountains in southern California, and it's considered the largest native flower of all the plants in California.

And it's not particular to soil or fertilizer or water.

In fact, it does not want water, it does not want fertilizer, and it does not want any soil amendment.

So it basically wants to be left alone.

Pam: Wow.

Well, I think we were talking earlier about irrigation.

Is that a big deal in this garden?

Mark: This garden, this is about an acre and a half with about 200 species here, and we don't irrigate anything.

Mother Nature has to irrigate the whole show for us.

So, these plants are adapted to a cool wet winter and a warm dry summer.

So, if you actually irrigate native plants, for the most part, with few exceptions, you kill 'em.

They don't want summer water.

They only wanna have their moisture during the cool wet season.

Pam: I'm glad you told me that because I do have some native plants at home that I water in the summer.

I think I'm gonna change the way I do it now because of what you said.

Mark: Yeah, I mean it's--there are websites that talk about native plant gardening and they say the best way to kill a native plant is to put it on drip irrigation and so, the landscape designers don't always adhere to that, and subsequently, they kill a lot of native plants and they fall out of favor sometimes.

They say, "Oh, they're fussy or they're hard to grow.

But they really aren't, you just have to know exactly what they want.

Let's go on down here and take a look at some more color.

Pam: All right.

♪♪♪ Mark: This is actually quite rare.

It's not really a sage but they call it a sage.

But it's--I have to tell you a little bit of scientific jargon.

Pam: Sure.

Mark: The genus is Lepechinia, this comes from the Channel Islands off of southern California.

And it has a beautiful flower that the hummingbirds and the bumblebees absolutely go crazy over.

And the leaf, they call it Lepechinia fragrans for a reason.

But take that leaf and crunch it and smell it.

I'm sure you'll enjoy the fragrance off of it.

Pam: Mm, smells so good.

Mark: Some of those smells that these mints and sages have, are thought to be defense mechanisms against the predators that would be grazing on them mostly.

Pam: So this smells good to me, but they would not taste good to some of the predators?

Mark: Right.

Pam: Okay.

Mark: Although, for human predators, it makes a wonderful tea.

Pam: Cool.

Mark: Yeah, so let's go.

I have a 1-gallon and we can go, put that one in the ground and I'll show you how we put in a native plant.

Pam: Okay, excellent.

♪♪♪ Pam: Here's a good space.

This is where we're gonna do the planting?

Mark: Yeah, I'm actually kind of running out of places in the Native Plant Garden, but I found one more and we're gonna plant a Fragrant Pitcher Sage that we started from cuttings.

Actually, Terry Kramer started this up in the greenhouse for us, and they take a long time, this was last fall, to reach a 1-gallon size.

But native plants are usually pretty slow at the beginning and then they take off after a few years.

So I'll show you kind of the process we go through to amend the soil.

Remember, I was telling you, these soils are quite heavy and clay-like, and so what we're gonna do is pull the mulch back.

Pam: I see soil.

Mark: There's soil.

There's soil there.

Pam: And this mulch is to help prevent evaporation?

Mark: Exactly, and it also is excellent at prohibiting weeds which are our mortal enemy in this garden.

Pam: Yes, that makes sense.

Mark: So I'm gonna show you a little bit of the texture of this soil.

This is actually pretty good.

It's pretty crumbly, but we can amend it to improve the drainage 'cause the secret with a lot of these native plants is to get them through the wintertime when the ground is very saturated.

You can see these are--this is, like, the parent material here.

It has a dark texture and dark color, so there's some-- there are some nutrients in it but it's very compact.

It's hard.

So we're gonna fix that.

Pam: It's a dirt clod.

Mark: It's a dirt clod, exactly.

Pam: With clay.

Mark: So we're gonna fix that with the addition of-- Pam: My gosh.

Mark: --of a little bit of perlite, a little bit of gravel, and a little bit of pumice-- Pam: Can I feel it?

Mark: --red cinder.

And that is to improve the texture of the soil.

Pam: It feels crunchy.

Mark: Mm-hm, it's gonna get crunchy.

Kind of like making crunchy peanut butter.

So we'll turn it, mix it, break up the clods.

'Cause this is the only time you're gonna get.

We get one shot at it, and the plant's gonna be there.

So, get it nice and mixed and blended in there.

There's lots of techniques in doing this.

One of 'em is to put the can down in the ground and then you know about the diameter you want, but I usually just use my judgment.

Okay, why don't you do the honors.

Pam: Okay, thank you.

Mark: Again, this is a Fragrant Pitcher Sage, Lepechinia.

Pam: Is this good?

Okay.

Nice.

Mark: And that's a little deep, so lift it up, let's put just a little bit more underneath it.

Pam: Little bit of soil.

Mark: What we wanna do is, have the top just barely crowned above the soil, right?

That looks just about right.

Pam: Okay, sweet.

Mark: Okay, go ahead and-- Pam: All right, nice.

This seems kind of high but you're saying it isn't so I totally-- Mark: Well, it won't be in a second.

Pam: Okay, I got you.

Mark: 'Cause what we do is we'll give it one last little push to get it to conform to the native material, and then we'll gently put our mulch back over it.

We usually leave about 2 or 3 inches away from the plant collar so that we don't rot the plant out should it get warm and moist.

Pam: Okay, good.

Mark: And if you wanna give it a drink.

Pam: I would love to.

Mark: We'll have a future member of the Native Plant Garden, a Fragrant Pitcher Sage.

Pam: Awesome.

Mark: All right, Pam, there it is.

There's the Pitcher Sage in the ground, and thank you so much for coming out and helping us today.

Pam: Thank you.

I had a great time.

Really appreciate it.

Mark: You're welcome.

male: Field Trip Trivia.

female: What is Lepechinia named after?

Is it a, Russian botanist Ivan Lepyokhin; b, Tiny Leprechauns; or c, A famous Italian pasta?

♪♪♪ female: The answer is a, Ivan Lepyokhin.

♪♪♪ Pam: We've reached the top of the garden.

Pam: I'm here at the "All Happy Now" Circle and I wanna know what the area of this circle is.

So, in order to find out what that is, I need to determine the radius of this circle.

The first thing we need to do is measure a point on the circle, on the edge, and then go to any other point on the edge of the circle and find the distance.

Then we're gonna cut that distance in half and draw a perpendicular line.

Now we repeat the process, and where those lines intersect is the center.

And from the center to the edge of the circle is the radius.

Let's get started.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Pam: Based on my measurements, the radius is 50 feet.

So now I need to figure out the area.

This is a job for Number Woman!

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Number Woman: Thank you, Pam.

That's a great question.

With the radius, 50 feet, what's the area of the circle?

So for area of a circle, the formula is pi r squared, which is pi times radius times radius, because with the two as an exponent, it means multiply the base that many times.

And then we know that the radius is 50 feet, and 50 times 50 is 25 and 2 zeros, which is 2500.

So we know the area of the circle is 2500 pi feet squared.

But what happens is we don't think in pi, so we can use this number: pi is about 3.14.

So pi is about 3.14.

What we can do is we can find the area of the circle is about 2500 times 3.14.

And that can give us more of a proximate in square feet without pi symbol.

So then we have this approximate 2500 times 3.14.

Now, what I do is I don't use the zeros in the beginning because then we can just add those at the end, so what we can really do is multiply 3.14 times 25 and then move those decimal places at the end and get those zeros in also.

So, then, 4 times 5 is 20, 5 plus 2 is 7, 5 times 3 is 15.

Placeholder, 2 times 4 is 8, 2 times 1 is 2, 2 times 3 is 6.

Add straight down: 0, 15, 7, 8, and 7.

Now, this doesn't include the 2500 so what we're gonna wanna do is go, 7, 8, 5, 0, and put those 2 zeros in.

So at this point what we need to do in this answer which is the correct one, we're gonna need to go tenths, hundredths.

So if we go tenths, hundredths, what we end up with is the final area of the circle is about 7850 square feet.

And now that we know the area of the circle, I'm "All Happy Now."

Back to you, Pam.

Pam: Thanks, Number Woman.

Peter Santino: Oh, so I see you've discovered my work of art?

Pam: Oh my, you must be the artist, Peter Santino?

Peter: That's right.

How can I help you?

Pam: Well, I would love to know more about this, because it's very intriguing.

It's a hill, but I notice that there is, like, sections that are in it.

Tell us more about it, please.

Peter: It's actually a machine.

I consider it a machine for the creation of personal happiness.

So that's why it's called "All Happy Now."

It's actually a spiral, a spiral of Fermat, is the original mathematical formula that it comes from.

There's two ramps, basically.

They're exactly the same, 180 degrees offset.

Pam: Yes.

Peter: One is sort of nestled in the other.

So when you walk up-- Pam: I can see.

This is the lowest part here.

Peter: You start here.

But when you walk all the way around, you don't come--you don't come back to this one.

You come back to this one, remarkably.

Pam: Oh my goodness.

Peter: Because this one is the starting of the other one, the other side.

Pam: So it's every--is it every other one then?

Peter: It's every other one.

Pam: Wow, can we try that?

Peter: Sure, you wanna walk around?

Pam: Yes, let's.

Peter: Okay, it's gonna take a few minutes.

Pam: That's all right, that's fine.

Peter: See, so here we are, back where we started.

Pam: Yes.

Peter: But we are-- Pam: But we're higher.

Peter: We're one higher, yes.

Pam: Yes, well, that is pretty neat.

I'll bet kids really like this.

Peter: Kids do like this.

Pam: Yeah, yeah.

Thanks so much, Peter, for bringing us to your amazing earthwork.

I loved it.

Peter: Oh, thank you for coming.

And students, this is--really might be an opportunity to talk to your teacher about taking a field trip to see something really wonderful: the Humboldt Botanical Gardens.

My earthwork, "All Happy Now," is here waiting for you, the perfect spiral.

Come visit.

Number Woman: Hi, kids.

Have you ever wondered how to find the area of a circle?

Well, what we can do is we can start off with circumference of a circle and then we're gonna prove how to get to area of a circle.

So, circumference of a circle.

Usually, you think of it as pi times diameter.

And we know that pi is about 3.14 which is about 3 times.

And if you draw a circle, if you go all the way across, it's called the diameter.

And so, with that diameter you can think of, "If I look at this length of this diameter, can you see how long it is?

It's about one, two, three, to go around, and a little bit, which is about 3.14.

So that's pretty cool.

That's how we can think of it logically.

Half of the circle is called the radius, so r equals radius.

Well, how many radii, which is plural for radius, goes across?

Oh, two.

So another way we can think of it is pi times 2r which we write 2 pi r, because we put the variable at the end.

So we're gonna use circumference is pi d, 3.14 time diameter, which is 2 pi r, and we're gonna use that information to prove why the area of the circle is what it is.

And we're gonna go to the next page.

So area of a circle, when you've heard it in school and if you haven't, is actually pi r squared.

But where does that come from?

So we have this cool proof that, basically, what happens is I'm gonna draw it over here, so if I draw, like I say, a big circle and then I draw a concentric circle, so those are like little circles in between, so I am--it's hard to draw them without a compass.

But, basically, if you throw a rock in the water and then they just keep--if you've ever seen that comes out.

Those are called concentric circles.

So if I have a bunch of concentric circles, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna say, "Well, if I go from the center out, that's called the radius, right?

We already did that.

That's called the radius.

But now, what if I wanna peel off all those layers, like, maybe if you're cooking cookies and you peel off the cookie dough or something.

You peel up, and you strip 'em by each other and make pie cookies.

That's what's it's gonna look like these little rectangles, so basically what happens is, I'm gonna take that little tiny one and I'm gonna take the circumference.

It's gonna be really tiny, a little rectangle.

Then I'm gonna peel off that next circle and it's gonna be a little longer.

And then I'm gonna peel off--peel it off, the next circle, and it's gonna be a little longer.

And then I'm gonna peel off the next circle and it's gonna be a little longer.

And I can keep peeling off circles and they're gonna keep being a little longer 'til I peel off the final big one, all the way around, and that's gonna be the tallest one.

But to have full area, I couldn't have 'em almost like pie pieces.

I would almost have to do, like, noodles or string so they're really, really thin.

So then, basically, what I have instead, is I have all these little, little tiny ones, all the way up, all the way up, all the way up, all the way up, and what it ends up making is, basically, a triangle.

And we know how to find the area of a triangle.

We know the area of a rectangle is base times height.

So what's the area of a triangle?

Well, the area of a triangle is gonna be base times height, but we divide by 2, because triangles are half of rectangles.

So then, let's think about this.

Well, we know that the radius, all the way across the bottom here, is gonna be r, 'cause that's the bottom of all of 'em, and we know the height is that last big circle around the outside, and we know the height, remember, from the other page, circumference is 2 pi r, so the height is gonna be 2 pi r. So now, we have the height is 2 pi r, the base is the radius, and we just plug it in.

So we know the base is radius, the height is 2 pi r, but we must divide it by 2 for a triangle, right?

So then what happens?

Well, the 2 cancels because anything divided by itself is 1, which is the multiplicative identity, and then we have, well, the area of the triangle is pi times radius times radius, right?

Because pi--if it says radius times pi times r, that's called the commutative property.

You can multiply 2 times 3 or 3 times 2 is 6, any order.

Same with this.

We can put these in any order.

[gasping] Where did--pi times r times r?

Well, r times r is r squared.

Pi r squared, so the area of my triangle, we'll cut it in half, is pi r squared, but the area of my circle is also pi r squared.

It matches.

And that's the proof of why the area of a circle's formula is pi r squared.

Thank you.

Pam: I've climbed the mountain and I'm "All Happy Now."

Thanks for watching "Field Trip."

♪♪♪ Terry: Hi, Pam.

Pam: Hi, I'm Pam.

Terry: Oops, I said it didn't I?

Pam: See?

See me?

See me making mistakes.

Watch me.

Okay, all right.

Pam: What should I do?

Like, act like-- female: Hold still, 'cause you're getting tied up.

male: That's probably good.

male: Go ahead and hand it to Pam.

female: Nineteen feet.

♪♪♪