So since I am a student in the IB curriculum, we have to do a lot of really cool

projects. One of them is setting up and observing a mesocosm!

Mesocosm is basically any outdoor experimental system that examines the natural
environment under controlled conditions. I’m doing mine terrestrial.

At first, I grabbed a lot of small and a little bit bigger stones and rocks from my
garden. This helps to facilitate drainage. I washed them to ensure that there was the
least amount of bacteria possible.

Here you can see the rocks at the bottom:

Next I added this kind of clay/sand that I dug from my garden. Unfortunately this
added a couple flakes of grass and possibly weed so I don’t know how that’s gonna
work out but let’s see!

Here you can see, the lighter layer of the soil is the clay/sand:

I added peat soil on top. I do not know which soil would work better with my plants so
I decided I would try both peat and clay. Soil is of course an essential part for the
plant growth since it gives the needed nutrients and substances to the plant and it is
also the part where plant grows it’s roots.

Then I planted my plants. Two of them are the most ordinary succulents. One is a
cactus. One is a mountain stand. And one is a plant from my garden that apparently
grows everywhere in our garden but is not a weed (at least that’s what my father told
me, ha has studied gardening). We do not know what it is called.

Here you can see them all:

So yeah, I left them a lot of free room for the air, added about 2 cups of water (not
purified, tap-water) and then sealed the jar. Oh and sealing a jar was quite a work.
Firstly I taped it with a insulating tape (because it is made from rubber so it has a
good grip).

Then I added one more layer of rubber tape to make sure that it is secured and no
air or anything gets through.

And that’s it. I put it in my garden in a mostly sunny place and now I’m gonna
observe it.