Hunting for Caterpillars in the Garden at Empire Elementary

On Wednesday October 8, 2008, we replicated our Louisiana study in our garden at Empire Elementary. Well....we did a fourth grade version. We weren't able to make our plots circles, our garden is very much a rectangle. We measured the width at 24' so we divided the garden in half at 12' and then made a grid. Students were assigned to hunt and do plant counts in each part of the grid. We only found one larva on Wednesday in 1a. On Friday we were working in the garden pulling sunflowers and weeds and finding surprise vegetables and we found 2 more larva. In addition, Friday morning, one of my students found a larva on the blacktop. We labeled this "general collections" and I sent her back out a morning recess to collect some leaves from a nearby tree. It was a really windy day and besides the caterpillar was really restless without food.