The grass is greener

Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition

Eoin Slattery and James O’Reilly from St. Bricin’s College explained the genesis of their prize winning project ‘The Grass is Greener with Alpacas’. Eoin began: “We saw that alpaca fertilizer wasn’t really studied in Ireland, so we decided to do a scientific experiment.” That experiment would study alpaca fertilizer and investigate how it compared to others. It would also explore the best uses for the alpaca fertilizer, Eoin added.

“We had grass seeds and put them inside in trays to keep the same conditions like light, water and soil. The same amount of soil and grass in each tray and six different treatments. We had no fertilizer control, 10-10-20 synthetic fertilizer and composted alpaca manure. We had raw alpaca manure on the top of, and incorporated with the soil. We also had alpaca manure tea, which was spread weekly.”

James continued: “Compost and alpaca manure had a higher germination rate than alpaca tea because alpaca tea had the lowest germination rate. We found out alpaca compost and synthetic were the two best. Alpaca compost mixed into the soil was better than put on top.”

The students thanked their teacher, who oversaw five projects at the exhibition. Mr. Daryl Dunne told this reporter that Eoin was a former YSTE entrant and James’ family lived on an alpaca farm, which represented a tremendous opportunity for the students and their project.