Scioly.org

Booknerd wrote: ↑October 22nd, 2020, 10:23 pm [NOTE: please excuse any typos or weird sentence grammar as this is late night Booknerd writing all of this and I'm too tired to go back and proofread. Ty and have fun reading my long post about plant mom blogs and home horticulture]
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I think I've found my new favorite event

Some initial thoughts:

This event lowkey feels like a spin-off of botany but with more application. It tests on not only how plants work, but how to grow them well. As one who is trying to learn how to raise plants at home, I'm looking forward to seeing how much I can learn from this event so I can directly apply what I learn to the plants I'm desperately trying to keep alive.

This event uses American measurements, not the metric system. But it makes sense considering that the American measurements are used most in horticulture.

Something I've found interesting about this event is that a lot of the community and resources that work with horticulture are diy/how-to/tips and tricks plant raising blogs on the internet. It's definitely an interesting experience to start studying for this event with blogs. I'm going to try and see if my local botanic garden has any resources on plant cultivation that are more reliable than the plant bloggers, but we'll see how that goes (I'm not dissing the plant bloggers or anything, they're all really good. It's just that having a textbook or professional article would give me the security that I'm using information that's a little more trustworthy and reliable).

I think a lot of studying for this event might be around local sources, since the knowledge on different plant growing and wildlife will vary from place to place, depending on climate, land (coastal/mountain/plains/desert/etc.), and other similar characteristics.

Don't hate me for this, but I really like how this is a binder event because I get ID event vibes from it. From the way I interpreted the rules, I expect there to be a lot of questions on "identify the native plant species in this picture" or "what pH levels are best suited for specimen A" or "the following picture is of a common pest. Explain how this pest impacts...". I'm curious to see how test writers will write tests and find a balance between general knowledge/ID questions, and the way competitors will have to balance their study to reach the standards for these tests (deciding to study more on ID knowledge of native plants vs. general knowledge).

And just a thought, since I know this is a trial event that's still going through some development: the rules mentions something about "native plants". How will this impact tests at tournaments with teams coming from all over the country (as I know many teams are deciding to use the online format as an opportunity to compete in tournaments in different states). Will the general knowledge of the test regarding native plants, pests, and wildlife all be specifically around the region of the tournament itself? And since different regions have different characteristics, how will tests be made fair at state and national tournaments? (ie. a team from florida will be coming in with different horticulture knowledge from a team from montana when it comes to the knowledge surrounding native plants and wildlife.) How can a test be made fair for teams that are coming in with slightly different knowledge based upon where they are coming from?
To take that thought a little further, I guess a possible way to solve the issue above is having a list of a few different regions/plants that all competitors should know. (I'm thinking kind of along the lines of how there's a list of lagerstatten on the fossil rules and a few examples of important oceanographic features like the Mariana Trench are listed on the dynamic planet rules, so for example an addition to the rules could have something about plants in the Great Plains of the Midwest.)

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Also, since this is a completely new event, I've decided to spend some time on creating the wikipage for this event so people new to this event can start with at a good place instead of having to search for information in online plant mom blogs. I'm also hoping to write a practice test for this event soon, just to kind of "set the tone" for this event and help all the test writers who have no place to start (hopefully I don't screw up the test and set a bad tone for the whole season..). But since I'm also completely new to this as well, it would be greatly appreciated if people can help me out on starting up resources for Home Horticulture. Oh, and if there are some home horticulture tests that are lost in the scioly universe and have not been identified yet, it would be great if someone can send them so I (and anyone else who wants to help) have an example to work with.