Carver the Scientist

What children learn in Level 33

• In Carver's time, most farmers in the South grew cotton in the same fields, year after year. Cotton used up the nutrients in the soil, and the soil wore out.
• Carver had a solution: crop rotation. That means planting different crops in a field from year to year.
• Crops like peanuts put nutrients back into the soil. Sweet potatoes grow well, even in poor soil. After a year of peanuts, cotton grew better again!
• Soon farmers grew so many peanuts that they couldn't sell them all. So Carver went to his lab and found hundreds of uses for them, like milk, soap, and ink.
• He found more than 100 uses for sweet potatoes, too, like flour and glue.
• Carver didn't invent peanut butter. People made it before him. But he helped make peanuts one of the South's most important crops.
• He designed a school on wheels, the Jesup Wagon, to bring lessons to farmers. And he shared his ideas for free, to help as many people as he could.
• Try it with a grown-up! Read the label on a jar or box in your kitchen. Can you find peanuts, sweet potatoes, or another plant?