Okay, so the other day I got this idea stuck in my head about figuring out how much stuff actually fits into a few common things I use around the house and garden. You know, like a flowerpot, one of those little hand shovel heads, and just a regular kitchen bowl. Seemed simple enough, but I wanted to actually do it, not just guess.
Getting Started
First thing, I went and grabbed the items. I picked out a medium-sized terracotta flowerpot, the one I used for my basil last year. Then I got my trusty little garden trowel – just the metal shovelhead part is what I was interested in, really. And finally, just a standard ceramic bowl from the kitchen cupboard, the kind you’d use for cereal.
My main goal wasn’t super scientific. I just wanted a practical feel for the volumes. Like, how many scoops from this trowel would roughly fill that pot? Or how does the bowl compare?
The Process – Trying Things Out
I decided to use water first, seemed like the easiest way to measure volume precisely.
- The Flowerpot: I took the flowerpot to the sink. Plugged the drain hole at the bottom with my finger – learned that trick the hard way before! Then I carefully filled it with water right up to the brim using a measuring jug. I kept track of how much water I poured in. It was pretty straightforward.
- The Shovelhead: Now, the trowel head was tricky. It’s not really meant to hold water, obviously. It’s curved and open. So, I tried a different approach. I got a bag of dry sand I had leftover. I scooped a level shovel full of sand and carefully dumped it into my measuring jug. Did this a few times to get an average. It wasn’t perfect, lots of spilling, but it gave me a rough idea of a single scoop’s volume. Definitely not precise, but practical enough for scooping soil.
- The Bowl: The bowl was easy, just like the flowerpot. Filled it up to the rim with water using the measuring jug. Simple.
What I Found Out
So after all that pouring and scooping, I got my answers. Nothing earth-shattering, mind you.
The flowerpot held quite a bit, more than I would have guessed just by looking. The bowl held a decent amount too, pretty standard. The most interesting part was the shovelhead scoop size. Knowing roughly how much one scoop holds actually helps now when I’m mixing potting soil or fertilizer. I can estimate better instead of just guessing wildly.
Comparing them was useful too. It took quite a few scoops from the trowel to equal the volume of the flowerpot, which makes sense but seeing it helps. And the kitchen bowl held, well, about as much as you’d expect a cereal bowl to hold, significantly less than the pot.
It was a simple little exercise. Didn’t take long, just involved getting my hands a bit dirty (literally, with the sand). But now I have a much better real-world sense of those capacities. Sometimes you just gotta do something yourself to really get it, you know?
