Info
| Explore | We know that plants grow because of sun and water. We now know that plants can communicate and that different types of soil can affect the plants. |
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| Research Question | We want to test the germination rate of the leek and how it responds to baseball field dirt, potting soil, and manure (mixed with a little potting soil). |
| Predictions | We think that the potting soil or manure will have the leek grow best. We think the baseball field dirt will do the worst because its mostly sand and sand doesn't hold water or nutrients very well. |
| Experimental Design | Our plan is to test different types of soil on leek seeds and see if how it grows and how strong and tall the plant will be. We will measure the height of the plants and rate how strong it is daily. |
| Conclusion | In conclusion, I believe that we overwatered some of the plants and this could have caused some plants to die. I also found out that they grow faster in more sun and higher temperatures which also could have caused these plants to take longer to germinate. The leeks were also very flimsy and none... |
| About this Project |
Updates
this is the final project I have been working on for the past few weeks and the final thing I believe I will be uploading.
Awesome presentation, your graphs were really good! I'm glad you guys enjoyed doing the project as much as I liked helping you!!
I attempted to send a graph that showed our plants growth over time since we finished the experiment but for some reason I didn't send. I believe that this was a problem from our end.
Hey Eli. Not sure if it is a problem on my end, but here I only see a blank message. Is there an update to your project so far?
these are questions we came up with and are going to research about
Why did the baseball field dirt only have 1 plant out of 10 sprout?
How come not many of the plants sprouted and the ones that did take so long?
Why were the plants 3 or more days late to sprouting?
Why are they so skinny?
Why don't they have any leaves?
What kind of plant is a leek?
These are some good questions to try to answer, although I think you should consider editing and combing some of your questions to give you better results and it will be a lot easier to answer the questions:
Why were the plants 3 or more days late to sprouting? + How come not many of the plants sprouted and the ones that did take so long? --> What are factors that can influence plant sprouting times?
For this one, you can look at how things like light, temperature and the time of year affect plants and when they sprout.
Why are they so skinny? + Why don't they have any leaves? --> What are factors that can influence plant size, strength, and number of leaves?
For this question, you can look at things like how water, food, and soil type (especially soil type for your experiment!) affect plants.
These are all types of questions that you can google and get some really good answers to discuss!
We have been able to measure almost half of them. Day 13 was the first day that most had started growing.
Great! Let me know when you have your measurements recorded, I'd love to take a look at them!
We have seen even more growth in our plants. More have sprouted overnight.
Yay! How exciting! Looks like some of them were just late bloomers (or late sprouters I should say). Have you been able to take any measurements from them yet? Also, are you recording the day you first see the sprout for each of the samples? This would be very important information for your results later on.
We have seen some growth today in our plants. It looks like the rest of our plants are starting to germinate also.
The plants growing in manure has been doing the best. Potting soil is also doing well. None of the plants have completely sprouted yet, but they are definitely in the process of growing.
yes everyone else's have sprouted today about 10 have sprouted but the plants are hardly visable we are not even capable of measuring them
Has there been any growth over the weekend of your sprouts? Maybe the soil you put them in is affecting their growth rate, depending on what kind of soil they are in. To hypothesize if this is what is happening, it might be helpful to make note of the soil that the plants are sprouting from. Do you notice that the plants in any one type of soil have grown more than others?
Today is day 7 and none have sprouted.
Do not worry, there is still time! Are other groups in your class seeing sprouts? If not, then it is probably just that the seeds are taking their time to germinate.
I apologize I didn't see your comment till today, you could test things like the thickness of the stems or its roots and other things but we will try to keep it simple and just do the angle it grows at.
Yes, those sound like good ways to measure how strong a plant is. For now, I think the angle of the growth is a good measure for this experiment!
Looking good!
This is our plant charts.
we have our plants planted and today is day 4 and none have sprouted the soil is slightly wet so it was probably a little overwatered but is most likely all right.
I think that leek plants typically take a 7-10 days to sprout, so it isn't out of the ordinary to not see a sprout quite yet :)
we believe its important to test the plants strength because it may stand upright in tighter packed soils than loose sand like the baseball field dirt, we suspect those plants wont stay upright due to the "loosness" of the soil.
It is good to see if the plants will stand upright in the different types of soil to see if soil looseness affects the plant's ability to support itself! I would like you to think about real-world applicability of this test. Are there other factors that may affect the ability of a plant to stand upright besides the looseness of the soil? What might those be? Also, can you think of other metrics to test that might tell you how strong a plant is?
we made a chart and we will be looking to see if the plant is leaning or not and we will be comparing the angle the plants are leaning at to the chart to determine what grade we give it. A:laying down not upright B: leaning not on the dirt but at about a 45 degree angle C: about a 60-80 degree angle D: vertical, 90 degree angle
I see the testing method you are using here, but I have a question for you-- why do you think it is important to test the plant's strength?
We did not properly complete our project, so we will be starting over.
Aw man, don't be discouraged that you have to start over! A lot of the time in science, things don't go as you thought they would and you have to start from the beginning or do it over and over and over again. I once spent two weeks working every day on an experiment and right at the end before we were about to see our results, the experiment spilled and all of the stuff I had been working on had to be thrown out. But, this ended up being good for the project because the second time I did it, I got even better results! Restarting your experiment is a great opportunity to see what you did wrong the first time and improve upon it.
I'm excited to see what you do next, what will you change in order to make the experiment better?
They hold more water than sandy soils and are often high in nutrients plants need. But clay soils can get waterlogged and then the plant roots can't get oxygen, or so dry that they become too hard for the plants to dig in.
Very true, when soils are too high in clay it can limit plant growth through lack of oxygen and waterlogging, or the soil can become too packed for roots to grow. However, soils that have some clay in them can be very good for plants because clay soil particles hold on to nutrients and water in a way that makes it easy for plants to uptake into the roots-- this phenomenon is known as adsorption.
we started our experiment and we planted 30 plants, 10 in manure, 10 in plain old dirt, and 10 in potting soil we are going to find the day they sprout, the plants strength and the plants height.
Very cool! I'm excited to see the outcome of the experiment! I have one question-- how will you test the plant's strength?
during our project we have decided to test the germination rate of a leek and how it responds to potting soil, Brewer dirt and Bangor dirt.
Awesome! Why do you think clay is bad for plants? Is there some cases where it might be good?
we are planning on studying the germination rate of the leek, we will possibly test things such as how it responds to different soil types, depths and lighting
Different soil types and depths sounds like an excellent experiment! What types of soil are you planning on testing the germination rates of leeks with? What depths would you test out? I'd love to know more about your question or hypothesis!
For the pearl millet, it takes two to four days to germinate, and it grows best in well drained soil.
for the radish it takes on average 5-10 days to emerge and germinates best at temperatures from 55-75 degrees fahrenheit
Today I learned the difference between a dicot, and monocot and that different seeds have different germination rates and what they are such as a radish or pearl millet.
Nice! What's the difference in the germination rates for a radish and pearl millet?
One fascinating fact I learned today is that there's approximately 144,000 different species of fungi.
Fungi are so cool! In fact, there might even be more species of fungi in the world, but fungi are hard to study and some of them can be hard to find so it is hard to know how many there are exactly.
Hello team!! I am so excited to work with you on your science project because I love science and plants. I currently work in a research lab studying plants and I am having so much fun doing it! In my free time, I like to go on road trips with my friends and read books.
Hi, I am Landon and I play basketball and baseball.
Hello my name is Elijah, I enjoy playing soccer and golfing
Hi all! Sorry to interrupt; I just wanted to quickly introduce myself. My name is Jennifer Hartley, and I am the 'liaison' for your class this session. My job is to support your teacher and mentors.
I work for the Botanical Society of America, and I'm a graduate student with Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. My research there is on soil health and macroinvertebrate communities (which just means I look under rocks to see what crickets, worms, and other critters I can find there). I'm also a former middle and high school teacher, so I really enjoy working with PlantingScience.
You may see messages from me from time to time, especially if your mentor has to take a few days to do some work. Great job so far, and I'm looking forward to seeing what you all come up with!