| Explore | Plants need water, soil, and sunlight to grow. Mrs. Martin came into our class from UNH to talk about agronomy. She told us that this could be another year without peaches because of to many growing degree days. She also told us about grafting plants. Were interested in learning if we put two seeds together if they will grow together. |
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| Research Question | Would two seeds in the same spot, radish and corn, radish and mung bean, and mung bean and corn, grow better then one seed on its own? |
| Predictions | We predict that the plant with one seed will grow faster than the plant with two seeds. We think this because the plant with two seeds may be affected if the two plants are trying to grow together to form into one plant. We think that the radish and corn and the radish and mung bean will compete for space and water. We also think that the mung bean and corn will try to grow into one. We think this because these two plants have roots that would grow easily together especially if placed in the same spot and watered the same amount of water. The radish is round so it wouldn't grow as well with roots. |
| Experimental Design | Materials: -6 containers, 9 radish, 9 mung bean, 9 corn, soil, water Spacing: corn: 4 inches apart, radish: 2 inches apart, mung mean: 3 inches apart Depth: all: 1 inch deep Soil: about 6 cm. Water: 20 ml. per seed There will be six pots and three seeds in each one. First get 3 bottles and cut them in half. The control plants are radishes, corn, and mung bean. The experimental plants are Corn and mung bean together, corn and radish together, and mung bean and radish together. Next, use a mixture of potting soil and local dirt. After that, plant your seeds with the correct depth and spacing listed above. In the control plants there are three seeds equally spaced apart. In the experimental plants there are 6 seeds. Place the experimental seeds right next to each other. Even the experimental plants will be getting 60 ml. of water all together even though there are double the seeds, so the experimental plants get 20 ml. for every two seeds. We will be comparing the height and the amount of leaves of the experimental plants to the control plants. We will also see how developed the experimental plants are, developed meaning how well they grew together. Our goal is to get the experimental plants to try to grow into one plant. This could help make it easier for farmers because instead of having to go through the process of grafting they can use this simpler method of placing seeds next to each other. They may not grow into one as if they were grafted, but they farmers could still use this easier method if the plants do conjoin in some way. In the end, we will look at the roots to see how they developed together. |
| Conclusion | After digging up the roots to see if our experiment worked, we noticed that the roots did not grow together. A possible explanation for our results is that the roots of the plants competed for resources such as space and water.The data that we collected shows which plants grew best assuming that they did grow together. We watered the experimental plants the same as the control plants treating it like it was one seed. The heights and amount of leaves showed which plants grew best. It does not show whether the plants grew together. To find that out we had to dig out the roots. If they did grow together than the data we collected would show us which plants grew best. To further this experiment we could have planted it right at first instead of having to replant it due to lack of soil and too much water. This could have made the plants grow together better if they had better planting. One of our corn plants was not growing so we replanted it 9 days after all the others. |
| Investigation Theme | AFW |
| Grade Level | Middle School Students (grades 6,7,8) |
| School Name | Nottingham Elementary |
| Session | Spring 2017 |
