Info
| Explore |
Work on this next! What do we know about plants from our experiences outside of school? What have we discovered in class and background research? What questions about plants interest us? |
|---|---|
| Research Question | What do we want to test or study? How did we come up with the question(s). How does the question fit what we know about the topic? |
| Predictions | What are the possible outcomes of our study given the variables we are working with? What is our explanation for why and how we think this will happen? |
| Experimental Design | What is our plan? Be sure to include enough detail that another group can replicate our experiment. What variables will we test? What variables will we measure and observe? What variables will we keep constant? How will we record our data? |
| Conclusion | What claim can we make from our experiment? What are possible explanations for our results? How do the data we collected and our reasoning with scientific ideas support our claim? What future experiments could be done to expand on the results of this experiment? |
| About this Project |
Despite finding issues with their seeds germinating this team kept on trying and communicating with their mentor.They addressed issues of watering and found in the end that [the treatment that] did not have fertilizer grew. They began to suspect that the fertilizer had something to do with... |
Updates
As this research project is now in the final stages of wrapping-up, we wish to thank everyone who participated in this inquiry; the students, mentors, teachers and others behind the scenes. We appreciate all of your efforts and contributions to this online learning community.
Scientific exploration is a process of discovery that can be fun! There are many unanswered questions about plants just waiting for new scientists to consider, investigate, and share.
After the end of the session, we will be updating the platform and archiving groups and projects, after which time new updates/posts will not be able to be added to projects or groups. Please come back and visit the PlantingScience Project Gallery anytime to view this project in the future. You can search the Gallery by keyword, team name, topic, or school name.
Good bye for now.
Warm regards,
The PlantingScience team
It’s great to see that teams from your school are wrapping up and posting conclusions. Enjoy the final stages of your project, and feel free to post any final comments or questions you have for your mentors.
So, it looks like the fertilizer was toxic, even at 11 drops! Even if this wasn't the result you're expecting, it's actually a very informative experiment. I haven't observed fertilizer toxicity that stops seed germination yet - so this was actually a novel result for me! I had to actually look up how fertilizer can cause seed death as it wasn't something I had not really heard of before. Typically, putting too much fertilizer on plants causes what farmers call "burn". It's called burn because the plant will develop yellow and dry spots, which can also happen if the plants are overheated. These spots are where the plant has dried out, and they dry out because of the high salt levels in fertilizer (the nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium are typically added to fertilizers as salts). Often the worst ions for this are urea and ammonium nitrate salts, which are added to give the fertilizer nitrogen. The high salt concentration will often kill the seed/prevent it from germinating. Do all you have any ideas how high salts would kill the seed/germinating plant?
Also, what might be useful in drawing a conclusion is to actually dig out the seeds that didn't grow. It could be interesting to see if they germinated at all (where you see a small plant emerging from the seed that then died) or if there was absolutely no germination. Considering Ragene said there was a bit of green that poked out of the 11 drop soil last week, I think you might see a difference between the seeds you dig out.
We are reaching the end of the experiment. Only the non-fertilizer plant continued to grow. Could you tell us why the excess amount of fertilizer negatively affected the plants?
This is interesting! I'm curious to see if there is anymore growth in the 11 drop pot - but it does look like you're getting some interesting results!
As to whether 11 drops was too much: this is very dependent on how concentrated your fertilizer is. For reference, I use a solid fertilizer that you use by dissolving it into water when I'm growing plants, and I typically dissolve 4g of the fertilizer into 2 gallons of water, which waters between 60 pots (the 4g/2Gal is the recommended concentration listed on the container). So, the amount of fertilizer to use can be really very low! It's hard to say whether 11 drops is definitely too much without a concentration, but it does sound like it could be negatively impacting growth.
The same pattern continued. Only the pot without fertilizer grew. The individual size of the pot is similar to an ice cream cone. We put in 11 drops in one and 33 drops in the other, expecting only the 33 drop to harm the growth. I saw a little bit of green poking out from the 11 drop soil a few days ago, but as the soil shifts, it was buried again.
It's been great to get the updates on the plants! Have you all seen any more growth since Wednesday? You've all mentioned that you think that the fertilizer could be negatively impacting growth, and I can actually think of some reasons why that happened - but I'm curious as to whether any of you have any ideas about what in fertilizer could negatively affect growth.
Also, I'm curious as to what size pot you're using - this could be making the fertilizer amount you added more or less concentrated in the soil, which could affect the seedling growth. This might be useful in terms of figuring out what's going on with these results!
When we checked our plants today, a new plant sprouted in the other well with no fertilizer. As of now, only the plants in the section with no fertilizer are growing.
Only the seeds in the non fertilizer pot have grown. Also, when watering the pot, the fertilized pots seem to absorb water much quicker than the non fertilizer pot. I think we need to examine the fertilizer to make sure there were no errors.
Today in the lab we only observed the change in the non fertilized pot. The other two remained the same.
Is it possible that adding too much fertilizer may affect or actually cause damage to the seeds?
We only see the growth from non fertilizer pot. We did not see any change from the other pots. We added the water the way you shows us before(bottom watering).
When we checked on our plants today there was more growth in one of the wells with no fertilizer, and in that section there are two plants that have sprouted. Other than those two, there has been no growth in any of the other wells in the container.
It could be that the seeds are a little slow to sprout - just make sure all of your pots are well waterered. It could also be that the fertilizer is affecting the sprouting - difficult to tell at this point!
Surprisingly, the one without fertilizer starts to grow, but we did not see any changes from other two pods. This is opposite from what we expected. We thought plant with fertilizer will grow more. What could it be the reason for that? I personally think the fertilizer gets poison for plant somehow.
It's possible the fertilizer has affected the plants, but it's less common for the fertilizer to affect germination of seeds.
Today when we checked our plants only one of the radish seeds had grown and it was in the cup with no fertilizer. No other seeds have sprouted since we last checked them on Friday.
This is a good way to cover your pots to help keep the soil moist.
If the top of the soil is dry after 2 days, I'd really make sure to get the soil well watered without really worrying about over watering it. Usually I find that my soil doesn't dry out as quickly, but so many factors (type of soil, temperature, humidity, pot size) can affect this that it can be hard to predict how frequently you'll need to water. I have actually seen seeds germinate in water, so I wouldn't worry too much about over watering the soil! It's really more of an issue with plant growth long term. Another thing you can try to keep the soil most is to loosely put a covering of cling film over the pots (make sure it is loose - don't seal the pots tightly!). This reduces water evaporation from the soil surface. I usually put a plastic lids over my pots when I'm trying to germinate seeds. Just make sure to remove the covering once you see the plant emerge from the seed.