Seed to Sprout

November 16th, 2012

We are hoping to start up the vegetable garden soon, and we want it to be able to produce food for our school and community. We think the best way to do this is by testing what vegetables grow best in different conditions. We are sprouting lettuce seeds in different conditions so that when we go out and grow vegetables in our garden, we will be ready to produce amazing lettuce (we plan on doing this with every plant before its planted).  The major variable we are testing is if lettuce sprouts better in a moist paper towel or in soil. Then we have three sub experiments. The first thing we are testing is if they sprout better in cool or warm places. The second one being do they sprout better in tap,fish,pond or gel beads. The third and finale one is that we are testing what type of soil they sprout faster in: normal soil, soil with with compost, or soil with chemical fertilizer.

Are first attempt with the paper towels on the water was not successful. we believe that at one point when they were in the middle right after they split, they got to dry then we kept adding water to them which eventually caused them to grow mold.

Major question does lettuce sprout faster in water or soil?
Hypothesis (Shauna, Hannah and Sophia)- If we sprout lettuce in water and soil, the plants in water will sprout faster

Does lettuce sprout faster with fertilizer?

Hypothesis:  Lettuce will sprout fastest when naturally fertilized (i.e. through compost) because it will have a lot of nutrients to grow big and healthy. (Kayla and Annica) Our power-point is attached to this page.

 

What type of water content does lettuce seeds sprout fastest in? (Hannah and Shauna)
– Hypotheses lettuce will sprout fastest in pond water

Day 2

9am
-paper towel is still wet
-no change in seeds
10:18 add beads

Day 5
-pond water 2 spilt
-fish water 75% split
-tap water 3 split
-1 cap full 10:15
-the beads kept paper wet
-fish water takes longer to dry
-2 cap full 2:22
-new fish water
-new pond water lower ph morn rain
-new tap water has a lower PH
-rain water PH 6.0

Day 6
-2 caps full pond,tap and fish 1:00
-beads one cap full 1:00
-pond 5 slipt
-almost all split
-tap 4 split

Day 7
-2 caps full in pond fish and tap 10:26
-1 cap full beads 10:26
-no change in splintering
-water all 2:03 2 cap fulls
day 8
-no change

Day 11

-no change
-water all 10:25 1 cap full

Day 12
-we found mold in some of the seeds

Conclusion:

The fish water germinated faster followed by tap,  and pond followed later. We believe that  in the middle of the process they dried out. Then when we watered them again they began to grow mold. We think this severely decreased the speed of genation of the seeds. We know now that if you are going to sprout seeds in a paper towel on a plate then you need to tend all the time so that they do not dry out. We know now that the best way to sprout seeds  on paper towels, in plastic bags, because it keeps them moist.

Here is a short video showing our first attempt From seed to sprout

 

Dose temperature affect the speed of sprouting? (Sophia)
hypothesis-if we sprout lettuce in a cold temperature and in a warm temperature, then the lettuce in a warm temperature will sprout the fastest.

day one- planted the seeds

day 2,3,4-nothing

day 5- one seed split from water plate 2

day 6,7,8
– no changes in seeds in water

-One sprout from soil plant 2
-putting beads on lettuce in paper towle to keep moist overnight

Day 12- Some mold is growing on seeds in water

Conclusion:

Lettuce in soil with heat sprouted the fastest. The lettuce in water and paper towel both heat and no heat didn’t sprout, and neither did the lettuce in soil with no heat. This is what I expected, because heat is one of the main factors of plant growth. The reason that the lettuce seeds in water and paper towel didn’t sprout, is that they kept drying out. We would water them each day, but when we would get to school in the mornings, the paper towel would be dry. This caused some of the seeds to grow mold.

~HannahSophia, and Shaun

This is all the data that we have collected from doing our experiment. Right here, is a video showing our Procedure for seed to sprout

Second attempt:

Hannah and Shauna conclusion:In conclusion we have found that the problem  we thought was  causing  the mold and that made the plants  stop  growing was right. when we redid our excrement we found that when we put the paper towel in plastic bags they stayed damp and  never got close to drying out like the paper towels on the plates did. we found that the seeds in the fish water grow the fastest we think this is because the rich nutrients that are in fish water. in our hypothesis we believed that the pond water would have the best water content of growing seeds. know we believe that the pond water we got has too much run off making it pollution overwhelming the nutrients that should have been there.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

4 Comments

on “Seed to Sprout
4 Comments on “Seed to Sprout
  1. Thanks so much for sharing your work online! I’m a Teacher at a school in Prince George, BC and will be using your work here as a resource for our students. We look forward to hearing more about how it goes for you!

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