Seed Germination By The Real Slim Shade Tree

Seed Germination By: The Real Slim Shade Tree Mitch, Taylor, Autumn, Hannah, and Lexi

Experiment Topic Question: What effect does Miracle Gro (24 8 16) have on bean seed germination Hypothesis: If Miracle Gro is applied to the bean seeds then it will affect the germination rate.

Materials • • Miracle Gro (24 8 16) 9 Petri Dishes Distilled water 45 Beans seeds Masking tape Paper towels 3 250 m. L bottles 3 Pipets

Miracle Gro The numbers on the back of the box (24 8 16) stand for: 24% Nitrogen 8% Phosphorus 16% Potassium

Procedure • • • • Gather Materials Cut 5 paper towels to the size of each petri dish Fill 3 250 m. L bottles with distilled water Add 1 tsp. of Miracle Gro in one bottle Add 1/8 tsp. of Miracle Gro to another bottle Leave the last bottle as just distilled water Label the petri dishes with “control”, “outdoor”, and “indoor” and trial number Slightly dampen the towel with the proper solution for each petri dish to stimulate damp dirt. Place 5 bean seeds into each petri dish. Cover dish Record data Apply the proper solution to each petri dish as needed Repeat steps 11 -12 until experiment is complete Record data daily.

Data Table Outdoor Indoor Water Set Up Day 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 1 a 0 0 0 5 5 1 b 0 0 1 3 4 5 5 1 c 0 0 2 5 5 2 a 0 0 4 5 5 2 b 0 0 3 4 4 4 5 2 c 0 0 1 5 5 3 a 0 0 0 2 2 4 5 3 b 0 0 0 4 4 5 5 3 c 0 0 0 3 4 5 5

Qualitative Data On day 2, there was some cracking in the outdoor containers. On day 3, they were all cracked and wrinkled. In the indoor containers, most of them started to germinate. On day 6, we noticed mold in some of all the containers.

Graph Amount of Seeds germinated Number of seeds that germinated 6 5 4 Water 3 Indoor Outdoor 2 1 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 Number of days 7 8

Results Our results were: • Control Group: biggest/longest epicotyls of all groups, germinated almost as fast as Indoor Group. • Indoor Group: Germinated fastest • Outdoor group: Took longest to germinate and molded over first, before all of the beans had germinated. • In conclusion, the "Indoor" solution of Miracle Gro has little to no effect on indoor plants, while the "outdoor" solution had negative effects on the indoor plants. • If we were to do this experiment again, it might be a good idea to have an indoor trial group as we did here, with "Indoor", "Control", and "Outdoor" trials attempted indoors, along with outdoor trials. Perhaps that would give better results with the "Outdoor" solution group.

Conclusion Our original hypothesis was: (If Miracle Grow is applied to bean seeds then it will affect the germination rate. ) Our data showed that the seeds in the "indoor" solution of Miracle Grow germinated the fastest starting on day three with eight seeds germinating. The water solution then proved to be the second fastest with three total seeds germinated on day three. The "outdoor" solution was the slowest as seeds did not germinate until day four, though it did have the most germination on the first do with nine seeds. Eventually all of our bean seeds did germinate in each dish by day seven of the experiment. The results that supported our hypothesis were that the bean seeds in the "indoor" solution of Miracle Grow germinated the fastest. The results that did not support our hypothesis was that the bean seeds in our control germinated faster than the bean seeds in our "outdoor" solution.

Variable Things we could have done differently: We could have tried having the experiment held outside. We also could have kept track of the amount of water we put in each day to take care of the mold. Another thing we could have done is have more trials and had a larger scale.

Pictures Indoor Solution