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Research question: How will adding fertilizer affect the rate of growth in bean plants grown in different types of soil?Introduction:Harvesting food is key to the survival of mankind. Over the years there has been many discoveries about how plants grow and what nutrients they need. Walking into any gardening store today may seem overwhelming. There are thousands of different types of nutrients and fertilizers you can buy to grow plants. I wondered how effective these fertilizers could actually be. Almost every package claims to help aid the growth of plants, but in this IA I wanted to test whether these basic fertilizers are actually effective at increasing plant growth. I have chosen two common brands found at the local depot: Jobes Organics All Purpose Granulate Fertilizer and Miracle Gro Organic Choice Blood Meal. To effectively test the fertilizers ability to aid the plant I will test them in different types of soil. I will use sand, natural soil from my backyard, and Sta-Green All Purpose Potting Mix. This will be more effective in showing the ability of the fertilizer to aid in growth because the soils all have varying amounts of nutrients to start with. This will eliminate the possibility of any outside nutrients affecting the plants more than the fertilizers. I will be measuring the rate of growth each plant in comparison to the controls to see whether or not there is a difference in the addition of the fertilizers. This is important because growing plants is a healthier alternative to buying plants, and with the aid of fertilizers plants might be able to grow larger and healthier than without fertilizers. Hypothesis: There will be an increase in bean plant growth when any fertilizer is added.Null: There will be no increase in growth when fertilizer is added.Independent: Fertilizer and Soil TypeDependent: Growth of Bean Plant (cm)Control: Plants grown in normal soil with no fertilizer added Materials:FertilizerJobes Organics All Purpose Granulate FertilizerMiracle Gro Organic Choice Blood Meal SoilLocal Soil (i.e. from backyard)Quikrete Tube Sand Sta-Green All Purpose Potting Mix45 Pots45 Bean SeedsWaterLamp with LED lightbulbMethod:Germinate seedsPlace damp paper towel on the bottom of a bowlFill the bottom of the bowl with one layer of bean seedsPlace another damp paper towel over the layer of seedsPlace bowl in a dark place with no sunlight (i.e. closet)Leave bowl in dark place for 2-3 days until sprouting occurs. Keep paper towel damp.Plant seed sprouts in 5 inches of soilKeep each seed covered with soil to allow the roots to sproutPlace seeds in a warm environment to ensure growth, use a lamp over the seeds to keep a constant temperatureAdd each type of fertilizer to the experimental soils the same time the seeds are planted.Water the plants every other day with one tablespoon of water, starting with the day the seeds are planted. Keep watering time constant (i.e. 8 PM every other day).This can be adjusted to every day if the soil is noticeably dry before the next scheduled wateringMeasure the growing plants every day at the same time. (Easiest is same time as watering, 8PM)Results:Table 1. This table shows the raw data collections from every day plant growth of the Blood trials.Table 2. This table shows the daily readings from all of the Jobes trials.Table 3. This table shows the raw readings from the Control trials. -82423010477500Table 4. This table shows the calculations made of both total averages of the dailiy readings, and the Total averages for all the trials.Photo 1. Photo 1 shows the unhealthy state of the normal soil, and sand trials with Miracle Gro Organic Choice Blood Meal.Photo 2. Photo 2 shows the healthy state of the potting soil with Miracle Gro Organic Choice Blood Meal trials.Conclusion:The data does not support the hypothesis; I fail to reject the null hypothesis. The control trials, on average, grew better for all the soil types than the trials where fertilizer was added. Through averaging the total growth, throughout the two-week period for each trial, and averaging the total growth of all the trials together, this conclusion was reached. Tables one, two, and three all show the raw data of the day-by-day growth of the plants. Some plants did germinate, but once transferred to the soil would not grow; even though they received the same amount of light and water as the other plants. This is shown in all the trials in which the average is 0, such as in trial 2 of soil with Jobes Organics All Purpose Granulate Fertilizer. On average, the trials in which sand was used yielded smaller amounts of growth than both the normal soil and the potting soil. All three trials with sand yielded less than 10cm of growth throughout the two-week period, whereas both the soil and potting soil have total averages over 20cm. This is not surprising, as sand is known to have little to no nutrients for the plants to grow. Although in comparison to both other soil types the sand did the worst, the plants did not immediately die in all cases. Many of the plants grown in sand grew, and some even grew taller than those found in the other soil types. As expected, in the control trials Sta-Green All Purpose Potting Mix had the highest average growth at 26.9cm. This fits the expected results because the potting soil is specifically made with extra nutrients to ensure the plants survival. This shows that the nutrients within the potting soil were effective. Within the blood trial there it appears that the normal soil has a higher average growth than the potting soil, which would go against the expected results. This might be the case because while the plants continued to grow some appeared healthier than others. Photos one and two demonstrate this issue. In Photo one, there is one of the normal soil trial plants that although large height wise, is very small and doesn’t appear to be able to survive or even stand on its own. Photo two shows one of the Potting soil trials with blood. Although the potting soil is clearly smaller it appears healthier with a much more full and green stem than Photo 1. This shows that although the data favors the Soil within the total average of blood trials; the actual vitality of the plant was not accounted for, only the plants ability to grow.Many of the Jobes Organics All Purpose Granulate Fertilizer and Miracle Gro Organic Choice Blood Meal trials are seen to have very close results. For instance in trials one and two of the potting soil trials there were average growths of 14.3 and 6.2. This is very close to the average growth within the soils trials three, 19.2, and four, 8.97. There is only a 2-3cm difference between both trials. This shows that although ultimately on growth is higher than another, both the soil and potting soil have the ability to grow large vital plants, that are almost the same height. Evaluation:Some limitations of this experiment were made within the design of the experiment. The main limitation of this experiment was it only takes into account the average growth of the plants not the health of the plant; This lead to a skew in some data, such as the total average height in the trials of normal soil with Miracle Gro Organic Choice Blood Meal. This average growth was higher than the potting soil with Miracle Gro Organic Choice Blood Meal trials, which was unusual since the Soil 2 control trials had the overall highest growth of all the soil trials. The physical condition of the plants was not taken into account in the data readings. This caused an error because although the normal soil yielded higher growth rates, the physical health of the actual plants was poor, as shown in Photo X. If this experiment were to be ran again there should be an observation factor included into the data readings that accounts for the overall health of the plant as well as the he growth rate. Another limitation of this experiment is that the potting soil used already contained fertilizer. There were no other potting soil brands available at the stores visited, and as such the experiment was confined to using the Sta-Green All Purpose Potting Mix. This could have skewed the data because the effects of adding two fertilizers onto one soil were not taken into account. This might have been the reason trials 1 and 2 of potting soil and Miracle Gro Organic Choice Blood Meal grew shorter than the normal soil. Although this data may be skewed the results form all the different soil types combined show a general decrease in the height growth rate with the addition of the fertilizer. To avoid the possibility of error due to this, a potting soil without fertilizer should be used if this experiment were completed again. The fertilizers that were used in this experiment were only 2 types of general fertilizers. If this experiment were to be repeated more fertilizers should be tested. Different types of fertilizers would be interesting to see if they actually help the plant grow. The two fertilizers used, Jobes Organics All Purpose Granulate Fertilizer and Miracle Gro Organic Choice Blood Meal, are two common fertilizers found in store during the off-season. Since this experiment was done in the winter fewer fertilizers are available. If this experiment were ran again doing it in the spring might help to get more types of fertilizers available to use. Human error caused the main problems within this experiment. The soil and fertilizer selection, and the design of the experiment could be changed in future experiment to allow for a fuller test of fertilizers effects on plants. Fertilizer is key when growing plants. Many people use it t aid in their plant growth, and to have more knowledge about the types of fertilizers that are most effective would allow people the chance to improve the health of the plants they are growing. ................
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