Dirty Beans Analysis of Soil Quality and Bean Growth Bryan Glosik, Nick Delphia

Experiment Original plan Four soil types: Clay, Sand, Topsoil, Metro 24 plants per soil type, half fertilized, half unfertilized Hypothesis: the plants in the topsoil would fair better than the other soils. We would offer the same amount of water to all the plants.

Predictions We thought the plants would have a hard time actually growing in the clay The sand would support the beans for a while, but that in the end the beans from the sand would not be as healthy as the beans from the other soils Fertilized soils would yield more successful plants than unfertilized soils.

How did we measure “success” or “health” in plants. Agriculturally speaking, success is determined by overall yield of the plant. We recorded what we felt were good indicators of a healthy and productive bean plant. Height, Leaf-count, stem-count, bud-count, final dry biomass (roots not included).

A Second Experiment Our original setup did not yield as many plants as we expected. The clay didn’t even yield one plant. We started a new experiment after about three weeks or so. Experiment B was same as A but no fertilizer, greenhouse watered for us, soils were metro, organic topsoil, and composted cow manure

Experiment B Hypothesis We thought the composted cow manure would yield more successful bean plants due to natural fertilizer qualities.

Results for Experiment A Nothing grew in the clay

Fertilized plants had more leaves, sand yielded plants with fewer buds

Soil had no significant effect on biomass

Fertilization had no significant effect on bud-count or bio-mass.

Trends in Experiment A

And some more…

Results for Experiment B Nothing grew in the composted cow manure

Metro-Mix plants yielded significantly more buds and more leaves than the organic topsoil

No significant differences in height or bio-mass

Trends for Experiment B

Conclusions Don’t grow beans in clay or manure When given the choice, a farmer should opt for topsoil over sand Fertilizer increases the number of leaves, but not necessarily the number of beans on the plant Potting soil yield the more beans than organic topsoil, but realistically, farmers can’t actually have a field full of metro-mix.