1. Planting Science: Growth of Bloomsdale Spinach With Added Organism
Power point by: Nicole
Group members: Elizabeth, Erica, Hannah

2. How did our science mentor guide us about Research Questions?
How do added organisms affect germination rate? We have thought about plants growing outside, and all the organisms that come in contact with a plant everyday naturally, such as worms, insects, and bacteria. We were wondering if these organisms affect plant growth. We will be investigating the affect, focusing on spinach growth, in a controlled experiment with different organisms.
How did our science mentor guide us about Research Questions?
What did we observe (or remember) from everyday life/class that made us come up with this question?
We observed that all organisms come in contact with plants every single day naturally, including worms, fungi and bacteria. From this observation we came up with this question because we wanted to conclude which organisms help plants grow and which organisms have a lesser impact on plant growth.
Our group had many ideas and components that we wanted to add to our research question. Our mentor Kelly Kerr, guided us to help make our groups research question by using a very important component, called a controlled variable. She described how having a control with no added organism is a very important factor for comparing the effects of the added organisms to the soil. Lastly, she verified our group that every successful experiment should have a control which we included into our research question. Overall, our mentor was very helpful for guiding our group to analyze a research question.
Predictions:
We are planning to test multiple different organisms, including earth worms, mycorrhiza fungi, and bacteria powder, and comparing them to a plant with no added organisms. There are definitely different possible outcomes for our study, but we predict that the seeds planted with earth worms will have the best growth. We feel this is a good prediction because earth worms are the organisms that seem to be the most commonly found in soil in nature. Worms help to aerate the soil and we feel this will be beneficial to seed growth. We think organism that will attribute to the second best growth will be the bacteria powder, and following that in growth will be the plant with the mycorrhiza fungus. We predict that the plant with the least amount of growth will be the control plant, since there are no added organisms to this plant. We believe the bacteria will beat the fungus, because we think that bacteria is more commonly found in soils compared to fungi.
List of materials that we will need for our design setup
Top Soil
Fungi Bacteria: Myco Blast Mycorrhizae
Fungi : Supre Myco Tea Mycorrhizae & Trichoderma
Red Worms
Bloomsdale Spinach seeds. (3)X 8 in planter
Recyclable planters 8 planters all together.
Distilled Water
Natural sunlight

3. Photo of the design setup
Experimental Design
We have chosen to use 8 different pots of the Bloomingdale Spinach. Each pot has 3 seeds per pot. The seeds were planted 1/2 inch down in the soil. The pots each have 6 Tablespoons of Top Soil. Each plant will be watered once a day, Monday-Friday, with 30mL of water. 2 pots will be our control for the experiment. These pots will include the 3 seeds and the top soil. No additives are necessary. 2 pots will include red earthworms. There needs to be 2 red earthworms per pot (4 total). 2 pots will have a Mycorrhizae Superpack. The Mycorrhizae pack is mixed with a gallon of distilled water. After the Mycorrhizae is dissolved completely in the water, 30 mL of the solution is added to each of the 2 pots, one time. After, the pots should be watered with just 30 mL of distilled water. The last 2 pots will have a the Supre Myco Tea packet-this is the compost tea alternative that has bacteria infused within the mixture. The bacteria pack is also mixed with a gallon of distilled water. After the packet has been completely dissolved add 30 mL of the solution to each of the pots, one time. After, the plants should be watered with 30 mL of distilled water. The plants need to be measured as soon as the first sprout is formed in whatever pot has the first sprout. After the first sprout is visible on the surface of the plant, the plants should be measured during class time, Mondays and Wednesdays, until the end date of the experiment.
How did our science mentor guide us about Experimental Design?
Photo of the design setup
Our mentor Kelly, was very helpful in guiding us in our experimental design process. Our mentor helped us by explaining how important the control is. Additionally, she helped us by giving us direction of doing our experiment on a smaller scale. Also, she guided us by addressing that Bloomsdale spinach is very hardy and you cannot over water. Lastly, she guided us on recording our data as soon as the first seed sprouted and to continue to keep measuring our data. Overall, Kelly was a great mentor in helping guide our group with the set up our our experimental design.

4. Photos across time

5. Photos across time

6. Conclusion: What do the data tell us?
After watering, measuring, and recording data about our plants over a period of time, we found results and came to a conclusion. We averaged the heights of the plants and stalks of each category, with the categories being control group, plants with worms in the soil, plants with bacteria added to the soil, and plants with fungus added to the soil. The averages for each of the categories came to the following: Final Average Height of the Control Group: 3.48 cm Final Average Height of the Worm Group: cm Final Average Height of the Bacteria Group: cm Final Average Height of the Fungus Group: cm In conclusion, the plants that had fungus added to their soil had the best rate of growth. We had not predicted that this will occur, we predicted that worms will lead to the best growth since they are found naturally in the soil. We think that the worms were not as successful as we thought because the worms did die in the beginning because they did not have enough soil. We are thinking the lack of soil made the worms less successful than what we expected. Through research we have found that fungus helps plants absorb nutrients and water. Fungus also helps digest organic matter that is already found in the soil such as nitrogen. We believe that this explains our results, because the plant was able to absorb nutrients and water more efficiently which lead to increased growth. It would be important to repeat the experiment multiple times to make the results always line up. It would also be interesting to test different types of fungus to see if a certain type of fungus is more successful than others.
How can farmers use the data to help a sprout farming business?
This data can help sprouting farming business by the findings of our experiment by incorporating fungi into the famers soil. Famers could use our experiment and the findings we concluded to help them with their sprouting business. From our data the farmer can conclude that using fungi in the famers soil will enhance the growth of their crops to help them have a successful planting season.

7. Qualitative Data Findings

8. Quantitative Data Findings