Growing plants for your science fair project

If you grow plants from seeds:

1. Know what the seed is! Is it a bean, a flower, a grass? Don’t just tell the judge that “my teacher gave the seeds to me.” Try to learn a little about that plant, things like how long it should take the seed to sprout, how fast it grows, what kinds of soil and water and light it needs to grow.
   
   
2. Not all seeds will sprout, so you should put more than one seed in each pot. Let them all grow and measure them all. It’s necessary to have measurements from two pots and seeds for each condition you are testing. With seed-growing experiments, you really need at least two and hopefully more of each thing you’re trying, because some will not produce any results.
   
3. What are you going to measure?
   

How long until it sprouts?
How tall it will grow in a certain number of days?
How many leaves it produces?
How large the leaves are?

All of those are useful measurements of plant growth. You have to choose which you will use and then find a way to measure the plant growth.
For all plant experiments, once you decide what single thing you are comparing (such as growing in light or dark, with our without more water, different kinds of soil, with or without added plant food, in a quiet or noisy place, in heat or cold), then you have to make certain everything except the one thing you’re comparing is exactly the same. That way you can be sure that the changes you measure were caused by that single difference.

Make sure you let the experiment run long enough to get results. You can’t do a plant experiment at the last minute. It may take weeks for the seeds to sprout and grow. If you are doing an experiment where you are trying to do things to improve plants’ growth, remember that seeds contain enough plant “food” for the seedling to grow for a while with no outside food needed. So give them enough time to use up that “seed food” and start to use food from the soil or any liquid they may be growing in (if you are trying an experiment using aquaculture--growing in water with no soil).