Transcript Dirty Beans - Miami University

Dirty Beans
Analysis of Soil Quality and Bean
Growth
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.