*FAST PLANTS*
by Peter and Dory
On September 17, 2007, we started our Fast Plant project in ecology class. This project was all about growing mustard plants -- Brassica Rapa-- and seeing how many seeds we could grow.
For the project, we worked in groups of two or three. First, each group put our seeds in soil. We planted them in quads, which are actually small squares of styrofoam that are separated into four equal parts. We called these parts cells. We planted three seeds in each cell and also put some fertilizer in there, too. We put wicks in the bottom of the quads and put them onto big containers filled with water. The plants actually water themselves, by sucking water up from the containers using the wicks.
We kept our plants in a light box. They needed light twenty-four hours a day, so we never turned the light off! Every few days, we took the plants out of the box to check their progress. On the third day, the plants sprouted. They looked like little clovers. On the eighth day, we thinned the plants. We took out plants from each part of the quad so only one plant was in each cell. This gave the plants room to grow.
Each time we took the plants out of the light box, we had to measure their heights and draw what they looked like. We kept all this information in a fast plant journal. We named the plants so that when we recorded our our observations and measurements we could refer to the plants as "Fred" and not just "that fast plant on the right." (At the end we made graphs that showed how much and how fast each plant grew). Soon, the plants developed flower buds and then real flowers! (They were yellow). Some plants also grew very tall, anywhere from 8 to 30 centimeters!
Later, we also pollinated our plants and then pruned them. Pollinating -- moving the pollen from one plant to another using a bent pipe cleaner -- helped the plants produce seed pods. Pruning -- taking off the flowers after seed pods started to grow -- helped them put all of their energy into growing seeds (and not just growing tall). Finally, after forty days, the plants stopped growing. We dried them for a week and then harvested the seeds. Most plants grew 4 or 5 seeds, but one plant grew more than 30!
For a final project, we made movies about the life of our fast plants. We used pictures that Mr. Adams took of the plants and downloaded them into iMovie (a program on the computer). Then we added our voices or sound effects to tell the story of how our plants grew and changed. This was the most fun activity and our movies turned out great! Most of us had never done anything like this before, so it was an exciting experience.
Check out our fast plant movies here: