The Effect of Worm Casting on Plant Growth

Overview

Objectives/Goals The objective is to determine how different percentages of the Coachella worm casting can affect the growth of radish plants in biomass. Methods/Materials Planted ten containers of six different percentages of worm casting mixed with sterilized peat moss and placed three radish seeds each. The percentages were 0%, 20%, 40%, 60%, 80%, and 100% of worm casting. The containers were color coded. Plants were placed in a green house to grow for the next 31 days. After four days, I thinned the plants out and left only the biggest plant to grow in each container. Plants were watered on a daily basis with the same amount of water. After 31 days the plants were uprooted, soil removed, and weighed. Then the radishes were removed and reweighed them separately. Results The results show that the plants that grew in the 80% worm casting had the most biomass and the 0% had the least. The order of smallest to greatest biomass is as follows: 0%, 100%, 40%, 20%, 60%, and 80%. In weighing just the radishes the 60% weighed the most. Conclusions/Discussion In conclusion my hypothesis was not fully supported by the data. I expected the 20% worm casting to produce the most biomass. With the 60% and 80% worm casting the plants had more biomass than the 20%, but the radishes were mutated, or oddly shaped. With the 20% worm casting, radishes were the most uniform in shape. This shows that too many nutrients can be harmful to plants and can affect the food it produces.

Competition history

• CSEF 2010 Plant Biology · Entry J2023

Resources

• CSEF project summary ↗

Related projects

Closest projects by meaning, across every fair and year in the corpus.

Browse more like this

• All Plant Sciences projects
• CSEF Plant Sciences projects
• Every CSEF 2010 project