🌷 Growing Flowers with a Hydroponic System 🌸
How does growth in Hydroponic System compare to growth in soil? What are the pros and cons for the Hydroponic System? Goal: Grow lots of flowers for the Palentines Dance!
Updates
November 13
Esmé: We are working on creating a self watering system for our non hydroponic plants. We have sprouts of all our plants now!
November 21
Amy: We have started working on how the plants wouldn’t be crashing into the lights as it grows.
December 18
Esmé: This month we have been replanting our flowers since they all died over Thanksgiving break. The planting process is going much faster since we have done it all before which is good. It is really frustrating that all our work from the last two months died over break, it is sad that we have to re-do everything that we had already done. I think using what we learned throughout the last attempt to lead to better success. We can try to not make the same mistakes again. For the end project, we still expect flowers hopefully, but they may not be ready for the Palentines dance as we had hoped.
December 19
Amy: Our plant all died during the thanksgiving break so we have to plant them again. We are making a self watering system that has been successful. Plants all dying is a challenge for me. We plan by planting the plants and leaving the system in an another room that is less hot. We expect the flowers to bloom hopefully before the palentines dance.
January 23
Esmé & Amy & Shitong: This month we have been focusing on utilizing the time-lapse camera portion of our project, and comparing hydroponic growth to soil growth. Our new growing systems have been going well, and we were able to upload one video to google drive which was exciting. The videos take up a lot of space, they are large files, and we worry that we may not get flowers without changing our lighting system. We uploaded the videos to google drive, since Emma Willards Google drive can handle larger videos. We may research how to adjust the lighting period to encourage the flowers to bloom. Originally we hoped that our end product would be flowers. However, at this point I am mostly hoping for lots of good time-lapse footage that we can use to make comparisons and observe growth.
February 27
Esmé & Amy: We are researching the photo period of cosmos flowers, researching why our soil flowers bloomed, and editing the time lapse videos. Our hydroponics have not been flowering, and they have been growing into the lights causing them to burn. We have researched the photo period to try to encourage our flowers to bloom, and we have tied back our plants to avoid burning. We hope that the hydroponic plants will also bloom, and we also hope to have some time lapse footage of the plants growth.
April 17
Shitong: We are working on taking down the system and filming our video on how to set up the hydroponic system and some tips and tricks. We measured the plants in the hydroponic system and soil system and it’s going well because we have data to compare the two systems. Taking down the system and resembling it was challenging for us. I think we can just help each other take down the system and resemble it by taking pictures along the way so that we can remember the steps. Our final product will be a Timelapse video of the hydroponic plants, a video on tips and tricks and setting up the system for people that use it next time, data and measurements of plant height and plant circumference. One important thing we learned is that hydroponic plants grew faster and had fuller branches. However, the soil plants flowered.
Scientific Terms
Hydroponic System
A hydroponic system is a method of growing plants without soil, using a nutrient-rich water solution to deliver essential minerals directly to the plants’ roots. These systems often use materials like perlite, coconut coir, or clay pellets to support the plants physically. Hydroponic setups can vary from simple home units to complex commercial farms, offering faster growth rates, higher yields, and more efficient use of water and space compared to traditional soil farming.
About Us
Esmé
I lived in Santa Fe, New Mexico for 5 months in middle school.
Amy
N/A
Shitong
N/A
ewsteam.org 