Plant the Moon with Team Rainbird! EP 10
Welcome back! Here is our final update for our Plant the Moon Challenge project.
Be sure to subscribe to see more updates on future astrobotany projects from us! Also, check out the Plant the Moon Challenge link below to learn how to get into the next round of this awesome science competition, it's open to everyone around the world!
Overall, our results were a little unsurprising, but there were still some very interesting things to note.
First, with the LHS samples. The best performing plant overall was LHS_MF2, in terms of mass, number of tomatoes, and height. The amount of roots the LHS_MF plants had was unreal compared to the others! LHS_M1 was second best, but there was still a pretty significant difference between them. Our soil test after the fact showed that, compared to the control which received no inoculant, almost all soils showed rises in Nitrogen, Phosphorous, and Potassium. The highest was the MF treatment (both bacterial and fungal together).
Of the soil controls, we had some interesting results here as well. Our control group actually outperformed the bacterial and fungal inoculant treatments, but again the plants that received both inoculants continued to grow through the period where other plants died and others died back.
These results demonstrate the positive benefits to growth, but also the impacts to overall plant health that these inoculants have. The unintended stress test in the soil pots clearly showed that a robust ecosystem of microorganisms can be a tremendous boon.
In the video, we showed you how we removed the soil from each plant to prepare it for weighing. If you don’t really care about recapturing the soil, you can be a lot less careful with this by removing the soil under a faucet or hose. Since I’m trying to capture as much of the soil as possible to reuse it, I wanted to do this manually to start.
If you would like to read our final report, feel free to DM us on Twitter or Instagram. Anyways, we will be doing more projects in the future! Please subscribe, and you’ll be the first to know what our next cool astrobotany thing is See you soon!
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Preparing for this experiment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8W0csI-fUn4
Check out our Instagram! https://www.instagram.com/rainbirddelalune/
Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/RainbirdTeam
Plant the Moon Challenge (#plantthemoonchallenge): https://plantthemoon.com/
https://sciences.ucf.edu/class/simulant_lunarhighlands/
Buy us a coffee! (small payments in support of the project): https://www.buymeacoffee.com/rainbird
Background music courtesy of Musopen, a non-profit working to increase access to music education by providing free music recordings, sheet music, apps, and educational materials.
Be sure to subscribe to see more updates on future astrobotany projects from us! Also, check out the Plant the Moon Challenge link below to learn how to get into the next round of this awesome science competition, it's open to everyone around the world!
Overall, our results were a little unsurprising, but there were still some very interesting things to note.
First, with the LHS samples. The best performing plant overall was LHS_MF2, in terms of mass, number of tomatoes, and height. The amount of roots the LHS_MF plants had was unreal compared to the others! LHS_M1 was second best, but there was still a pretty significant difference between them. Our soil test after the fact showed that, compared to the control which received no inoculant, almost all soils showed rises in Nitrogen, Phosphorous, and Potassium. The highest was the MF treatment (both bacterial and fungal together).
Of the soil controls, we had some interesting results here as well. Our control group actually outperformed the bacterial and fungal inoculant treatments, but again the plants that received both inoculants continued to grow through the period where other plants died and others died back.
These results demonstrate the positive benefits to growth, but also the impacts to overall plant health that these inoculants have. The unintended stress test in the soil pots clearly showed that a robust ecosystem of microorganisms can be a tremendous boon.
In the video, we showed you how we removed the soil from each plant to prepare it for weighing. If you don’t really care about recapturing the soil, you can be a lot less careful with this by removing the soil under a faucet or hose. Since I’m trying to capture as much of the soil as possible to reuse it, I wanted to do this manually to start.
If you would like to read our final report, feel free to DM us on Twitter or Instagram. Anyways, we will be doing more projects in the future! Please subscribe, and you’ll be the first to know what our next cool astrobotany thing is See you soon!
-----
Preparing for this experiment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8W0csI-fUn4
Check out our Instagram! https://www.instagram.com/rainbirddelalune/
Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/RainbirdTeam
Plant the Moon Challenge (#plantthemoonchallenge): https://plantthemoon.com/
https://sciences.ucf.edu/class/simulant_lunarhighlands/
Buy us a coffee! (small payments in support of the project): https://www.buymeacoffee.com/rainbird
Background music courtesy of Musopen, a non-profit working to increase access to music education by providing free music recordings, sheet music, apps, and educational materials.