Hi, I'm doing some research for a project and I had some questions. If I know this information -amount and rate of water received -amount and rate of sunlight + ambient light received -relative humidity of the atmosphere -temperature for the lifespan of common household plants, how could I use that information to enhance the growth of the plant, either through mechanical means or through human means? Plant food? Additional sunlight/water? I don't know if the question is specific enough, but anything would help. Thanks
you would have to run comparative tests with modifications of each variable singly including a control. Upon collection and digestion of data you would be able to formulate a theory for the commonalities or differences which would allow you to alter them and change your results. If its science fair type thing, try having all variables controlled to be the same except one. Otherwise you are running multiple and not necessarily overlapping experiments. I remember back in grade 7 one of my classmates did a project on 'geophototropism' and got good marks (as in better than mine! :) ).
Thanks for the reply. Without having to run experiments, are there commonly accepted numbers? For example, and I'm making all this up: the average houseplant should receive 18 hours of light a day at 50% relative humidity for maximum growth. It should be watered with 1 oz of water per hour during the day and half of that at night. If I'm looking into products such as pots and vases, is there a way I can generalize all this info like that, or are plants so different that there is no general ruleset that will apply to a majority of common houseplants?
Apart from variances of different species requirements there are also environmental issues that effect all these aspects. Things like season, position, size of plant, amount of root-ball in pot, size of pot, two different plants in the same position can have a huge variation between their needs also, the condition of the potting mix, the quality of the potting mix, the type of pot, what the pot is made of.....etc...etc.... So no it's not really possible to generalize. If trailing pots you'd have to use the same species and try to control every possible environmental variance there is. I don't know if you watch the show "Mythbusters" but they used pea plants in controlled environments to try and prove or disprove the effects of music/talking to plants to the plants growth. (Peas are relatively fast growers and good for this type of experiment) They built several shade houses with electronic watering systems and each had the same amount of plants 1 shade house was spoken to 1 was yelled at 1 had heavy metal 1 had classic music and 1 was controlled (nothing). If I remember correctly they actually found extra growth had occurred on the ones which had been played music.
