Germination trials

What You Will Need:

• Plastic shot glasses. These can be cleaned after use and will be handy for other experiments.
• Cotton balls.
• Small seeds such as rocket, cabbage, spinach, lettuce, beetroot, pak choi, etc.
• Water.
• A flat piece of plastic or cardboard.
• Green masking tape. This type peels off cleanly.

Setting the scene

Often we need to know if one type of seed behaves differently than another. This can be important in a garden, nursery or on a farm. In this experiment you will test to see if one type of seed germinates faster than another. Links to other related experiments are below.

What to so

Asking a question

Your first experiment will attempt to answer the question:

"Which type of seed germinates faster, seed A or seed B?

The seeds used here are rocket and spinach, but they could be any types of seeds.

Steps to set up a basic fair test

1. Place a teased out cotton ball in a plastic shot glass. Try and make the top of it flat, which makes it easier to position the seeds.
2. Label it 'A'.
3. Fill it up with water, then pour off the excess.
4. Place several seeds of your chosen type evenly spaced on top of the cotton. Tweezers are helpful for this.
5. Repeat using the same setup, but with a different type of seed. The key thing is that both set-ups are the same in all ways, except for the type of seed. This includes using the same number of seeds. Label this second set-up 'B'.
   
   
6. Place a flat piece of plastic or cardboard over both shot glasses to keep the moisture in and leave them beside each other in a warm room. Check them daily and record your observations.
7. Which seed type begins to germinate faster? To confirm this, make a data table for each seed type, showing the number of seeds that have germinated each day.
8. Draw a bar graph to show your results. Day 1, 2, 3, 4, etc. should be on the bottom axis and Number of seeds germinated, on the side axis. Each seed type should be displayed with a different bar colour.

Question

If you wanted a quick crop of vegetables in your garden, or on a farm, which seed type, A or B, might give you a better head start?

Related resources

Five seed race

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Germination race