Stages of plant growth and reflection

Set up:

I added 5 ml of nutrient A and 5 ml of nutrient B before adding the water. After adding 9 litres of water, I added 40 ml of nutrients A and B.

I added some seeds into the pot with the necessary material.

One week later,

We went down to check on or plants and found that two of them germinated as sprouts can be seen. It was growing healthily and we were rather satisfied.

Two weeks later,

I didnt check on the plant daily and went down a week later after the last "visit" (Cause i kind of forgot about it). I was shocked to see that the plants were dying. I thought that is was due to too little water in the box thus i added more water, hoping that it would revive.

Few days later,

 

Even though the plants grew taller, the stems were not strong enough to keep the plants upright and it was still wilting. Kimberly and Nicole added some nutrients to it to keep it alive but to no avail.

Following weeks,

It is shown on the above picture that the plant is not healthy. It is starting to wilt.

Kimberly and Nicole tried to remove the dying plants and they added more seeds to the pot. Only the bayam germinated and the other plants died.

Harvesting,

The last time we went down to check on the plant, the bayam was very healthy and it was the only successful plant we grew. Even though we met with some problems through the process, with trial and error, we succeeded in growing hydroponic plants. (Partly.)

Pros and Cons:

The pros of growing hudroponic plants are that hydroponic plants do not require soil. It is also known as soil-less farming method. It can easily grow tropical plants is suitable to be widely used in singapore as Singapore is one of the many countries experiencing tropical climate. Sunlight is available all year round. The hydroponic kit can also be reused to grow other tropical plants, this makes it environmentally friendly.

The cons of growing hydroponic plants are that it is hard to achieve the correct solution. Even though hydroponic farming do not require soil, large amount of water is needed to grow the plants.

 Reflection.

The reason why our plants wilted may be because the solution. It was difficult to achieve the correct amount of water to the amount of nutrients. I have also read that water have to be cool in other for the plant to grow healthily. These areas are very crucial in growing hydroponic plants and they were the areas we did not pay much attention to.

Overall, I think that aeroponic farming is better than hydroponics even though aeroponic farming method requires machines. The set up maybe costly but in the long run, it is still cheaper than hydroponic farming due to the amount of water used in hydroponic farming. Aeroponic farming only require 10% of the amount of water used to grow hydroponic plants.

I think Singapore should create more aeroponic farms thus we do not have to rely on other countries for fruits and vegetables. Just by growing aeroponic plants should be sufficient for Singaporeans.

-Jiayu