Plantarium+Experiment

Hello! I am Arielle. This is a page on my new experiment: "Plantarium Garden Lab". Stay tuned for continuous updates!
The objective of the Garden Lab is to enable plants to germinate and grow without water and sunlight. People have used NASA's technology to create a type of gel which helps the plants thrive without the necessary conditions for plant growth. I found it very interesting and decided to try it. If you are interested, see the package: The set consists of 3 Growth Gel greenhouse containers (comes in different fun colours!) for you to plant seeds in 4 different types of seeds in specially sanitised capsules 1 extracting stick (or ice-cream stick) 3 soil peat tablets 3 miniature pots





=__Results__= 27th August (just planted):

These are the seeds which are just planted. There are basil seeds planted in the red gel, cucumber in the yellow and //Rucola Arugula// in the green.

28th August:

I do not think any of the seeds are germinating yet. Maybe we should give them one more day...

29th August: The basil seeds have germinated! Their white roots are showing. Let us wait for the other seeds.

30th August: The basil seeds' roots are growing longer and shoots have appeared. Some of the //Rucola Arugula// seeds are also germinating. The tomato seeds are taking quite a long time to germinate.

18th September: Wow! After a few weeks, the //Rucola Arugula// seedlings and the basil seedlings are growing quite tall, but there might be overcrowding. Shoots have sprouted from the cucumber seeds. I also notice that the level of gel in the containers has fallen. That means that the seedlings have been absorbing nutrients and water from the gel.

20th September: The cucumber seedling has grown even taller than the seedlings in the other containers. Maybe it is because it does not need to compete for water and nutrients. One //Rucola Arugula// seedling has grown so tall that it has fallen over! I think that it does not have roots that are growing deep enough into the gel.

23rd October: I did not check the plants for more that one month because I was preparing for exams. The //Rucola Arugula// and basil seedlings have a type of white, cotton-like fungus growing on them. I do not think they are going to survive. The basil seedlings are turning brown and wilting. Can someone help me identify what type of fungus this is? Only the cucumber seedlings do not have fungus on them and I will keep that setup, but not the others. I hope this can be a learning point to make the containers air-tight so spores cannot land in the containers.

I will continue to keep track of the cucumber seedlings' progress.

Hi Arielle! I don't know what type of fungus it is but I think I've found a website on how to stop it from growing. Read [|White, Cotton-Like Fungus on Seedlings] for more information. :) Or do you think it could be [|Mealybugs]? Hope it helps! ~Sarah P.S. There are tons of websites on the Internet about "White Cotton-Like Fungus", so maybe you can check those out!

Hi Sarah. Thank you for the comments. However, I have already gotten rid of the fungus-infested plants:( But they can't be mealybugs because they look different (I have garden experience too). ~Arielle