Help! Science Project with my Son

Since I have some experience with hydro, when my son (10 yrs old) came up with a need for a science project, I suggested a comparison of traditional soil growing vs hydro, kind od a "Feed the World" project. Now, I know a bit about light scheduling & nutes foy MJ, but I don't know much about heirloom green beans. We are going to germinate them together using root riot cubes and 24/7 T8, but once they sprout, half go outside to fend for themselves, and half go to hydro. Question: what do I need to do for green beans re nutes & light in hydro? All help welcome!!!

Almost everything in the pea family has nitrogen fixating nodules on their roots. So poorer soils w/o much nutrient will sustain pea family things. But almost everything grows better if you give it an all around good all purpose fertilizer.
As far as light, I think a half days sun should be enough. Just gotta figure how that equates to indoors.

dannyboy602 said:

Almost everything in the pea family has nitrogen fixating nodules on their roots. So poorer soils w/o much nutrient will sustain pea family things. But almost everything grows better if you give it an all around good all purpose fertilizer.
As far as light, I think a half days sun should be enough. Just gotta figure how that equates to indoors.

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Thanks, DB. I guess I'll just use some MG on both the garden and hydro plants, and see what happens. Wow, an actual science project!

I have T5 6500's and 2700's for light. What do you think? Mix 'em up and light 'em up 12/12?

Oh, and I need to find out about pollination, I know that some plants won't self-pollinate. Hmmmmm.

OK, the pollination question is resolved. All beans self-pollinate, so I don't need to worry about doing it manually, or inviting some bees into the the garden for the plant equivalent of an orgy! Still not sure about optimum light though. Would it make sense to use 6500K during veg, and switch to 2700 once pods appear? Will manipulating light cycles force fruiting, as with MJ? The idea here is to demonstrate that hydro grown beans will produce a bigger and better yield, so any and all techniques are fair game.

Flash4211 said:

Thanks, DB. I guess I'll just use some MG on both the garden and hydro plants, and see what happens. Wow, an actual science project!

I have T5 6500's and 2700's for light. What do you think? Mix 'em up and light 'em up 12/12?

Oh, and I need to find out about pollination, I know that some plants won't self-pollinate. Hmmmmm.

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IDK that Miracle Grow will work in your hydro setup. It's ok for soil but idk what rate to use it in a hydro setup. You need that information before you feed the plant in hydro. I will see if I can get some pro hydro help.

As far as light...
mine are good with full sun. Pole beans are sort of like indeterminate tomatoes for me. Grasshoppers and cold [frost] stop them. They may have upper/lower limit temps for "fruit set".

Using beans in hydro is an interest project. Seems like most the stuff normally grown this way is heavy feeding. Wonder how root veggies do in hydro?

We'll find out soon. I pm'd a hydro expert. Let's see what hellraizers opinion is.

I wouldnt use MG in hydro! If your looking for a super simple nute line that way cheap, look into GH Maxi grow

MG is a salt based fertilizer and due to this, salt buildup would quickly become an issue in hydro. Would not recomend it!!

Use both spectrum with the lights. I recently did I similar project with beans but with 6500k vs 2700k and the results were almost identical - mixed always seems to better than just one though.

can you use the "soil inoculate for legumes" in hydro? or is it needed?

Hey, thanks, guys, some golden information here. I'll definitely skip the Miracle Grow and go with hydro nute.

I read up on innoculants; you treat the seeds before planting, and the bacteria will take up housekeeping. It looks to me like they'll be fine in hydro.

I've got a 4-foot, 4-tube T5 fixture that I'll populate with 2 2700's and 2 6500's. The only HID I have is a couple of 1000W HPS/MH - but I think that would be overkill. And anyway, I'd rather spend the electric bill costs making bud.

These plants will be an indoor hydro grow, but no tent, just a corner of the garage. I was planning on 24/7 light and a top feed recycling system. The seeds are sprouting in root riot cubes, and I plan to move those into 4" Grodan cubes set into a tray of Hydroton when they get strong enough.

Does this look like a reasonable approach? Thanks!

Seems like a reasonable approach to me except for the 24/7 light. Why not less hours of light? It's a constant so it will have little impact on your experiment but will cut down on the electric bill. Of course I guess if you're in a hurry to perform the experiment and want more visual results more light might speeds along differences in growth rate - 24hrs just seems excessive to me.

And think about how you are going to log the data. Height? Mass? Nodes? Node spacing? You might have a taller plants but it could have less nodes which would suggest stretch versus actual faster quality growth... I'd recommend taking all the data down as it looks pretty impressive in class when you have charts comparing wet weight, dry weight, height, nodes, node spacing...

Well then...
Let the experiment begin!

Gastanker said:

Seems like a reasonable approach to me except for the 24/7 light. Why not less hours of light? It's a constant so it will have little impact on your experiment but will cut down on the electric bill. Of course I guess if you're in a hurry to perform the experiment and want more visual results more light might speeds along differences in growth rate - 24hrs just seems excessive to me.

And think about how you are going to log the data. Height? Mass? Nodes? Node spacing? You might have a taller plants but it could have less nodes which would suggest stretch versus actual faster quality growth... I'd recommend taking all the data down as it looks pretty impressive in class when you have charts comparing wet weight, dry weight, height, nodes, node spacing...

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Well, the idea is to show that hydro beans produce more than garden-grown, and one big advantage of hydro is the ability to increase light to increase yield. Plus, I'm using T5's, very cheap to run. Am I missing something, ie, the plants need some dark hours?

Good point on what points of comparison to use. I was planning a basic photojournal, including a yardstick. I will include any other reasonable metrics, such as those you suggest. Of course, the key metric is yield: Hydro-grown beans produce 5 pounds of fresh green beans, garden-grown produce three.

Thanks much for the suggestions, they shall be immortalized at the Science Fair!

ok...beans don't like nutes, or HID lights for long periods of time...the color doesn't matter since they are the not signaled to fruit by light changes... most plants "autoflower"...they will grow a bit but you need some sort of screen, or stakes or an ornamental little plant thingy because beans climb...but they also grow super super super fast..so they are a lot of fun.

and it isn't a proper science project with one plant inside in hydro and one outside in soil...you would have to have them both under the same conditions with different mediums...because which ever ones grows better there are other factors at play..like if outdoor grows better well there is the sun out there...but if hydro grows better, well there aren't any bugs...so...you need soil and hydro side by side for it to be an experiment..if not then you are just growing some beans outside in dirt, and inside in hydro...you need a control...any experiment has to have one...and both plants would have to get the same nutes...when you go changing things it gets all iffy...like hydro might get a higher concentration of nutes or something and now the whole experiment is blown...everything has to be exactly the same for both plants...

and really if you could do bean plants outside in hydro that would be the best...because i have grown beans inside and out...and they do not like it inside...

Plants don't need dark time but they do often appreciate it. I was just thinking that aside from the electricity charges 24 hrs is unnatural. You could be adding a bit of a second variable due to promoting an unnatural light schedule. Both soil and hydro plants should be receiving the same number of hours of light anyways so the increased light shouldn't be part of what increases the hydro yield - if it is that's a second variable which will completely negate the experiment when it comes to strictly hydro vs soil.

Like misnu said, all other variables must be the same. They both need to be grown indoors (or both outdoors), both with the same nutes, under the same light, same temps, same humidity, same pests...

If you grow one outdoors in the ground and one indoors in hydro there's really no comparisons being made - was it the heat, the light, the nutes, the avialbale O2/Co2...? It's like saying, well I threw this one in dog shit in the dark closet and I gave this one to my horticulture teacher and the one I gave to my horticulture teacher did better. So to conclude give all seeds to your horticulture teacher. Wait...thats not science.

To make all things equal, you could plant some outdoors- in the dirt and do some hydro w/artificial light. Put a photocell outside to turn lights on/off.