Do Coffee Grounds affect the growth of plants?

Trying to Accomplish: Do coffee grounds affect the growth of plants compared to regular store bought plant food?

Hypothesis: The coffee grounds will allow the plant to grow faster than the plant food.

Procedure: 1. Go to store and buy three of the same plants

2. Buy plant fertilizer and collect coffee grounds when needed.

3. Buy three of the same containers to put plants in to collect data

4. Put plants into containers and measure each plant at beginning

5. Measure each plant at the end of the week and compare them all

6. Finish collecting during week 4 and make averages to put on board.

Conclusion:

My observations during my project were clear enough to say that my hypothesis was correct. I said that the coffee grounds would have a better effect on plant growth when mixed with the soil compared to store bought plant food. Although the data that came out of the four weeks didn’t have much of a difference when compared to one another, the same plant was consistently larger than the other two. The plant with the coffee ground mix had been the tallest plant since week number two. If I would have started to collect data before I had, I would have had more measurements to work with. One flaw to my project was how I didn’t keep track of how much water the plants needed. Some days I would forget to check them and they would all be dry, so this might have affected the growth of the plants. Over all my project was a success in answering my starting question.

Abstract:

This year for science fair I wanted to investigate if coffee grounds mixed with regular soil work better than store bought fertilizer to grow plants. I predicted that the plant with the coffee grounds and soil mix will grow faster than the store bought fertilizer. I choose this topic because almost every morning my parents, teachers and other guardians have coffee. The idea of using the coffee in plants was because plants can be used to grow lots and lots of food each year so if there was some way to make them grow faster, farmers could make more profit. My research also shows that there are almost 400 million coffee cups made per day. From this information, I decided to make my project about something that people use all over the world.

To start my project I needed to research a little about my project so I went on the internet and found as much information on it as I could. Next, I made a list of materials to buy from the store or collect from what I already had. My materials included 3 plastic containers, a ruler, plastic plates, a long metal rod, and about four cups of coffee grounds. My plants were placed into the same plastic containers with holes in the bottom so whenever I watered them it would drain. An equal size of soil was placed into each container. One container had nothing added into it, the second had store bought plant food mixed in, and then the third one included a cup of coffee grounds. I labeled each and measured their beginning sizes then placed each one on a platform in my house that the sunlight is able to reach each day. Lastly, to make sure that I measured each plant the same way I put a metal rode next to each of the tallest plant stalks and marked the tallest leaf on each one. Every five to six days I checked the plants for water and I measured them to record in my data log.

Every week my project was measured to check any changes in height. When first set up all three of my plants were roughly around five inches tall. The second week, neither of the plants grew to make a difference but by the next week, two out of the three grew to five and a half inches tall and the last one grew to about six inches tall. The larger one from that point on was always the plant with the coffee grounds mixed in with the regular soil. There wasn’t any dramatic changes like I predicted but there was enough of a difference to collect data. On January 17th, two plants were around six inches tall and the third one was about six and a half inches tall. The same thing happened on January 24th, my last day week of collecting data. One plant was almost 7 inches but the other two stayed between six and six and a half inches.

Based on the data I collected for five weeks helps to conclude that coffee grounds are better for plant growth than regular plant fertilizer. My hypothesis was correct in saying that the coffee grounds would work best in plant growth compared to plant food. This project was very accurate but still had a few flaws. The only major flaw that could have been worked around was that I could have used more time to collect data. This was not my original project idea so I started collecting data two weeks after I should have been working on it. Me changing my project impacted the outcome of my experiment. My plants could have grown more than they did if I remembered to water them every single week. They went almost two weeks without water so that could have made a possible difference in my concluding measurements. Over all my science fair project was very accurate and my final data was correct.