For a week, the soil samples were dried in a lab oven set between 105 and 110 °C. With confirmation from the teaching team, the mass of the glass vial containing the dried soil was measured and recorded, and the moisture content was computed using the following formula: (Mass of soil sample − Mass of dried soil)/Mass of dried soil × 100 (Mass of soil sample −Mass of dried soil)/Mass of dried soil× 100. A shared Excel file was updated with the moisture content values. Our group downloaded the file after finishing the bacterial plating experiment and waited for the TA to confirm that all the data had been gathered. An unpaired t-test, averages, and standard deviations were computed, and the p-values were obtained using Excel. 

The moisture content measurements that our team obtained from the tomato plants and peach tree were similar, differing by about 0.06. There was only a 1.15 difference between the means of the two conditions when looking at the mean values from the class. This gives a percent difference of 7.5%. The peach trees and tomatoes' respective standard deviations for the class data were 5.05 and 5.53. This indicates that although the peach tree values varied more, the pH values in the two places remained quite comparable. We used an unpaired t-test, assuming unequal variance, to compare the data, and the p-value was 0.607. There is no statistically significant variation in moisture content between the two situations because the p-value was higher than 0.05. 

Overall, our group’s findings suggest that there is not a strong difference between the moisture content of the two conditions, condition 1 (peach tree soil) and condition 2 (tomato plant soil). Our t-test result of 0.607 is far higher than the significance marker of 0.05, meaning that there is not a significant difference in the two sets of moisture content by percent data.  According to the class data, the average moisture content of the tomato plant soil was 14.7 while the moisture content of the peach tree soil was 15.85. The peach tree had a slightly higher moisture content percentage by 1.85%, however, this difference is not large, while some lab groups found higher moisture content in their tomato plant soil instead of peach tree soil, leading us to the conclusion that the difference between the peach tree soil moisture content and tomato plant soil moisture content is insignificant, meaning it has little to no effect on the biodiversity present in the soil. 

Our evidence and conclusion pointed to the idea that the difference was insignificant enough that some groups found higher moisture content in different conditions. When researching why this may be, the simplest answer according to one university in Poland is that moisture in the soil is not stable due to inconsistent rain patterns (Borowik and Wyszkowska). The garden area is small and contained as well as maintained consistently with the same methods. These factors lead us to believe that the setting of the garden lacks enough variance to provide unique and significant differences in soil moisture content between conditions. While weather and natural occurrences may affect the moisture content, these would affect the whole garden. Unless maintenance heavily differs in either section of the garden, different areas of soil across the entire garden should have similar moisture content.