This is my final blog post for this project, and I feel that I can't finish it off without acknowledging all the help I received throughout my time working on it. I would not have been able to carry out this projects well as I did without the help and guidance of so many people along the way to help me. To start with my mentors, I want to say thank you to my on-campus mentor Mr. Witzel, and my off-campus mentor Mr. Rolf Hill from the Severn class of 1990. Mr. Hill was an immense help in getting the soil composition right, this was the area I had the least amount of experience in so having help made it a much smoother process. Even if I wasn't't able to talk with him very often, Mr. Hill offered valuable insight that I used for the basis of my project. Mr. Witzel helped immensely at every stage of my project, with him first guiding me through the process of setting up my project like with how to determine the conditions and soil requirements of the plants, and even where I should grow them. After all the plants had started growing, I was able to consult with him if anything went wrong or didn't behave as it should, and overall served as an amazing source of knowledge whenever I needed it. Outside of just my mentors, I also wanted to thank Mr. DeMarte for helping me with finding the right soil balance early on. His knowledge of chemistry was a major part in finding errors in the materials of my soil, as well as how much of it I was actually getting. Another group of people I wanted to thank were my parents, who served as valuable second or third set of eyes in reviewing my application for the fellows program, and even aided me during the actual project itself. During my time away for a French exchange, they were able to continue the experiment in my absence, gathering data points and keeping the plants alive until I returned. The last person I want to thank is Ms. Das, the fellows coordinator. This may be her first group of students she is advising through the fellows program, but she handled it in such a way it seemed that she had been doing so for years. It was because of her that I was able to stay on track with my project and never miss any deadlines, even if it meant having to hunt me down during school hours to remind me of an impending due date. To everyone I have talked about here and more, thank you for anything and everything you have done to help push this project forward, I couldn't have done it without all of you.

I just recently finished planting what is most likely to be my final group of plants for this experiment. With the final project dates rapidly approaching, I'm not sure how many more tests I could fit into the amount of time I have left. While the experiment will largely stay the same for the last few days of this project, I did want to note that I have more time going into the end of the school year so I will be doing my best to make sure all the needs of these plants are met to try and achieve the best possible outcome. The one part that is different are some of the seeds I used. The radishes and peppers were unchanged, but I previously ran out of lettuce seeds and needed to get more from a different company this time, but this hopefully should not affect the results. I will have a full post about thanking people closer to the end date, but for now I did want to thank everyone following along with these posts, this concept has been fun to experiment with and I like the final results I've gotten.

I have just returned from vacation a few days ago, and as expected the health of the plants has diminished a noticeable amount. Due to this being a largely unavoidable part of leaving for an extended period of time, I will need to make a note for this group of plants stating how I needed to leave the project for nearly 2 weeks. I harvested the radish plants earlier, and the other plants only have a few days until their growth cycle is done. I still have enough time to go through another full growth cycle of all three types of plants, so I probably have one more time to give my best effort. I've learned a lot over the course of growing these plants, and I hope I can apply it all going into the last sets of plants.

​As I have alluded to in previous posts, I am leaving on a French exchange program for the next few days, and will be largely unable to attend to my project in the meantime. My family should be able to monitor the ; plants in my stead, and I should be back before needing to harvest this set of plants. Of note, whether it's due to not receiving rain for some time or the relatively dry atmosphere of the greenhouse, many of the plants are drying out and withering. I've been doing my best to water them more. I do turn 18 over the trip, so that will be fun. More updates will come when I return.

Going into the final few blog posts of my project, I realized I have been somewhat neglecting my website. So, I've done my best to update it more and fill in the information I had yet to upload. Overall the project is going well. The second set of lettuce plants don't seem to be growing as well as the first. I've found some difficulty in determining how much water to give the plants due to the strange water retention of the soil, and both under or overwatering the plants causing similar negative effects. I did go on a vacation over a long weekend which meant I wasn't here for a measurement date, but I took one before and after I got back to hopefully make up for this. 

The third group of radishes have been planted and are growing, while the second group of lettuce and peppers are continuing to grow as well. Because another set of plants have been harvested I will add the results to the existing data tables. Once again the radishes that grew had no bulbs, and as a result not much edible material. I do realize that I may have set my hopes high when considering I am working in less than ideal circumstances for my first major gardening project. While the results technically are just to find which combinations provide the best growth, independent of the actual amount of edible material, it would have been preferable. Over the next few days I will be away on a trip out of country, and will be unable to take measurements, but based on my schedule, it shouldn't be too bad if I miss a measurement by a day or two. The French exchange I'm going on does still provide issues, but I can likely coordinate with my family to take measurements and harvest the plants while I'm gone. There are few changes I need to make for the duration of my project, and I will likely continue on this schedule through the remaining duration of the year.

I have been asked to give a timeline for the rest of my project, and due to the nature of how I've set everything up, a general plan for the rest of my project can be seen in the calendar section. Some things I would like to point out are that I will finish are the number of plants I will get, and other possible difficulties I might run in to. By the end of my project in April I will have, or will be close to having, 4 sets of radishes and 2 sets of lettuce and peppers. The third set of lettuce and peppers will continue growing into June, which does provide me with the opportunity to bring a live plant in for my presentation if the school will allow me. I have made an unfortunate development, in that I will be away on a French exchange program for most of late March, preventing me from measuring or harvesting many of my plants on time. I will either need to adjust my schedule to account for this, or have my family help me while I'm away. This project is getting closer to its end, so I will likely spend more time cleaning up this website and preparing a presentation, but until then I will still make my regular updates and notes.

After more time has passed, the second group of radishes have continued to grow exceptionally well, many of which have already surpassed their previous heights from the end of the first set. However, there is one plant that has failed to grow nearly at all, and after this much time has passed, I feel confident in saying that it is dead and will yield no significant results. The soil in particular had 50% artificial soil, which does raise questions on how this plant died if others with more artificial soil are still growing. I also recently took the final measurement for the first group of lettuce plants, and plan to harvest them within the next day or so. Because I have not done so yet, this will also be when I add sand into the soil mixture to hopefully see similar changes in results to the radishes. I don't talk about them often, but the bell peppers plants did fail to grow this time, and because they have a similar growth period to the lettuce, I will replant the two sets together. It has snowed very recently at the time of writing, so adding in the soil may prove more tedious than last time due to potentially being confined to my greenhouse while I do so. Even so, I will try to reduce the delay as much as possible to avoid as much of a wait as last time. Hopefully these plants will grow much better than they did in the first set, I will use my experiences from such to improve the next one. I will provide further updates in my next post and in my notes.

After a suggestion from my mentor, I decided to add a set amount of sand to each pot of artificial soil in the hopes that it would loosen up the soil and allow for better growth under the soil. This did come with a sizable delay, taking all the way until the 26th to find the right type of sand and test different amounts of it in the soil. I planted the new group of Radishes on the 27th of December, and will update my calendar. Hopefully this is the last major setback of the project.  Other things I seek to address in the second iteration is overwatering and root crowding. In the pots that did grow plants, their growth quickly stagnated and did not grow bulbs to be used as actual food. While I do not technically need to grow food as I only need to prove growth is possible, it would still be a much more desirable result. To this end I need to water the pots less, as overwatering can harm plants, and I will plant all the radish seeds in a central location rather than spread throughout the pot. This increases the chances of one seed sprouting in the center of the pot, and not multiple near the edges. In the new year, I should be nearing the end of the growth cycle for the lettuce and peppers, while still in the early stages of growth for the radishes. I will continue to make updates as I go, and happy new year.

After 40 days of growing, the first group of radishes are finally set to be measured and harvested over the weekend. The lettuce still needs to grow for about another month, so I will not be harvesting it at this time. This first group definitely wasn't perfect, but it still served as a valuable learning experience for me to continue ahead with my project. The most important thing I learned is that without anything else added to it, my artificial soil becomes incredibly dense when it gets wet. I feel this is what prevented many of the plants from growing, as their seeds either could not breach the surface to sprout or could not develop enough root structure to sustain themselves. Over this weekend, I should be able to harvest all 4 of the radishes that did grow, get a biomass measurement for them, and plant the new group, while hopefully implementing the idea with sand. The height measurements that I gained from the radishes will be uploaded to the currently empty section after I'm able to put them into a graph. I plan to make a graph for each set of each plant, which should provide a decent amount of data. I'm unsure of where I'll be for my next blog post, but will keep up the work I've been doing up until now.