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Now that your experiment is set up and ready to run, you need to consider the "what and how" of your research. This means what kind of information, or data, you wish to collect and how you intend to collect this data. You'll also need to decide how long your experiment needs to run before you stop collecting data from it. . .
Taking It To Term
In professional laboratories, the progress of experiments is rigorously monitored, with data being collected several times a day in the most intensive cases. Your work need not be so rigorous, but you do need to have a methodology that will help you determine, in a measurable or quantitative way, what kind of results you are getting. This methodology consists of the type of observations, or data, you wish to collect, and how you intend to collect it.
Continuing with my peanut/Alocasia example, the first information I need to record is the date I started the experiment, and a name for this study. The simplest name is "Experiment #1", and the date is going to be the first day that everything is potted up and ready to grow on. To make your work easier, you should record all your information in a small notebook that you use for nothing else. This is your laboratory notebook and will contain all of the raw data you collect throughout the course of your experiment. You also need to decide how long you intend for your experiment to run. In professional labs, the end of the experiment is when data is no longer being collected and the experimental setup is dismantled or destroyed. In your case, you are going to have some nice plants that you won't want to destroy, so you just have to set a date on which you will collect data for the last time.
The Raw Ingredients
How much information you record is up to you, but the more accurate and comprehensive your data is, the more reliable your results are likely to be. For example, for each day the study is running, you can record the high and low temperatures, whether the day was cloudy, sunny or rainy, and whether you watered your plants that day. Also record anomalies, such as "the cat knocked over pot #4 today and I had to repot it". Hopefully, you will place your experimental setup somewhere that will minimize upsets, interruptions or anomalies.
When your experiment is likely to result in a visually significant change, taking pictures is an excellent way of recording your data. If plant size is important, you can place a ruler next to each plant when you take the picture to show scale. Other information you might wish to record is number of leaves on the plant or plant height. In my case, I'd want to know the total number of leaves at each time I collect data, and also the time between new leaves. This would be numerical data I would record for each plant in my notebook. The numerical data plus the pictures would give me the information I need so I can evaluate the results properly. Be sure to record your data in such a way that you know which plant the data applies to. This is done easily by numbering the pots and by making a little chart with the pot numbers on the first column and the data label (i.e. number of leaves).on the top row. Then just fill in the spaces, or cells, with the data you collect.
The Tale of the Tape
Let's say that your experiment ran for 60 days, which would be a good time period for my peanut/Alocasia study. At the end of the period, you will collect your final data, take your final pictures, and then "officially" end the experiment. All this means is that you won't be collecting any more data. Your next step is going to be the analysis of your collected data for each plant, and evaluating that collection of data. Analysing your data could be as elaborate as making tables and graphs, or it could be as simple as comparing pictures to see which plant(s) look the best. In any event, your goal is to see if the data collected confirms, refutes, or are inconclusive reference your hypothesis. If everything was done properly, this will enable you to formulate a conclusion. In my case, an outcome that confirmed the hypothesis would be, "Growing a peanut plant together with a finicky Alocasia helps the Alocasia grow much better".
What can you do now? Well, if this is real "open-source", you'll want to find the appropriate forum on Dave's Garden and publish your findings there so others can benefit from them. But you may have also thought of other questions related to your research, questions that warrant further investigation. For example, in my case, I might wonder if legumes other than peanuts produce a greater, lesser, or no effect on the Alocasia plants. I would then proceed to design a second experiment, using clover instead of the peanuts, and see what kind of results I'd get. The hypothesis would be expanded from "peanut plants together with Alocasias help them grow better" to "legumes together with Alocasias help them grow better". Of course, that means I'd have to grow more plants and try other legumes, like beans or peas, to test this hypothesis. At the end of the experiment, I'd have a bonus of beans and peas to eat, providing a tasty end to my research effort.
Resources
For more information on the scientific method, click here.
LariAnn has been gardening and working with plants since her teenage years growing up in Maryland. Her intense interest in plants led her to college at the University of Florida, where she obtained her Bachelor's degree in Botany and Master of Agriculture in Plant Physiology. In the late 1970s she began hybridizing Alocasias, and that work has expanded to Philodendrons, Anthuriums, and Caladiums as well. She lives in south Florida with her partner and son and is research director at Aroidia Research, her privately funded organization devoted to the study and breeding of new, hardier, and more interesting aroid plants.
