Just before we broke up for our summer holidays, our soon to be Year 6 teacher – Mrs Strange, set us a project to try and grow a pea to it’s full potential.

LO: To learn about the lifecycle of a pea.

Materials: A plastic zip lock bag, 3 hard dried peas and folded wet kitchen tissue.  

I placed the three peas into the plastic bag, with the wet tissue. When two weeks had passed, I was shocked to find the peas had sprouted!

The reason that the peas had grown and not died, is because the wet tissue gave the peas, the moisture needed. The water evoporated from the tissue, but it circulated inside the sealed bag therefore we did not need to water the peas. This does not happen in a greenhouse because it’s too big and the evaporated water does not accurately rewater the plants in this way. 

 We placed the ziplocked bag on a window cill however, we found our previously in a school Science pea germination experiment that the best growth was from the pea that was placed inside a cupboard with zero sunlight. 

During my Google research I found the table and graph above, it shows an experiment of pea growth with and without sunlight. The results are the same as our findings in our class experiment in that the peas without sunlight did better. 

After three weeks it was time to pot the peas. When I potted the small plants, and noticed that the roots were longer than the stem. It was difficult to pot the delicate plants, because not only were the plants delicate but the roots needed to be wrapped in order to fit them into the black plastic pots.

After the plants were placed into the pots, we patted the soil down because avoid roots drying up. Then we watered the plants, put them in the greenhouse and went on holiday. When we returned from holiday, we discovered that the plants had unfortunately died 🙁 even though we did flood them with water. When it died it was just before school so I couldn’t grow another one.  

Conclusion: 

In hindsight, I should have asked a neighbour to water them whilst we were away.

References:

https://ivypanda.com/essays/light-effects-on-pea-seeds-germination/#:~:text=a%20metric%20ruler.-,Data,in%20pots%20kept%20in%20sunlight.