Passable setup.

The only thing I could think of to use as a setup for the seedlings was some kind of aquarium, though unfortunately mine had a wire screen covering. I taped sheets of plastic (loosely, for some airflow) to the top, placed the seedlings in and BAM! you have a terrarium. It was a little more difficult than that, but I'll spare you the details.

As for the seedlings itself two or three on both sides, control and acid have had browning of the leaves, but there have been no new problems since they were put in the terrarium, which is working really well. Sprayed the seedlings yesterday, noticed the gibb acid had a slightish yellow tint but don't know what that means.

Comment, please!

Sprayed seedlings yesterday.

Just another update; sprayed the seedlings and saw a little more drying of some leaves but nothing drastically different than two weeks ago.

Sprayed seedlings again

Decided to spray the seedlings every two weeks instead. A few are showing browning which I guess is from low humidity, I'm misting the seedlings several times a day until I can get a setup.

Sprayed the seedlings, not too much growth, both the control and gibberellic seedlings have either showed little growth or the leaves have browned (the structure of the leaf is still there, there's just discoloration.)

Any ideas for a windowsill setup that can enclose a dozen or so seedlings and up humidity?

Update

The last control seed germinated, but that with the other recent one to germinate don't have any leaves. One of the control plants has lost a leaf and the other one is shriveling up. Most of the other seedlings with leaves already have grown a third one, and the ones with no leaves have stayed that way. Interestingly, one of the giberellic acid seedlings with the shriveled leaves has created two more leaves, both with the same distinct shriveled fashion.

Good:

Bad:

I've just started spraying the marked seedlings, Tuesday October 27th, so I'll try to do it every Tuesday, with a 1000 ppm concentration of giberellic acid. I'm worried that the giberellic acid might have lost its potency in some way, because I think it's protein based. I've been keeping it in the refrigerator and was told by the seller (Unitednuclear.com) that it should keep for about a year.

I sprayed each seedling from the top down 1-2 times, making sure that the whole of the plant had a few droplets, and that no acid mixed with the other plants.

Questions and comments are appreciated. (Any ideas on how I could test if the acid is still potent?)

Five more seeds germinated.

This experiment, though very small scale, is showing results completely against what I thought. Since my last post, five more seeds have germinated, three being gibberellic and two being control. They are exactly even. I have no idea what to say about that.

I also went around and noted the different foliage amounts for overall growth, and I was even more surprised. For gibberellic acid seeds, over the seven I noticed:
Medium growth
high growth
low growth
tiny twig
excellent growth
Frail growth
good growth

Below is what I consider frail



Below is what I consider good



I consider excellent to be three leaves at this stage.

The gibberellic acid seedling that is considered excellent is also the first to germinate.

The eight control seeds are as follows:
Not germinated
Just germinated, no growth
good growth
good growth
good growth
medium growth
excellent growth (three full leaves)
good growth.


Do you see why I'm confused? So far it seems like soaking seeds in gibberellic acid has no effect on germination rate and is actually worse for the growth!

The experiment by no means is done. I'll spray the gibberellic acid seeds in a week from now and set them on a bi-weekly spraying schedule. I also removed the plastic from all of the seeds because of mold forming. I scraped off the mold and will just water them more often.

Questions and comments are appreciated.

More germination... Flawed experiment?

On Friday Aug 28th two more of the seeds germinated. Both of them were control seeds. Since then, six more have germinated, half of them control and half gibberellic acid. All of the seeds were clumped together in germination time regardless of whether they were treated in gibberellic acid. Six more have yet to germinate, but I'm questioning my methods.. there are so many sources of error.

This makes four gibberellic seeds and five control seeds. So far more non soaked seeds have germinated, rather than the commonly understood 25% untreated 99% treated. There's still much more to the experiment, but I'm starting to think that someone such as me who is in an unsuitable geographic location and can't work with a large amount of seeds is unfit to collect any kind of data. There are too many variables just with seed quality alone to test much without 100+ seeds, but I'll keep posting in case there are any obvious differences.

I put all of the cups on the windowsill with a hole through the plastic for each seedling. The first to germinate is starting to open up two leaves... I think. The first set of seeds I had never did that and instead remained green stumps for a month.

I'll upload pictures tomorrow. Comments and questions are appreciated.

Update

A couple of weeks ago, when I was watering the seed tray, one of the Gibberellic acid seeds had floated up out of the soil, because of the very loose mixture and the shallow planting. It had a small root "bubble" on it, so I put a small scoop of peat moss and perlite with a heavier consistency on top of all the seed cups. I also covered the whole tray with plastic wrap to limit evaporation and watering.

Yesterday or today, one of the seeds germinated, and I'm pretty sure it's the one that that had the root bubble. It's on the gibberellic acid side, and just looks like a little white blob. I poked a small hole in the plastic wrap over it so it could grow freely. Because it's white, and the other set didn't even look green for about a week, I'll delay putting the tray in the sunlight until a few others germinate.

Because only one of the seeds have germinated, I can't yet look at any data on the effects of gibberellic acid on the germination time. Though it's taken a little less time than the previous set of seeds, those were also soaked in the gibberellic acid, plus I'm doing things a little differently based on what I've read and learned from mistakes, e.g; The container size, number of waterings, soil composition, length of gibberellic acid exposure.

I sort of wish I hadn't thrown out the seed I cut open to check for freshness, I just thought about whether it could have split into two plants.

Comments and suggestions are appreciated.

The effects of Gibberellic acid and Miracle fruit.

This is a sub-blog of growing miracle fruit, from the beginning.

This is the beginning of my experiment on using the growth hormone Gibberellic acid on miracle fruit seeds. In a previous experiment, I did a simple test on the effect on watermelon seeds and they grew twice as tall, but germinated half as often. (However, this was a very small sample size and be within the deviation of error. With miracle fruit, it seems the idea is it has an unknown effect on growth but causes high seed germination. I've devised a low scale experiment to get some data on how true this is.

I received sixteen seeds from Ethan Bradley of the forum 0n July 29th, 2009. I cut the smallest one open just to quickly check that they were fresh, and the inside was green. This means I'll have seven to be treated with gibberellic acid and eight as a control.

The basic goal is to log the percentage of seeds that germinate, both with no treatment and being treated with gibberellic acid. After waiting a month after the first seed germinates, I will see how many have died and how tall they are, gibberellic and control. I'll see if there is a difference in height, foliage, and overall health. If three seeds or more germinate out of the control, I will select one to be spritzed bi-weekly with a 500 parts per million concentration of gibberellic acid. This is because I need to see whether overall growth is effected because of the initial soaking or the later spraying. If three or more germinate out of the giberellic side, I'll select one to be left alone.

The rest of the gibberellic side will be spritzed with gibberellic acid bi-weekly. The reason I am taking one out of the control and gibberellic acid side, is because there are four scenarios:

1: Left untreated

2: Initially soaked and later sprayed

3: Initially soaked and not sprayed

4: not soaked but later sprayed.

Because I have a limited supply of seeds, I am mainly testing the first two, but testing all four may lead to some interesting data.

If the seeds soaked in gibberellic acid and spritzed regularly germinate more often, but only grow as much as the ones just soaked, it means there is no point to using up your supply and spraying the plant.

If the seed germinates more often and grows faster, it means it's worthwhile.

If the seeds soaked in gibberellic acid grow faster than the control, it would be worthwhile to do so even if you have an abundance of seeds.

And if there is no change whatsoever, there is no point to buying the gibberellic acid.

Personally, I think that it will have an effect on germination rates, because my first growing attempt had twelve seeds and all of them germinated with gibberellic acid, however, I didn't have a control. I don't know whether all but three of them dying was because of the acid, or it just works that way.

The seeds were already cleaned so I started by soaking all fifteen in warm water for half an hour. I then put them in ten percent bleach and water to sterilize them, and soaked seven in a 1000 parts per million form of gibberellic acid for 30 minutes.

I mixed up a batch of 60-40 peat moss and perlite, with a few shakes of slow release miracle grow fertilizer, and a fourth cup of lemon juice mixed into two quarts of water which I initially watered with to lower the PH. In the end I had the fifteen cups of mixture I needed, as I was using translucent larger cups to possibly see the vertical roots. I filled all the cups with the saturated mixture and cut a small hole in the bottom. On seven I colored a portion of the cup green and cut a notch in the top to know that those were the gibberellic acid ones. I put in the control seeds first to avoid contamination, just barely under the soil. I did the same for the soaked seeds, and then dripped the solution over each one. I transferred all of them to a tray where they will be kept humid with a cup taped over each one.

I will monitor the results as well as I can. Now we wait. Suggestions, comments, and questions are all welcome.