How does adding salt to water effect the growth

of a plant?

Background:

What conditions does lettuce grow best in?

Lettuce grows best in spacious soil where its roots can easily be able to move throughout
the soil. It is found to be more successful if there is good compost getting put on the soil.
The compost will give it more nutrients and will help it grow more. Lettuce is originally
found in South-East Asia, where many families still grow them in plenty (Gilmour, 2019). The
scientific name for lettuce is ‘Lactuca sativa’. The family lettuce comes from the family of
plants called Asteraceae (also known as the ‘daisy family’) and is one of over 25,000 plants.
Some plants that are similar to lettuce include arugula, escarole and more (Science Direct,
Unknown).

How will the change to my experiment affect the growth of the plant?

In my opinion I think the salt will make the plant be not as healthy and could result in dying.
The salt will make the water more acidic, and plants need water to survive so the salt could
be a contributing factor to its death. At the point of writing this text I can already see the
salt is slowing the plant growth. Some things I am keeping consistent are feeding it the same
amount of water, giving them an equal amount of sunlight and more.

Aim:

To determine the effect of adding salt to water and seeing if it differs from regular water.

Hypothesis: That the salt in the water will make the plant slowly deteriorate.

IV: adding salt to water

DP: growth

Method:

15 cm of soil (potting soil) was placed into a 20cm x 15cm black plastic pot and the 25 seeds
were placed in each pot, about 20 mm below the soil. One of the plants was fed with fresh
water but the other one was fed with water with a pinch of salt that had been combined.
Both pots have been placed in the direct sunlight for them to grow well. The plants were
watered around 20ml each day for a month.

Materials:

 2 Black Plastic Pot

 Soil
  Lettuce seeds
 Water
 Salt

Results

The results showed that the salt was affected the plant a lot by the growth only ending up at
7.1 cm whether the normal one ended on 8.4. cm. Throughout the 3 weeks they were being
grown, the plant that was being fed normal water was consistently healthier. At the one
week mark the salt water made the plant only grow 1.5 cm but the normal water was
already a centimetre taller. Even at two weeks the saltwater plant was still behind in growth
at 4 cm.

A graph of the growth between the two plants

How adding salt to water affects the

growth of a plant
10
9
8.7
8.3
8 8
7.7 7.9
7 7 7.2 7.2 7.1
6.5 6.6
6 6.2
Growth 5.7
(cm) 5.4
5 4.9 4.9
4.1 4.3
4 4 4.1
3.6 3.7 3.9
3.3
3 3 2.8
2.5 2.4
2 1.9 1.9
1.3 1.5
1.3 1.5 1.5
1
0.7 0.6
0 0 0.2
0 0.2
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21

Days

Normal water
Saltwater Growth (cm)
(cm)
 Table of the growth between the plant fed with
water and saltwater

Day
1 0 0
2 0 0.2
3 0.2 0.7
4 0.6 1.3
5 1.3 1.5
6 1.5 1.9
7 1.5 2.5
8 1.9 3
9 2.4 3.6
10 2.8 4.1
11 3.3 4.9
12 3.7 5.7
13 3.9 6.5
14 4 7
15 4.1 7.2
16 4.3 7.2
17 4.9 7.7
18 5.4 7.9
19 6.2 8
20 6.6 8.3
21 7.1 8.7

Discussion

As we can see from the graph the saltwater made the plant grew slower than the plant
being fed by normal water. Both of the plants were given an equal amount of soil and were
watered the same amount daily. Whilst the plant being watered by normal water was
consistently growing about 3-5 cm the saltwater made the other plant average a 3-4 cm
growth daily. The hypothesis that was stated earlier, was mostly similar to what happened
in the end. If I were to improve my experiment, I probably could have done a few more
plants to make it more accurate. This experiment might not have been very relevant or
important, but it is interesting to see how easily salt can affect a plants growth.

Conclusion

In conclusion we have now found out that adding salt to water does affect the growth of a
plant, as we have seen but not by too much. However, my hypothesis wasn’t entirely
correct as I thought the plant would deteriorate the plant, but the leaves of the saltwater
plant did turn a much lighter green than normal.

Bibliography

Middleton
Gilmour 2019, Growing Lush, Green, Crisp Lettuce, viewed 1 March 2021,
<https://gilmour.com/growing-lettuce#:~:text=The%20ideal%20lettuce
%20growing%20location,provide%20protection%20from%20the%20heat.>.
 Unknown
ScienceDirect Unknown, Lettuce, viewed 1 March 2021,
<https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/agricultural-and-biological-
sciences/lettuce>.

The plant being fed

The plant being fed normal saltwater. As you can see it
water. As you can see it is has a more unnatural
a more natural green. colour