The Experiment - day 32

"What Experiment?" I hear you ask. The links at the bottom of the post will see you right.

Well, here is what my little seedling pottles look like this evening. Lovely and lush, a little overcrowded, but that's okay - I want a good number of plants in each pottle to give a more reliable result.
I have not moved their positions around - so the one that is "top left" has always been "top left" and shall stay that way for the next 4 to 6 weeks, and ditto for the other three pottles.



On Tuesday I set up the different water treatments but have been slack about blogging (while being un-slack about parenting), so here goes now.
As you can see, I have used 4 more-or-less identical jars (Chunky Marmalade for those with insatiable curiosity about such things). There may be minor differences in the amount of scratching each label has received but I have not paid much attention to that. Right this second, each lid has got a label on it identifying which water is in the jar, but when Merl gets home from being a responsible youth group leader (they're playing Laser Force, the lucky dog) I'll get him to label them A,B,C,D so that I won't know which plant is receiving which treatment. The jars and lids were washed in the dishwasher all at the same time.
Details of the treatments are;

1. Plain tap water - from the cold tap after it was running for a bit
2. Boiled in the electric jug - start with cold tap water as above, boil it, let the jug turn itself off, let the water cool to lukewarm before pouring it into the jar. We have a stainless steel jug with a concealed element.
3. Microwaved in pyrex - start with cold tap water as above, fill a pyrex measuring jug, use the "Auto reheat" function on the microwave and repeat the 'reheating' until the water is properly boiling. Stir cautiously with a stainless steel teaspoon each time the microwave beeps or stops (but not the last stop - just leave it - microwave-boiled stuff can be extremely hot). Leave the jug in the microwave until lukewarm then pour water into jar.
4. Microwaved in plastic - as with pyrex but using a 'microwave safe' plastic container from the last time we had Indian takeaways.

So here we are, all systems are 'go'. And now... only time will tell.

Here are the links to what this experiment is all about...
Is Microwaved water safe?
The Experiment - day 1
The Experiment - day 7
The Experiment - day 15
The Experiment - day 23