Pea sprout test- first try

Abstract:

I might have waited a little too long in this test, or made the extracts too concentrated; but it does have some qualitative information which I can make use of.  Some seeds were rotting to the point of dissolving away- yet among these there were others which looked healthy enough. Sprouting discount store seed raises its own questions concerning baseline viability, though using the control did factor out some of the baseline morbidity due to materials and my methods.

The purpose of the test was to see whether the mule stable sweepings offered to me, and the CFO cow manure on the same property, were free enough of herbicide to grow a garden.  Since peas are said to be more sensitive, I thought I would try sprouting peas to see if some failed to sprout. (see article)

Method:

For the mule stable sweepings and the CFO cow manure I took a half-cup of material to be tested and soaked it in an equal amount of water for 48 hours, then decanted the water to soak the peas for two days.  Then I placed them between damp paper towels, each in their own container, and kept the towels moist by adding a few drips of tapster as necessary.  The "water" sample was straight tap water sourced in my well.  The broadleaf sample was taken inside the square area where grass doesn't seem to grow; and the "grass" was taken in a particularly grassy area in the meadow at large.  For these samples, I dug a hole and used the water that seeped into the hole- in this season the hole refilled itself with water within 8 inches of the top in the grassy area, and completely filled the hole in the broadleaf plot.

Results:

None of the samples had all seeds sprout.  The control had an 80% sprout rate; all samples were compared with this rate as a baseline.  So in the following data set the "water" batch is shown to be 100% when compared with itself.

(compared to control)
water	100%
mule top	69%
mule middle	81%
cow	63%
Grass	86%
Broadleaf	38%

Analysis:

Looking a the results it appears that sprouting may be inhibited in every sample.  Maybe it could be the concentration of the amendments in water was too high. The middle, older mule sweepings looked pretty good, comparatively.  It was surprising to me that the grassless area inhibited sprouting the most.

Conclusions:

 For the most part, this test was unsatisfactory and inconclusive. I'm faced with the desire to get some kind of results but a universal drop in viability points to a problem,  I'm tempted to, as one of my instructors put it, "torture the data until it confesses," but I can't say anything with confidence. Picking out the extremely low viability of the broadleaf sample I must reluctantly conclude that the broadleaf sample may have been treated with something that peas do not like. I must do another test more like that described in the linked article to learn anything more.

Looking up info for this article, I found this article from the North Carolina State College of Agriculture. https://content.ces.ncsu.edu/herbicide-carryover.  It seems to be the source of the info I've been hearing, or one of the sources; and according to the article I didn't do it right; and need to monitor growth until at least three sets of true leaves develop- far more than checking whether they would sprout or not.