This is an interesting science project. The growth of a plant is better in the absence of bacteria. A fact that no one who has studied horticulture will deny. Another fact is that if you boil something you kill the bacteria on it and sterilize it. Agreed to that one too since most of us have seen sterilization in progress at some location or the other.

So if we boil beans to sterilize them will they grow better and into plants faster? Plus dry seeds take time to absorb water to germinate. Will the boiling process speed up germination too? Of course cooking the beans for too long would make it impossible to grow. So what’s the optimum time to soak and boil the beans? Or does boiling the beans even a wee bit kill them and no plant will ever grow from them? That’s what we hope to find out with this science project.

What we need is a bag full of lentil beans. About 50 of them. Now divide them into groups of 10 each and place them in different bowls. Each of the five bowls will get a different treatment. One set will be used as control and planted into a pot. The second one will be soaked for 24 hours and then planted in a pot.

The third set get to soak 24 hour and then boiled for a minute before being planted in the pot. The fourth set get the 24 hour soaking and a 5 minute boiling before they go into the pot. Last lot gets soaked 24 hours and boiled for 10 minutes before being planted in the pot. Now observe the 5 pots for a month and record observations every week. You may be surprised at the observations you get in this science project.