Background: My snake plant recently died one week ago. Just before it died, I changed two major variables that may have caused its death. First, I moved my snake plant from a dark room (containing very little natural light) to a room containing natural light for at least 11 hours each day. Second, I repotted my plant and changed the soil from coconut coir to regular potting soil. Could one of these variables be the culprit of my snake plant's demise? (Of note, I will only test one of these variables).
Hypothesis: Snake plants are more likely to survive for 6 months when maintained in rooms with natural light exposure (≥8 hours natural light per day) as compared to rooms with dark natural light exposure (≤1 hour natural light exposure per day). (Notice here that I only focus on one variable to test per experiment)
Procedure: I will purchase 10 snake plants. Half of the snake plants will live in a dark room (my bedroom with the curtains closed all day). The other five plants will live in my office, which is exposed to natural light for ≥11 hours each day. To control for external variables, all plants are watered 100mL once per week and room temperatures are kept consistent throughout the house. After one month, I will count how many plants have survived and compare between the light and dark settings.
Variables: In this scenario, my experimental group is plants stored in a room containing ≥11 hours of natural light each day. My control group is plants kept in a room containing very little natural light (i.e. whatever seeps through the room darkening curtains). My control variables are ambient house temperature (which is the same between the rooms), the source of the plants, the potting soil (i.e. coconut coir), and frequency and quantity of watering.
My independent variable is the quantity of natural light exposure each day. My dependent variable is whether or not my plants survive.
Data and Findings: After one month of exposure, all 10 plants survived, but the plants grown in light had more leaves, and the leaves were greener.
Conclusions: After repeated experiments, I conclude that my hypothesis is not supported. Snake plants survive regardless of being in dark light settings compared to bright natural light settings. I did note, however, that plants grown in light were greener and fuller. Given this, I will run another experiment testing potting soil effects on plant survival, and likely run a different experiment seeing which light settings my plants prefer over long time periods.