Wisconsin Fast Plants
FAQ's Wisconsin Fast Plants
Which Wisconsin Fast Plants® kit or seeds should I order?
We recommend if you are just starting out with the plants to begin with either the Wisconsin Fast Plants® Growth, Development, and Reproduction Advanced Kit or Wisconsin Fast Plants® Elementary Exploration of Plant Life Cycles Kit.
Standard Wisconsin Fast Plants® seeds or seed disks are recommended for teaching and learning about life cycles, conducting selection experiments, and ecology studies.
Other seed varieties and kits are available for teaching single and double-trait inheritance patterns. Learn more about additional seed varieties.
What lighting and growing system do you recommend?
Choose a lighting system that fits your classroom needs and budget. Our Plant Light Bank provides excellent lighting and plenty of room for growing plants from multiple classrooms at the same time. Another good option is the Plant Light House®, which provides the right growing conditions for a single classroom set of plants®.
Select a growing system for your plants that works best for the number and age of your students. For example, you may choose to use the Wisconsin Fast Plants® Growing System with 1 quad shared by 4 students if you have multiple classes of secondary science students. This growing system is included in the Wisconsin Fast Plants® Growth, Development, and Reproduction Advanced Kit. For elementary students, we recommend the larger, stable deli-container system that is included in the Wisconsin Fast Plants® Elementary Exploration of Plant Life Cycles Kit.
What should I do to grow healthy plants?
Wisconsin Fast Plants® thrive when they have constant light (24 hours a day), moist growing medium, and temperatures that fall in the optimal range of 24 to 26 °C (72 to 78° F).
Be sure to adjust your plants or your lights to keep the tops of your plants very close to the light bulbs—3 to 10 cm (1 to 3") away.
Plant in a soil-free medium, and use a wicking growing system to maintain moist growing conditions.
If your classroom temperatures are cooler than the optimal range, your plants will be fine, though they will grow more slowly. If your classroom temperatures are warmer than optimal, your plants will grow more rapidly and may become spindly. Under extremely hot growing conditions, or when flowers grow into and touch hot light bulbs, Fast Plants® can become sterile.