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Positive music: A factor in increased plant growth?

I.M. Boggled

Certified Bloomin' Idiot
Veteran
Has anyone else noticed positive growth effects from playing music for their blossoming gals?

In 1973, a woman named Dorothy Retallack published a small book called The Sound of Music and Plants. Her book detailed experiments that she had been conducting at the Colorado Woman’s College in Denver using the school’s three Biotronic Control Chambers. Mrs. Retallack placed plants in each chamber and speakers through which she played sounds and particular styles of music. She watched the plants and recorded their progress daily. She was astounded at what she discovered....

(In one)... experiment, Mrs. Retallack used two chambers (and fresh plants). She placed radios in each chamber. In one chamber, the radio was tuned to a local rock station, and in the other the radio played a station that featured soothing "middle-of-the-road" music. Only three hours of music was played in each chamber. On the fifth day, she began noticing drastic changes. In the chamber with the soothing music, the plants were growing healthily and their stems were starting to bend towards the radio! In the rock chamber, half the plants had small leaves and had grown gangly, while the others were stunted. After two weeks, the plants in the soothing-music chamber were uniform in size, lush and green, and were leaning between 15 and 20 degrees toward the radio. The plants in the rock chamber had grown extremely tall and were drooping, the blooms had faded and the stems were bending away from the radio. On the sixteenth day, all but a few plants in the rock chamber were in the last stages of dying. In the other chamber, the plants were alive, beautiful, and growing abundantly.

Mrs. Retallack’s next experiment was to create a tape of rock music by Jimi Hendrix, Vanilla Fudge, and Led Zeppelin. Again, the plants turned away from the music. Thinking maybe it was the percussion in the rock music that was causing the plants to lean away from the speakers, she performed an experiment playing a song that was performed on steel drums. The plants in this experiment leaned just slightly away from the speaker; however not as extremely as did the plants in the rock chambers. When she performed the experiment again, this time with the same song played by strings, the plants bent towards the speaker.

Next Mrs. Retallack tried another experiment again using the three chambers. In one chamber she played North Indian classical music performed by sitar and tabla, in another she played Bach organ music, and in the third, no music was played. The plants "liked" the North Indian classical music the best. In both the Bach and sitar chambers, the plants leaned toward the speakers, but he plants in the Indian music chamber leaned toward the speakers the most.

She went on to experiment with other types of music. The plants showed no reaction at all to country and western music, similarly to those in silent chambers.

However, the plants "liked" the jazz that she played them. She tried an experiment using rock in one chamber, and "modern" (dischordant) classical music of negative composers Arnold Schönberg and Anton Webern in another. The plants in the rock chamber leaned 30 to 70 degrees away from the speakers and the plants in the modern classical chamber leaned 10 to 15 degrees away.

http://www.dovesong.com/positive_music/plant_experiments.asp
 
They did this on Myth Busters. They had 3 identical rooms set up, one with no music and two with different kinds of music. The music rooms did alot better then the one without. One of the music rooms did better then the other...Cant remember which one.
 
G

guest3854

I read on 1 of tha sites death metal seemed to stimulate tha plants to grow tha most!
Rock on !
 

bartender187

Bakin in da Sun
Veteran
^^
Ive heard mozart/classical does the best. again... i heard this threw the grapevine, so take it with a grain of salt.
 

I.M. Boggled

Certified Bloomin' Idiot
Veteran
This guy has an interesting sound theory (and products)

This guy has an interesting sound theory (and products)

(Back in the mid fifties)
Dr. Carlson spent several years in the University of Minnesota Agricultural Experiment Station studying plant physiology and obtaining his PhD. in Plant Breeding. He concluded that plants were able to obtain 72% of their nutritional requirements through their leaves via the stomata, the mouth-like pores on the lower surface of the leaves. Plants could flourish in very poor or unsuitable soils and climates – provided a way could be found to increase the uptake of nutrient into the leaves. He knew that plants translocate any excess nutrients from their leaves down to their root system, thus conditioning the soil and storing nutrients for future use.

His work led him to eventually find a range of sound wave frequencies which stimulated the stomata into action and thus increased the uptake of ‘free’ nutrients available in the atmosphere, including nitrogen, and moisture in the form of humidity in the morning dew. The sound frequency Dr. Carlson utilized has turned out to be in the same range as some songbirds, particularly during some of the spring mating and courtship rituals. This finding has led some people to suggest that the spring birdsong may be one of Nature’s signals, a trigger for trees and plants to break dormancy and begin to grow. If so, the implications of that alone are considerable for modern horticulture, which tends to discourage birds.

Experimenting with various plant extracts, trace minerals and amino acids, Dan finally came up with an organic nutrient that gave the most rapid and balanced plant growth. After several years he came up with a nutrient blend, which when applied with the sound frequency, produced rapid and balanced growth on over a hundred different crops, from avocados to zucchini. Dan Carlson achieved world-wide recognition for his Purple Passion plant, which grew so big with Sonic Bloom™ that it is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the world’s largest indoor plant. It eventually grew to 1300 feet in length. But the purple passion plant experiment was of novelty value only. Scientists were not interested in this success because it involved a non-edible plant of no commercial value...

In 1986 Acres U.S.A. magazine reported 30 percent increases on oranges and the reversal of the disease, ‘Young Tree Decline.’ Papaya showed 300 percent increases. Yield increases of 400 percent for cucumbers, African Violets with up to 300 blooms per plant instead of 30, and 300 percent yield increases on sweet corn were among many other successes. In forests, perhaps the greatest potential for this revolutionary technology lies in forestry -–with the promise of shorter tree rotation times and exceptional wood density qualities. In the U.S., pines have halved their maturity time with Sonic Bloom™. With Sonic Bloom treatment you can expect 1/3 larger potatoes, 1/3 more yield, a denser potato and each generation shows an improvement over the last.

The senior editor of Professional Farmers of America magazine, a definite skeptic, tested Sonic Bloom™ and reported 100 percent yield increases in soybean yields. The treated soybeans were visibly larger, with an increase in pods per plant and pods numbering from 60 to 100. In Wisconsin, soybean plants produced up to 300 pods per plant; 30 to 35 is considered to be the norm.

http://www.the7thfire.com/Sonic_Bloom/sonic_bloom.htm
 
I haven't tried any other types of music but my plants do seem to respond positively to oboe music :chin: maybe its time for some experimenting
 
G

Guest

Death Metal

Death Metal

Oke here is what i got out of some SAGE a long time ago. But i have always played the same tunes hehe.

 
G

Guest

Mrs. Retallack’s next experiment was to create a tape of rock music by Jimi Hendrix, Vanilla Fudge, and Led Zeppelin. Again, the plants turned away from the music. Thinking maybe it was the percussion in the rock music that was causing the plants to lean away from the speakers

I just read one study that metal/heavy music seems to stimulate plants to grow faster and produce bigger yields than plants that "listened" other kind of music :chin:
I don't know could this be possible but my plants seems to be doin' fine with my music collection (mainly metal :)

-BG-
 

Farmer John

Born to be alive.
Veteran
You guys have to read some Freak Brothers...theres this strip where phineas plants some seeds and plays them music, but one of the small ones is a mutant seed from outer space that grows too fast and destroys the city. Better watch out.
 

Steinawitz

Member
I have a stereo in my grow room and recently wired small speakers into two my my chambers. I play mostly jazz, and leave it on for them a few hours a day (so far just for the last few days). I'm interested to see if they respond, however i'm not running a control group to compare any results.
 
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