Many people think that talking to your plants helps! There are been several studies on this…with unexpected results!
Mythbusters
Seven small greenhouses were set up on the M5 Industries roof.
- Two were set up with stereos playing endlessly looping recordings of negative speech.
- Two of positive speech.
- Fifth with classical music
- Sixth with intense death metal music.
- Seventh greenhouse, used as a control sample, had no stereo.
They used recording instead of directly talking because they knew talking produces carbon dioxide which theoretically would feed the plants.
Surprising Results:
- The greenhouses with the recordings of speech grew better than the control.
- There was no difference between the kind or angry talk.
- Classical music plants grew better than controls.
- Intense death metal grew best of all!
Month Long Royal Horticultural Society study :
This study involved 9 different readers talking to tomato plants through headphones and compared to controls.
They found:
- Talking to your plants really can help them grow faster.
- Plants grow faster to the sound of a female voice than to a male voice.
- Plants grew best to the voice Sarah Darwin, granddaughter of the legendary botanist Charles Darwin, reading a passage from the On the Origin of Species.
Neither of these studies were large scale or double blind.
The Mythbusters results seem to indicate that plants respond to the intensity of the sound value and not to our human interpretation of life supporting.
The Horticulture Society results indicate the plants respond better to certain frequencies of voice. Maybe Women do make better gardeners.
Related Info:
Learn How To Listen To Plants: Read my own experience with learning how to talk with plants and my review of the book on this topic here: Practical Guide to Plant Communication
Listen to the Plant Expert:
[audio:http://realfoodsforlife.info/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/stephen-intro-can-we-talk-with-plants.mp3]
Listen to the complete interview: it is great: Talking with Stephen
]
Subscribe to the Newsletter
Get healthy tasty vegan gluten-free recipes and useful lifestyle tips sent to you twice a month