Do plants respond to music?

[sydneyguy]

Almost every one has heard about experiments and theories on plants and music. On Tuesday night I saw a new episode? of Myth Busters that did the plants and music test. They set up identical green houses (GH's) on a roof top factory and played through tape recording hard core thrash (Pantera? etc), classical, human abuse , human 'love' messages and a 'control' green house which was left on its own 'natural' devices. They played through recordings to avoid entering the GH's and to keep even human CO2 levels even. THey grew about 10 seedlings of 'bush beans' (must be yank term ?!) and left them in the GH's for 30 days.

 

After 30 days they pulled all the plants out and weighed them for there final total weight. Surprisingly the GH that performed the best was the one that was subjected to hard core thrash and then classical music. Plants didnt seem to respond to either human abuse or 'love' messages. However they just pulled all the plants out straight from the pots and weighed them. In uni I know that when they conduct similar experiments on plant matter they dry the plant material first in these 'ovens' and then weigh the dry plant material. Dont know if this would have affected the results if you would have dried the plants first?

 

Anyone else see this episode or use music in the grow rooms? If you do a Google search there's heaps of info you get but its all conflicting. Feel free to comment no matter how 'whacky' you think the topic of plants and music is or your theories-just have to go to change the station in my grow area from classical to something harder...

[Doob]

Already a thread for this topic.

[sydneyguy]

Thanks didnt know about that ! Didnt go back far enough when checking previous posts! Sorry guys for the repeat in topic !

[BentBuddha]

I saw this episode too. (sorry, too lazy to look for the previous thread).

Interesting that the plants liked heavy metal. I'm not sure if plants respond well just because of kind words as such, over a tape recorder, or if it it would be better to be there personally saying nice things to them. I believe for that experiment to work, the plants need real human interaction using kind words, and the vibes we give off while doing it. I mean, would you feel better someone saying genuine nice things to you, or a pre recorded tape? Food for thought

[leafy]

Hey I wonder what would happen if you played plants cyprus hill, 'hits from the bong' 24/7 for a year?

[pipeman]

in terms of personal gardens I reckon plants that get music will do better. not because of the music, because their owners are obsessive gardeners who do everything they can to optimise the grow environment. a careless, lazy gardener wouldn't play music to their plants

[RobbieGanjaSeed]

I remember that mythbuster show withthe plants, and like many things they do it was really rough. And not only rough, I think their conclusions deny the "outcomes" they themselves establish.

 

Anyway as for the program which showed heavy rock being more productive to pea plants, they made many growing errors which in my view nulified the entire experiment, none the least being that at least one group of plants were water starved for days, and barely alive at time of weigh in. It was a while ago now so I can't recall exactly what, but they made some fundamental mistake for growing peas too, which was the test subject. Maybe it was the wrong season? I forget now. But having the watering system stuff up, near killing one batch should have seen a re-start at least.

 

The show can be entertaining, but their results shouldn't be taken any more seriously than any other knocked together Tv show. That's how I see the show anyway.

 

cheers

rob

[Indycar]

I always had intentions of bunging a radio in me cab 'n dialing it into ABC Classical.

 

Must get around to it one day...

 

[BudMan]

I saw a thing on this many years ago when i was a kid. It showed that plants respond to positive sounds like softer music. I remember they had 1 speaker with hard rock & 1 with like opera type stuff & the plants grew towards the softer 1.

They also did a test with red & blue light & found that the plant grew better under blue celefane (was just over a light cover) than the red.