Electroculture Gardening
washingtonpost.comSticking aerials in the soil seems so unlikely to work. Even theoretically, an aerial would mostly be picking up human transmissions, resulting in vanishingly small voltages/currents in the soil. If there is indeed an effect, why not just use a fixed source/oscillator and find the optimal parameters. I think i need to try this myself, on the outside chance there is some effect.
On further thought, there is something simple that might be going on here. If each plant is sensitive to the electrical activity of other plants, it might not matter exactly what that activity is. The plant could be interpreting it as a signal that another plant is close, and that it needs to outcompete it, making it grow taller with bigger leaves, but because that "other plant" isn't actually there, there's nothing to compete for the nutrients.
It's not electricity or electric fields the plants react but chemicals.
Honestly, I really think the effect could be just some kind of galvanic effect.
Potting soil is moist, has a non-neutral Ph, and has trace metals hanging out. So if you stick a zinc-coated or copper wire in that, it'll probably start to react in some way. So the effect may still be "electric", in a sense, but not by harvesting "free energy" from the environment. Also, ions directly from this galvanic affect might be working like a kind of fertilizer by being more bio-available somehow (I am not a botanist).
> why not just use a fixed source/oscillator and find the optimal parameters
Exactly. Don't leave it to chance and figure out what's viable. Also: use something unlikely to chemically react with the soil.
I think it's more likely that there's a chemical effect from the copper, somehow. Maybe it nukes algae that would otherwise be competing for nutrients?
They also said that artificial lightning strikes improved mushroom growth.
So, it doesn't seem to be directly related to plants at all.
That could easily be a different effect. Lightning strikes are going to give off all sorts of interesting chemicals that you wouldn't get just with electric fields.
The comment on mushrooms and lightning strikes stood out to me as well. My first idea was that lightning arcs might make nitrogen more available by generating nitric oxides?
It might also simply sterilize an area, allowing fast spreading fungi to temporarily dominate in the absence of normal biological competitors.
I've heard of using copper coins in the water of cut flowers to spruce them up.
In the article they talk about using artificial electromagnetic fields as an alternative to sticking random antennas in the soil, which apparently works well too
Here's a study where healing of wounds is three times faster using electric fields applied to the wound site: https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2023/LC/D2LC0...
Cell movement seems to be impacted by electricity in humans. Perhaps the same is true for plants, and can be part of the explanation behind this?
(Easier to digest version of the link, but in Swedish: https://www.chalmers.se/aktuellt/nyheter/mc2-sa-kan-elektric...)
There aren't any batteries or electricity here. There's just copper wire. There's no appreciable electric field, just a wire that is at best absorbing some ambient radio waves and heating up incredibly slightly.
Doesn't make sense.
Your paper references a highly controlled field on a chip.
Those metal rods are plugged into earth. They don't do anything particular in regards of electronic fields.
Many organisms are sensitive to electrical charge, including types of spiders that use it to fly to distant locations. It’s possible that plants may use it as a signal of coming rain intensity?
I have noticed something quite interesting: in my nursery, actual rain stimulates germination, leaf formation, flowering, and budding in a way that collected rainwater applied over identical timeframes in identical quantities using sprinklers that approximate rain drop physics fails to do. Well-water performs roughly the same as collected rainwater.
I’m speculating that there is some other signal present with actual rain that is lacking in the surrogate process. It could easily be electrical charge.
I’m not sure whether I truly want clarification on this or not, but
> including types of spiders that use it to fly to distant locations.
Really?
I need to leave this planet.
They are only tiny little things. They let out a long piece of silk, something like a meter or two, and thats long enough with enough drag to lift them away.
Now, if you have a fear of all spiders, I feel for you. If you have a fear of big fuckoff spiders, I can assure you that these are tiny, smaller than a pin head.
Yeah I’ve got a fear of big fuck off spiders, thankfully I’m in England so nothing major, but as we approach winter plenty of house spiders are going to appear out of the cracks!
It's called "ballooning"; only done by basically newborn tiny spiders, that string out some silk which is light enough to be affected by wind or electrostatic effects.
Fascinating, I wonder if there’s some evolutionary advantage for this, maybe spreading out more so they don’t encroach on each others territories from an early age and make their own home?
The blue giant tarantula of Hispaniola climbs to the tops of trees to absorb electrical charge from nearby thunderstorms, jumping down onto unsuspecting prey and stunning it with their electrical charge before injecting it with venom.
This allows them to attack much larger prey like spider monkeys and chickens, which they liquify on the inside with their venom, a kind of external digestive process.
After the liquefaction is well under way with the venom paralyzed prey, they suck out the nutrient rich liquid, often sharing the hapless victim with sister tarantulas from the same nest.
Thankfully, blue giant tarantulas are entirely a figment of my imagination.
I was totally prepared to avoid checking because it’s too good of a story to ruin with a misguided insistence on facts. And then you ruined it. For shame.
I couldn't read past the third paragraph out of fear. I'm resigning myself to live in a world of giant, flying, electrified, blue tarantulas.
Don't worry, they are small and only fly just far enough to land in your mouth as you sleep.
Hahaha as I said in another comment, impressive protein gains overnight!
Yup, real thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballooning_(spider)
Here's where I mention the old wives tale of spiders crawling into your nice warm holes while you sleep.
(That was meant to come off as creepy, not sexually creepy though)
The protein gains overnight though are impressive I believe
"Many organisms are sensitive to electrical charge..."
Flowers generate electrostatic fields as a kind of 'gas gauge' for available nectar, see:
Detection and Learning of Floral Electric Fields by Bumblebees by Dominic Clarke et al. Science 340, 66 (2013); DOI: 10.1126/science.1230883 http://science.sciencemag.org/content/340/6128/66
https://www.npr.org/2013/02/22/172611866/honey-its-electric-...
While I can't immediately see an obvious physical explanation for what's going on either, that doesn't mean it's not worth investigating. That's how a lot of advances happen. "Hmm, that's odd" happens first, understanding comes later.
I'm with you on this ...
What seems to be happening is a whole lot of anec-data that has various problems which do not allow someone to draw useful conclusions.
The problem a lot of folks have is "We've been planting things in the ground using centuries of study on the subject, something so novel couldn't possibly work!"
Putting together some experiments with a little rigor to try to identify (a) if plants are growing better in this environment and (b) what, specifically, is causing that growth and (c) altering the experiment to focus on that "what" ruling out other possible side-effects[0] would be helpful.
It seems like something that could be done by an amateur as the equipment involved for a lot of this is inexpensive while the upside is huge if it turns out there's something to it.
[0] Specifically the mention of lighting strikes affecting Shitake mushroom growth -- which could be any number of crazy things that happen when lightning strikes something -- would be necessary.
The website doesn't have proof.
The first question would therefore be 'were is the proof'
If they're trying to experiment for real, it seems like there are some pretty obvious experimental controls that should be used which I don't see discussed.
The control plants should have a non-electrical-conducting wire planted in a similar manner. And in fact, another control should use a copper wire that is cut in various places to interrupt the circuit (and reconnected to be rigid with a non-conducting material)
Without those controls, the effect could be simply a chemical interaction with metal as others here are suggesting. Or even just an effect from how the plant is potted with a wire placed in the pot. Maybe the wire just adds air or makes it easier for the roots to grow or something who knows. Interesting.
I remember my grandfather talking about copper-based fertiliser to be used on live trees (iirc), to help growth, and this was in the early 90ies in south Italy, when i was a child.
Dumb question: could it just be that copper rods in the soil are just providing “copper” to the plants in the same field?
Copper sprays are a common anti-fungal and anti-bacterial used for fruit trees.
I don't think it's an electrical thing in this context, but that doesn't rule out some other effect.
Easy to check, just stick some short fragments of rods in soil.
but the electric current may improve dispersion of copper ions through the soil.
>“We didn’t see much difference in the radishes, to be honest, but the cucumbers and tomatoes are showing a great difference,”
Most above ground plants are easy it's the root vegetables that are hard to grow. You pile on nitrogen and the tops of plants grow, even root vegetables' top leaves grow but little of the root. Corn can be a pain it needs a lot of water and even more nitrogen.
Even if you have the perfect amount of nutrients and the pH is good for nutrient distribution a carrot can be stopped by a single pebble in the way or if the soil too compact.
> Espiritu is unconvinced by anecdotes about increased production, he says, because he hasn’t seen any explanation for how an antenna could physically aid a plant’s growth
Meta comment. I'm a software dev but consider myself a scientist, at least in part, and I don't like dismissals like this. It's true we need to understand the underlying mechanisms of things, that's what science is about. It is not (in my view) about this, where we say we have no plausible underlying mechanism so we shouldn't be interested. There are times when we need to take that tack such as with likely crankery[1], but the first thing you do is check it out.
It's not a scientific attitude to say "I can't see how it works so screw it"
> “Does it help it better photosynthesize? Does it help it better uptake nutrients? Does it speed up the cellular metabolism of the plant? No one seems to have that answer,”
As someone else has pointed out, it's been suspected for decades that electric fields affect healing (I remember hearing about this in the 1980s where it was provisionally found to help bone growth in broken bones). There seems to be no plausible mechanism and it may turn out to be false – but it may not. You dismiss after you've taken a look, not before.
Edit: As mentioned, this is a meta comment. It's not about plant growth, it's about the 'right' attitude.
[1] if all perpetual motion machines so far have failed then it's likely the next one isn't going to work either. There is a cost to looking into peculiar things, but a potential benefit as well.
Atmospheric electricity is a very interesting phenomenon. The electric potential difference from the air to the ground increases by about 100 volts per meter of height.
Perhaps this electric field is used by plants as some kind of feedback mechanism telling them how tall they are, and by disrupting that field with an antenna we are somehow tricking the plant into thinking it is taller or shorter than it really is and it responds to that by growing more vigorously.
A wire will cause the air around it to assume the same potential, ie the same as air that is low to the ground. If you are 6" above the top of the wire, the voltage to ground will be the same as 6" above the ground. Note that the wire could be made of anything even slightly conductive, because it just needs to be ~10x better than air. The plant already causes the potential to be zeroed out, just like a human body: https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/II_09.html
Using copper allows you to absorb low frequency radiation like FM radio. Note that you aren't blocking it to any significant degree, since it's just one wire and not a cage. It also isn't causing any voltage on the plant since it's just being absorbed by the wire.
The plant will zero out the potential, presumably because there is a small current through the plant itself. In the presence of a nearby antenna/grounding rod the current through the plant would be significantly lower, since there is a less resistive path to ground.
In the case of my hypothesis, the mechanism I'm describing would likely be somehow tied to the plant's perception of that current.
It's in the range of femtoamps. Current in general is not really very directly measurable, particularly for biology. Instead you do things like measuring voltage across something or magnetic fields.
I think electroculture has potential! :-) When I think of “electroculture” I see locally controlled, patent expired, closed loop mechatronics run by $2 microcontrollers with built in depth cameras pruning wanted plants and trimming out unwanted plants.
Low tech: Bare copper wires supporting plants help the gardener love the plants more by looking pretty and shiny!