Should I Sing to My Plants?

I use to think my dad was goofy when he told me that he talks to his garden to make it grow better, until I started reading about vibration and frequency.  There have been actual studies to determine if the resonance and frequency of our voice changes living organisms.  So I wondered, should I sing to my plants to make them grow? 

All living organisms including DNA, plants, animals and humans, vibrate and have frequency according to science. 

In a 2007, scientists from the South Korea National Institute of Agricultural Biotechnology believe that two genes, rbcS and Ald are turned on by music that is played at 70 decibels, which also happens to be the same level of a normal conversation.  These researchers found that the plant’s response was different depending on the frequency of the sound.  The higher the frequency, the more active the gene response.

Mythbusters decided to test to see if words really mattered when it came to growing plants, this is what they found:  The team charted the plants’ growth over 60 days. Afterward, the MythBusters determined the winning greenhouse by comparing plant masses from the three groups. To their surprise, the silent greenhouse performed poorest, producing lower biomass and smaller pea pods than the other two. Although there was no difference in plant quality between the nice greenhouse and the mean greenhouse, the soundtracks seemed to produce a positive effect in both.

 [Keeping reading for the opposite effect from the study below…]

Sound does then affect cell metabolism… but how does the type of music we listen to affect our own cells and does it change our DNA?  In another study done in 1973, Dorothy Retallack conducted experiments at the Colorado Woman’s College using the school’s Biotronic Control Chambers.  She placed plants in each chamber and played different sounds and styles of music. One chamber was radio tuned into rock music, the other tuned into more soothing music.  Only three hours of music was played in each chamber.  On the fifth day, there were drastic changes.  In the chamber with the soothing music, the plants grew healthily with their stems bending towards the radio. Within two weeks, the plants were uniform in size and were lush and green.  In the rock chamber, half of the plants had small leaves and had grown gangly while others were stunted.  Two weeks later, they had grown extremely tall and were drooping. The blooms faded and the stems were bending away from the radio.  On the sixteen day, most of the plants were dying.  In the “soothing” chamber, plants were alive, beautiful and growing.

I think these studies are very interesting.  I now don’t think that singing or talking to plants are such a weird thing anymore. Epigenetics is the study of cellular and physiological phenotypic trait variations that can be caused by external factors and can switch genes on and off.   It looks like our voice and music does indeed affect plant growth and even our bodies, so I guess we better all start singing for better health!

For further reading, check out my post Can Music Heal The Body which addresses how water changes with sound as well as free music downloads.