Playing music for your peppers

[SadisticPeppers]

I know this would seem like a crazy subject, but do any of you play some kind of music for your peppers?

I recall several studies being done that say music actually helps plants grow better and faster, etc. The Mythbusters, for instance, said heavy metal (no pun intended) was the best, while other studies said classical music. So that being said, if any of you do play music, what do you play?

 

[yorees]

This is a very interesting topic to bring up. I think that there are some unexplained and explained controversies about this subject but long story short I do think that there could be an increase in growth by playing music, I always thought that when you talked to a plant the carbon dioxide was what helped it grow but it could be more than that. I don't play music to my plants but I play it around them perhaps I'll further look into that!

 

[jsschrstrcks]

I play podcasts from wisdomonline.org while working with my plants. They seem to do pretty well.

 

[POTAWIE]

Check these threads

http://www.thehotpepper.com/topic/4469-best-music-to-play-for-plants/
http://www.thehotpepper.com/topic/15857-playing-music-for-your-plants/page__hl__music__fromsearch__1

 

[AlabamaJack]

mine get a steady diet of old country honkytonk and Texas music...a little SRV never hurt anything...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VsHXd4rQnW0&feature=related

......actually anything country that ISN'T Nashville...I hate cookie cutters that are out there just to make money...yeah, she thinks my tractor's sexy is a real deep thought provoking line Kenny Chesney...you bet your ass I will call you out any day, any time...

 

[synclinorium]

I kind of wonder if some sort of mechanical stimulation is what's at play here... anything with a nice baseline should do nicely if this is the case.

...

*puts on dubstep*

 

[Burning Colon]

here is another link.

http://www.thehotpepper.com/topic/18914-do-plants-grow-better-to-music/page__hl__sonic

so, i actually played the sonic bloom, along with ravi shanker and several other himalayan chant CD's and i mixed in wildlife natural music(bird chirps and waterfalls - no whale sounds) and frequency sounds. i mixed it all up in a playlist and put it on a dedicated computer. the music played at least 16-18 hours a day(except days the wife wanted to use the computer room - east indian music is not her cup of tea and i think michael bolton would have stunted my plants growth). at first, the computer would lock up some time throughout the day. so, i loaded a different operating system(linux based) and that fixed the problem of the computer locking.

did i see the monsterous growth as describe by the sonic bloom people. no. did it hurt anything, not really but now i get these occasional desires to burn incense and chant.

one could question the my experiment, like, was the computer producing the necessary frequencies required for optimal plant growth, where the stand alone speakers i used up to par in delivering the frequencies or were they too inadequate. was the sound reflected properly in the 20' X 12' room. along with sound was a fan also required to stimulate the plants. was there enough light. was i feeding the plants properly. was the growing environment adequate.

 

[Capsicum]

"The Mythbusters, for instance, said heavy metal (no pun intended) was the best, while other studies said classical music"

The results from mythbusters could not be any more vague.

 

[synclinorium]

It's difficult to make real science sexy. You have to fudge it a little to keep people interested.

http://xkcd.com/683/

The problem with studies like this is being able to keep the growing conditions identical between your sample populations and only varying the amount of your chosen variable, and even then having only one or two plants per sample is hardly conclusive. On possible setup is to have a large room filled with plants using the same light, nutes, soil, and everything else, and have a sound source blasting in one corner of the room, that way you could monitor the sound received at various points in the room and test your sound intensity against various aspects of your plants, such as height, stem diameter, leaf length, time to flower, etc, while also monitoring the moisture content and bulk density of your soil, as you would expect the continual vibrations may increase the rate of evaporation and decrease the available pore space as the material settles. The effect would probably be minor, but it needs to be considered.

THEN you can test and see if sound itself has any effect on plant growth. Assuming I haven't forgotten anything...