“It’s sexy and I grow it…” Plants and their love for music
Yabadabadoo!
Happy Wednesday, my loves! 🌿
A few weeks ago, I started a small plant nursery on our balcony with nothing but a few empty egg cups, a handful of soil (literally scooped out from our front-yard garden), and the dream to be a ‘Jungle Mama’. 🧝♀️
Green-thumbed friends gifted us basil babies, spider plants (who, by the way, are one of nature’s best inventions to reduce electromagnetic radiation around you), and a variety of mint seedlings to kick-start the project. Since those rather humble beginnings, I have accelerated my gardening skills, and am now the proud owner of 7 gigantic flower pots, 10 kilogram of manure, a polka-dotted watering can, and a growing army of new green friends. Yipiieh! 🌱
Oops… I wet my plants!
It brings me immense joy to look after those little guys every day. While it’s old news that gardening has therapeutic effects, I love the fact that my chlorophyll-kids remind me to just be in the NOW, and do my thing. 🤗
So I talk and sing to them; I have given them names; and yes, they also get a little concert every day. Am I crazy? Most probably yes! The results, however, speak for themselves: they shoot up like they want to grow straight to the moon. 🤸♂️
The beginning of my gardening journey: Mini spearmint and peppermint plants in egg cups, not bigger than a few centimetres.
The hippies were right: It’s all about the vibe!
While plants might not have ears, they do have skin that reacts to the environment around them – pretty much like us (or didn’t you get goose bumps while watching “Dark” on Netflix?). We humans operate our world with the help of seeing, smelling, touching, hearing and tasting, and thus, plants use their own complex sensory systems to react against external influences such as wind, sun, rain, insect attacks - or humans with bad taste in music. 😅
Plants enjoy Western as well as Indian classical compositions.
It was Indian botanist Dr. T. C. Singh, Head of the Botany Department at Annamalai University (Tamil Nadu), who conducted one of the first experiments about the effects of music on plants in 1962. His findings were amazing:
1. Balsam flowers accelerated by 20% in height and 72% in mass when they listened to Western as well as Indian classical music (Ragas). 🌺
2. The size of field crops increased up to 60% after Singh entertained them with a private Raga concert - a gramophone and loudspeakers included. 🌾
3. He also experimented on the effects of vibrations caused by bare-footed dancing using Bharata-Natyam, India’s most ancient dance style, which has no musical accompaniment, on marigold plants. And can you ‘be-leaf’ it? They flowered two weeks earlier than expected! 🌸
You grow, girl!
Sound waves enter the plant through sensors in the skin and produce movement in the cells which further stimulates the production of growth-relevant nutrients. The result: Bigger, better, Badaboom! 🤗
If you are a fan of heavy guitar riffs and scream-like vocals, however, and you still want your greenies to blossom in peace, then you are advised to listen to your favourite tunes with headphones. Many experiments show that plants really don’t like any kind of rock – they would rather die. 🧟♂️
Music is the strongest form of magic.
To entertain your leafy friends, I compiled a YouTube playlist called “Music for Plants”. 🌿 From George Gershwin's famous "Rhapsody in Blue”, Mozart’s “Kleine Nachtmusik”, and Ravi Shankar’s album “The Origins”, these tracks are specially designed growth-stimulating frequency sounds. Plants love vibrations that are happy, rhythmic, and calm. And don’t we all deserve a peaceful sound shower today, too? 💖
It’s party thyme!
So no matter if you tune into your favourite tracks, or explore new musical gems together with your little green babies, the point is: Just Press Play! 💃And because sharing music is pretty much the same as sharing love, here is one amazing track I can’t get enough of these days.
Wherever life plants you, bloom with grace.
Just follow nature’s advice, and look towards the light today! I highly suggest you start a small nursery yourself, and become BFFs with your new leafy roommates. 🤗 They will not only bring you joy but hope - and we all need a bit of both these days.
As always, I am rooting for you! ☘️ You are amazing. 💖
With love from Goa,
Isabelle 🌿
