This is one of the most widely heard tips about “tricks” to make plants grow faster and healthier and that is based, simply, on the fact that putting music to the plants would favor their growth and have positive effects on their development. . However, is music really good for plants? Does putting music near the pots make the plants grow in less time? Or is it more of a myth than a fact? If you want to know the real effect that music has on plants, keep reading and we will tell you about it.
Why it is said that music is good for plants
It is often said that music is good for achieving specific mental states, as well as for achieving greater concentration or more energy. In fact, listening to music has positive effects on human health, to the point that music therapy is a way to improve the mental health of some patients.
From this, a correlation is made with other living beings, understanding that, in the same way, that music would positively affect the human mind, it would also have the ability to enhance the health of plants and other living beings.
Scientific studies on whether music is good for plants or not
Despite everything that can be said about it, it is important to take into account one fundamental thing, which is that plants do not have a nervous system or a brain as happens with animals like us humans. Thus, the effects that music can have on plants if they do, must be different. In this sense, the best information can be obtained from some scientific studies that have been carried out in order to know a little better how music affects plants, as well as to delve into the specific effects it would have.
These studies are numerous. The first was carried out from the 50s of the 20th century. However, the most conclusive is much more recent, such as those carried out in the first decade of the 21st century. These experiments carried out their work with several working groups with different plants, such as the onion plant or garlic, in addition to seeds of other varieties of edible plants.
After studying the way in which music affects plants, in a unanimous way, all studies reach the conclusion that, indeed, some types of music would have the ability to accelerate the growth and flowering process of plants. However, the explanation given by these scientists does not have much to do with the “healing power” of music that we can apply to ourselves, but with the vibrations it generates. Many plants have evolved to be adapted to the wind of the open air. In this way, the presence of music in the environment where the plant is would emulate the effects of the wind, which would help it to stimulate itself and develop more quickly.
What music is better for plant growth
Another of the results of the various studies that have been carried out to study whether music is good for plants dealt with the type of music that most affects this growth acceleration. In this sense, it was concluded that classical music is the one that contributes the most to plant growth, while music from styles such as pop or rock would have the least effect on growth.
In fact, the classical composers with whom these studies were carried out with the best results regarding flowering were Mozart, Chopin, Mussorgsky, Wagner, Schubert, and Tchaikovsky. The botanist TC Singh’s studies were carried out by putting music by these composers over several weeks for 16 hours a day to a group of plants, while other plants were in the same conditions but without music, which allowed to have two study groups to be able to compare them with each other. After the weeks that the study lasted, the conclusions were that some specimens that had been in contact with classical music had grown up to 66% more than those that had been silent for the same time.
