People keep trying to figure out the ways to make their plants grow faster or stronger. We tried to provide enough sunshine and water for them. But last week, when I bought two plants from the farmers market, my friends told me that I should play music to plants. I thought they were just kidding but I still find some information about this online. It is true! I had been published before. Some people believe playing music to plants is one of the ways to makes plants grow stronger.

Dorothy Retallack is one of the people who lead the experiments. She did the experiments many times. She play varies kinds of music to find out which kind of music can affect plants to grow better. In every experiment, she prepared three chambers with the same conditions, and the only difference is the music that played in the chambers are different. She first found out the best way to play music is play it three hours per day. And then she tried rock music, soothing music, steel drum, North Indian classical music, Bach organ music, and so on. She found out that if plants like the music, they will grow toward the speaker and grow healthier and more beautiful. On the other hand, if the plants dislike the music, they will try to “run” away from the speaker, and they will grow smaller than average, and most likely have shorter lifespan.

Doing experiments several times might reduce the mistakes. I think this experiment is reliable, because she had most of the variables controlled, and there is not much lurking variable left. She eliminated the third variable by doing this experiment. In the description I found, there is not much details about variables other than the music, but if she is famous researcher, her chambers should be identical.

Besides, scientists have study whether there is communication among plants. It was a study placed in a remote school and they “played classical music for several months for tomato and potato plants until the day of harvest”. They compare these plants to those plants grow without music. The result shows that music can make the plants grow stronger.

This study seems to be reliable but the third variable might exist, which has an impact to the growth of the plants. But overall, from the studies above, there are correlation between playing the music to plants and the growth of the plants. As a good plant owner, it is not bad to treat your plants as a human. Play the music for your plants!