Do Electrified Plants Grow Faster? Let's Find Out!

[Emilya Green]

Yep, you read that right...

There has been some talk about whether or not, applying a charge to the soil will make a difference in the grow. Some have made claims of accelerated growth and even a driving away of all bugs. We are going to attempt to find out.

First, I selected two identical clones of approximately the same size. One has been labeled "control" and the other has had aluminum electrodes inserted in the soil at the edge of the cup on opposite sides, about 2/3 of the way to bottom of the soil.

A single 5" solar cell capable of putting out about a 1/2 volt at a fairly good amperage was chosen to be the power source. At table height approximately .1v was produced. When we used a paper towel roll and a couple of solo cups taped together to halve the distance, the inverse square law was seen and the voltage doubled. At the present height, approximately .228 v is being produced during the 12-1 hours that the lights are on.

We should be able to see if there is a difference between this plant and the 8 around it, one of them being our control. The plants just got their second watering, this time with a 3 day AACT teeming with microlife.

 

[Mr. Krip]

I'm in! +REPS for the controlled testing!

 

[dr.h00k]

......h00k...

 

[COgrower]

This is an interesting experiment, I will stick around and see the results.

 

[Kriaze]

Subbed up, interesting experiment

 

[AngryBird]

I need to get a better camera
It looks good

 

[Sneakygreen]

Interesting I'm down to see this out

 

[AngryBird]

Interesting I'm down to see this out

Yes it is
We had the discussion in my journal and I have been adding some to my plants too Emilya is and "old timer" with this. When I researched about the idea her name came up in older threads in different forum. That is why I spoke to her when starting !!

 

[photos]

Subbed very interesting E

 

[Densenug]

Got a see, Thanks for posting Emilya

 

[Emilya Green]

Alright my duckies... some early results are in. It is undeniable what I am seeing... 8 plants, including the control have their leaves at about half staff... they look fine.

Our electro powered girl however has her leaves up, in full transpiration mode. She is obviously busier than her sisters.

Here they are, from the top and the side.

 

[AngryBird]

This is what we noticed too in our Deep Cheese with 12 V .. stretched up double than before !

 

[HeyWilbur]

Fascinating. I'm in Emilya.

 

[Mr. Krip]

Alright my duckies... some early results are in. It is undeniable what I am seeing... 8 plants, including the control have their leaves at about half staff... they look fine.

Our electro powered girl however has her leaves up, in full transpiration mode. She is obviously busier than her sisters.

Here they are, from the top and the side.

Very interesting!!!

As I was about to make another joke that I would be stretching for the sky and wetting myself, too, if you applied electrodes to me ( ) it occurred to me that what you're experiencing MAY play into some of Doc Buds' science, too.

In the original post of his HBB journal, he mentions:

So, here's what I'm learning at the moment.

In my quest for the stickiest, best tasting weed possible, I'm experimenting with different forms of nitrogen and changing the ionic balance in the soil.

Nitrates are readily available to the plant, but they also leach out of the soil easily with watering. Ammoniacal nitrogen (NH4) is different. It has a positive charge, whereas the nitrate (NO3) has a negative charge. Cation is positive, Anion is negative.

NH4 is captured by particles in the soil and are stored there until the roots and mycorrhizae on the roots break them loose and feed them to the plant.

When you feed with strongly cationic forms of nitrogen, like Ammonium sulfate or ammonium phosphate, you get these cations and it stimulates reproductive growth from the plant.

The question is when to add this?

So, I added at the onset of bloom on these plants and immediately noticed more triches than I'd ever seen before, right off the bat.

At the same time, I've also noticed that the buds aren't swelling as much as usual for these strains. So I'm hoping to change that by getting the soil back into the anionic range a bit, by feeding with Calcium Nitrate, which is rather unique.

Calcium is a very powerful cation, which will dislodge the NH4 and also boost calcium in the plants. The nitrate is readily available to the plant as well. This will very slightly favor reproductive growth and should bulk up the flowers a bit.

Next cycle, which is 3 weeks behind this one, I'm going to bulk up the buds first and then hit them with the cations and see what happens.

Perhaps the two of you are achieving SOME of the same results using two entirely different methods to effect the ionic charge of the medium?

P.S. I need to spread some more +REPS around, I guess, before I dislodge more on you, but I'll be back!

 

[Croatsan]

Fascinating. I'm in Emilya.

Fascinating. What a difference a comma makes

 

[Emilya Green]

Fascinating. What a difference a comma makes

in deed.

Very interesting!!!

As I was about to make another joke that I would be stretching for the sky and wetting myself, too, if you applied electrodes to me ( ) it occurred to me that what you're experiencing MAY play into some of Doc Buds' science, too.

In the original post of his HBB journal, he mentions:

(INSERT)

Perhaps the two of you are achieving SOME of the same results using two entirely different methods to effect the ionic charge of the medium?

P.S. I need to spread some more +REPS around, I guess, before I dislodge more on you, but I'll be back!

Yes, I was having similar thoughts, and also wondering if the electricity is helping break apart the bonds by breaking apart the water and adding both free hydrogen and oxygen molecules as a catalyst in reactions. Something is happening for sure. It is also fascinating to me how little voltage is needed to see this happen.

 

[Mr. Krip]

in deed.



Yes, I was having similar thoughts, and also wondering if the electricity is helping break apart the bonds by breaking apart the water and adding both free hydrogen and oxygen molecules as a catalyst in reactions. Something is happening for sure. It is also fascinating to me how little voltage is needed to see this happen.

I'm sure some electrolysis has to be taking place. Here's a study you'll appreciate (I think! ):

Magnetic and electric effects on water

Note the following:

High fields affect hydrogen bonding in an anisotropic manner, hydrogen bonds being strengthened along the field but weakened orthogonal to the field [582]. At low fields, however, both translational and rotational motions may be reduced. Electric fields are expected to increase the differences in the properties between the ortho and para forms of water [1186]. Electric fields also lower the dielectric constant of the water [616], due to the resultant partial or complete destruction of the hydrogen-bonded network.

So, of course, I started to look into the ortho and para forms of water which led to this:

ortho-Water and para-Water

And, that's when my head exploded!

I read a lot of stuff on rotational spin of the molecules (much of which was WAAAAAY over my little head!) and boiled it all down to:

Para-H2O does not interact with an external magnetic field, but ortho-H2O does.

and

This means that liquid H2O effectively consists of a mixture of non-identical molecules and the properties of pure liquid ortho-H2O or para-H2O are unknown. The differences in the properties of these two forms of water are expected to be greater in an electric field [1186], which may be imposed externally, from surfaces or from water clustering itself. Many materials preferentially adsorb para-H2O due to its non-rotation ground state [410, 835].

I have no clue, however, how or what kind of effect this would have on the plants so tend to think it may have been a bit of a red herring.

Maybe you can get more from that info than I was able to???

 

[Weaselcracker]

If this works very well it's going to be cool. But annoying to have to implement... One of those things you kinda wish you hadn't discovered.

 

[TheFertilizer]

Okay so I am going to preface this by saying I'm not a chemist and I'm not trying to sound like a know it all but...

I'm pretty sure it's creating an abundance of hydrogen. Probably in combination with a lot of other reactions too, but I am saying this because I have seen people generate hydrogen by passing a DC current through a water. Given that the soil is generally saturated, one would have to assume that the same kind of reaction is taking place in the soil with the water and the current creating increased levels of hydrogen. Again I gotta say I'm not a big chemistry whiz, because my source for this is the Mythbusters lol They did a show testing "free energy" myths where some design basically had an electrolysis setup to generate hydrogen. In their myth they were seeing if it would produce enough hydrogen to power a car, you can probably guess the outcome, but anyway I think this is one thing you can probably check off as a definite reaction and probably verify with some Google'ing. Anyway they did show that it did produce some amount of hydrogen, and I wouldn't be surprised if that had a greater effect on something like a plant than a car engine...

So I thought that might be a useful mention. Pretty cool experiment! I am sure there's a way more complex reaction taking place here but I don't doubt there's a measurable effect. it's pretty simple science, adding that energy is a catalyst of some form that's causing a chemical reaction. I wonder when the effects stop becoming positive and become negative, and wonder if it's effecting the soil life or the plant itself. I'm going to guess it's the former.

I wonder how a hydro setup would do... DC-DWC

 

[Mr. Krip]

Okay so I am going to preface this by saying I'm not a chemist and I'm not trying to sound like a know it all but...

I'm pretty sure it's creating an abundance of hydrogen. Probably in combination with a lot of other reactions too, but I am saying this because I have seen people generate hydrogen by passing a DC current through a water. Given that the soil is generally saturated, one would have to assume that the same kind of reaction is taking place in the soil with the water and the current creating increased levels of hydrogen. Again I gotta say I'm not a big chemistry whiz, because my source for this is the Mythbusters lol They did a show testing "free energy" myths where some design basically had an electrolysis setup to generate hydrogen. In their myth they were seeing if it would produce enough hydrogen to power a car, you can probably guess the outcome, but anyway I think this is one thing you can probably check off as a definite reaction and probably verify with some Google'ing. Anyway they did show that it did produce some amount of hydrogen, and I wouldn't be surprised if that had a greater effect on something like a plant than a car engine...

So I thought that might be a useful mention. Pretty cool experiment! I am sure there's a way more complex reaction taking place here but I don't doubt there's a measurable effect. it's pretty simple science, adding that energy is a catalyst of some form that's causing a chemical reaction. I wonder when the effects stop becoming positive and become negative, and wonder if it's effecting the soil life or the plant itself. I'm going to guess it's the former.

I wonder how a hydro setup would do... DC-DWC

Actually, the electrolysis is breaking the H2O into BOTH hydrogen AND oxygen and, if the electrolysis is the cause of the increased growth, I would think it would be more due to the additional oxygen in the soil than hydrogen.

However, I think there's still a question of whether or not the growth is due, in whole or in part, to the additional oxygen/hydrogen, or is something else happening due to the ionic charge of the soil?