Plants appear to love electricity.

Look at these pictures below. All these plants are thriving on those wires, they actually grow towards them and climb on them. They look healthy and appear to enjoy whatever it is that they get from the wires.

So, what is it that they get from the wires? Most of these wires are telephone cables, they usually transmit voice signal and provide 48V DC to power landline phones. It is this 48V DC that is attractive to the plants. They climb and coil around the wires and absorb as much as they can of the electromagnetic field generated by the 48V passing through the wires. This energy boosts the plant’s sap flow bringing more nutrients from the roots to all the parts of the plants. See a full explanation of the process in this page.

You could call this phenomena an “involuntary case of electroculture”. We don’t call it electroculture just because we are not willingly doing it, but it proves that the plants are drawn to electricity and that it has a positive effect on them. We should learn from this and replicate it in our gardens. How?

Traditionally there are two ways: passive devices like antennas that gather electricity from the atmosphere, or active devices that use a man made power source. Both work on the same principles, the only difference is the source of the electric charge.

This case, with the plants growing towards and on the wires could be considered equivalent to an active electroculture device, and is very easy to replicate in our gardens. For instructions on how to build it, go to this page.