CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Building, and Staying Safe

This chapter describes the two forms of electroculture that are safe and cheap to try at home, so that you can test them by the method of the last chapter. I describe them as experiments, not as recommendations. It also says clearly what not to build.

The passive antenna

The usual form:

• A wooden dowel or straight branch, three to six feet long.
• Bare solid copper wire, around 12 or 14 gauge, wound in an open spiral from near the bottom to the top, with a few inches left at the base to go into the soil and often a small coil or loop at the tip.
• Set upright in the bed or pot, pushed a few inches into the soil.

Tradition gives many further rules: wind clockwise in the northern hemisphere, align to north, use particular proportions. I know of no evidence that any of them matters, but if you are testing the claim, follow the instructions as its advocates give them, so that no one can say you did it wrong.

Your sham control is the same dowel wound the same way with something non-conductive.

The galvanic pair

• One plate or strip of copper and one of zinc or galvanized steel, each perhaps the size of your hand.
• Bury them upright at opposite ends of a bed or large trough, a few inches deep.
• Join them above ground with a length of insulated copper wire, with good clean connections.

If you own a multimeter, connect it in place of the wire. In moist soil you will read something on the order of half a volt to nearly a volt between the plates, and a current somewhere from microamperes up to a milliampere or so, more when the soil is wet and less as it dries. That reading is the one thing in backyard electroculture you can actually measure, and it is satisfying to see.

Your control is an identical bed with identical plates and no wire.

What not to build

Do not build a high-voltage system. The methods that have real evidence behind them use tens of thousands of volts on bare overhead wires. Supplies capable of that can kill. Improvised versions made from fence energizers, ignition coils, neon transformers or microwave-oven parts are dangerous to you, to children, to pets and to neighbors, and may be illegal. Leave powered electroculture to people with engineering training and proper equipment.

Do not connect anything in the garden to household mains. Not through a transformer, not through a dimmer, not “just to try.”

Other cautions

• Lightning. A tall metal mast in open ground is a lightning attractor. Keep garden antennas short, lower than nearby trees and buildings, and stay out of the garden in a thunderstorm.
• Buried services. Before driving any rod or stake deep into the ground, find out where your gas, water, power and cable lines run. In the United States, call 811.
• Copper build-up. Copper does not break down. Large amounts of bare copper left in the same soil for years can accumulate to levels that harm earthworms and soil life. A few coils are harmless; do not bury pounds of it.
• Eyes. The tip of a wire on a stake is at face height when you bend to weed. Bend the end into a closed loop.