Electricity and Plant Growth: J. J. Broomall’s Experiments with Seeds

Published in the Bulletin of the American Dahlia Society as “Growing Plants by Electricity” (January 1929)

By J. J. Broomall

Original text by J. J. Broomall is in the public domain. Compilation, editorial notes, introduction, biography, and revised text copyright © 2026 by Steve K. Lloyd. All rights reserved.

In Growing Plants by Electricity, J. J. Broomall turns from dahlia breeding and cultivation to one of his more speculative interests: whether electrical energy might accelerate plant growth, influence germination, or eventually provide new methods of insect and disease control.

The essay is valuable less as a reliable account of plant physiology than as a record of Broomall’s experimental temperament. He distinguishes between results he believed he had observed and an important problem he explicitly says he had “DID NOT FIND OUT” how to solve. From there, however, observation increasingly gives way to conjecture. Greenhouse seed germination after a rainstorm becomes evidence, in his interpretation, of atmospheric electricity; the same reasoning then leads him toward claims about human vitality, insect control, and even possible medical applications.

An earlier 1926 essay contains Broomall’s statement that he had caused seeds ordinarily requiring one to four weeks to germinate within twenty-four hours. That earlier passage does not identify electricity, the seed involved, a collaborator, or an experimental method. It may be related to the experiments described here, but the surviving evidence does not establish that the two accounts describe the same experiment.

The text below follows the January 1929 bulletin publication, the most secure complete witness of this essay.

I believe that the time is not far distant when the plant growing industry will be revolutionized, when it will be possible to plant vegetable seeds one week and eat the vegetables the next week. Possibly you think that I am dreaming, that such a thing is impossible, but remember that we are living in an age when much that for centuries has been regarded as impossible has become actual fact.

If someone had told you ten years ago that you would be able to sit in your own home and hear a person many miles away blow out a candle, or whisper, or even breathe, without any connection whatever except the electric waves in the atmosphere, you certainly would have thought that such a person was dreaming. But now all we have to do is to turn a button on a small box and that dream becomes a reality.

Having been connected with some experiments in growing plants by electricity I have learned enough to convince me that it is going to be possible to grow many plants in a fraction of the time that is now required to grow them without the aid of electricity.

The young man that I assisted in the experiments knew very little about plants. I knew much less about electricity, but we succeeded in finding out that it was possible TO CONVERT DRY SEEDS INTO GROWING PLANTS WITHIN 24 HOURS AFTER PLANTING; that plants would stand an extraordinary heavy voltage passing through them without any apparent injury to the plants; but that a steady pressure of the current had no effect on the plant and did not hasten its growth in the least; that there must be a vibration of the current to produce the desired effect.

What we DID NOT FIND OUT was how to produce the necessary vibration or “frequency” without injuring the meter, interfering with nearby radios, or wrecking or burning up the apparatus used in causing the vibrations that was producing such astonishing results.

There is no doubt in my mind but that this question will be solved in the not far distant future. I believe if such an expert as Edison would turn his attention to the possibilities of plant life that the problem would soon be satisfactorily worked out.

According to the Popular Science Monthly the Germans are succeeding in growing vegetables and grain by the means of masts quite a number of feet up in the air, on the top of which are antennae which draw the electricity from the air and conduct it to the growing plants. If the illustrations were correct their success would appear to be phenomenal.

But here, as elsewhere, I believe that Nature points the way to a satisfactory solution. A year or two ago I remember reading about a society of very learned men in England who had a debate as to “Why plants grew better in rainy weather,” and they finally came to the conclusion that it was because the rain-water carried the electricity into the plants.

Now, it may appear egotistical for me to question the decision of those learned gentlemen, but my own experience causes me to think that their decision was incorrect as far as the rain water is concerned.

I have planted a great many Dahlia seed in my time. Generally when I have planted Dahlia seed the first seed would appear above ground about five or six days after planting, and from then on a few more, probably less than five per cent, would appear each succeeding day.

It sometimes happened about this time we would have a heavy rain storm. I would be surprised, and agreeably so, upon entering the greenhouse the following morning to find apparently all or nearly all of the remaining seeds pushing through the ground at once, fairly lifting the surface soil in their efforts to get above ground.

Now, what do you suppose caused those seeds to get such a move on all at once? There can be but one possible answer, ELECTRICITY, and the electricity was not carried into those plants by rain water because the rain water could not get to them. Moreover, they were wet by water from the hydrant before the rain arrived.

Hence I have concluded that the only way that the electricity could reach those plants was THROUGH THE WALLS OF THE GREENHOUSE in much the same manner that the electric waves enter your receiving sets regardless of the walls of your house.

Nature had supplied the necessary vibration to cause those seeds to act simultaneously and immediately, and Nature did not stop there. Those electric waves went through your body, and that is the reason you feel good after a rain storm.

Of course in this Southland a rain that is worth millions of dollars to the country makes us feel good anyway, but our enjoyment is still greater if our bodies are “tuned in.”

Plants are sometimes weakened by being forced by artificial heat. Plants grown by electricity are not weakened. In fact it seems to add to their vitality and vigor of growth.

And here is another thing that may be worth millions when it is worked out in a practical way. Plants will stand without injury many times the amount of electricity that would be fatal to insect life, and I believe that it will eventually solve the problem of controlling many insect pests.

Furthermore, it is reasonable to assume that electricity may be successfully used to destroy disease germs in the human body without injury to the patient.

While readers may not agree with all my conclusions I trust that what I have written may cause others to do some thinking along the lines discussed.

J. J. Broomall
Eagle Rock, California.

1. The earlier twenty-four-hour germination claim. In The Mission of the Dahlia of December 17, 1926, Broomall stated that he had demonstrated the possibility of germinating seeds within twenty-four hours when they ordinarily required one to four weeks or longer. The passage has been verified against the newspaper page image. It does not identify electricity, the kind of seed, a collaborator, or the experimental procedure. Although the shared twenty-four-hour result makes a relationship possible, the surviving evidence does not establish that the 1926 statement and the electrical experiment described here concern the same experiment.

2. Observation and interpretation. Broomall’s descriptions of rapid germination, rainstorms, atmospheric electricity, plant vigor, insect mortality, and possible medical applications record his own observations and conclusions. They are preserved here as historical claims and should not be read as statements of modern scientific consensus.

3. Publication state. The December 1928 newspaper and January 1929 bulletin versions preserve the same substantive composition. The bulletin version is used here because it survives as the cleaner and more secure complete witness. A minor newspaper-level difference involving “less than 6%” rather than the bulletin’s “less than five per cent” concerns ordinary background dahlia-seed emergence, not the electrical experiment itself.