Evidence level: Named third-party grower report, not a controlled study. Originally published January 2014, describing a garden trial run over the summer of 2013 by Bill Perry, a St. Louis home gardener David was advising at the time.
What was done
Bill added a simple electrical system — a 5V/550mA DC wall-adapter unit with buried nail electrodes — to one side of his roughly 25×14 ft front-yard garden, growing tomatoes, eggplant, broccoli, peppers, and chard.
What was observed
Plants closest to the positive electrode (about 8 feet away at the most pronounced point) grew noticeably taller and larger than plants farther away in the same garden. The effect was visible across multiple crops — tomatoes, broccoli, and eggplant all showed the same distance-based pattern, with growth amplification falling off as distance from the electrode increased.
Limitations
- No separate control plot. The comparison is a gradient within one garden, not electrified vs. unelectrified beds planted and tended identically.
- Qualitative, not measured. Height and leaf-area differences were assessed visually and photographically, not with a tape measure or yield scale.
- Single grower, single season, uncontrolled home-garden conditions. Sun exposure, soil variation, and watering could all have varied across the garden independent of the electrode.
Preserved because it’s a real, named, independently-documented account — see Experiments for current trials with formal controls, and Research for the evidence-graded findings library.