Weed & Waves: Mary Jane’s Favorite Sounds
“ . . . our plants are looking sad, they’re feeling the tension in the house,” I tell my sister as I look towards my sprouting lemon trees and Mary Jane saplings, each drooping, telling me in their way that they could feel mom and dad fighting. Mom and Dad weren’t fighting, we were just dealing with a New Yorker’s favorite time of year, lease renewal (or in our case, lease termination).
“Yeah :/,” My sister says, grabbing her things for work and staring at our windowsill. She didn’t say “:/” but she looked like she was watching her child heal from a broken arm, unable to interfere in one of life’s moments.
My lease termination isn’t the main point, I’m focusing on my three children, affected simply by the vibes in the house in which it lived. Living in a two-family home with a landlord-who-didn’t-want-to-be-a-landlord living right downstairs, my plants faced a variety of environmental shifts that helped or hurt them. In November 2023, my sister and I received a notice from our landlord refusing to renew our lease; we had to move. After a whirlwind of a year, and losing my job literally ten days before, I was sulking around the house taking care of the only thing I felt I had control of, my plants. Even then, they were still not getting the nurture they needed. Feeding off of the house’s energy, my plants had suffered and did not want to grow.
Vibes are vibes; plants feel the energy we emit and react from it, the same way children can tell when mom and dad are fighting. Of course, homeostasis doesn’t work on tension and is always in flux. What is tense in one moment can always be aided by music, a universal language made to aid, enhance, and replicate, the natural sounds available on this planet. Music is wavelengths, it is encapsulated in everything we do and is felt through vibrations. One of my favorite aspects of music is John Cage’s 4:33, a composition that “engaged you, made the present world open up like a lotus blossoming in stop-motion photography.” With varying reproductions, 4:33 is a magnifying glass on the natural compositions provided by our world; for me right now, this is the sound of Issa Dee’s freestyle in the background, cars driving by outside my window, and the sounds of lids clanging on pots as my sister cooks in the kitchen.
When we’re talking about Mary Jane, this conversation translates the same: your Mary J. needs some Mary J. (Blige)! Literally working off of vibrations and frequencies, Mary Jane grows best in a loving, bumping environment. Think of it this way: bud that makes you bounce needs to bounce.
Vibrations affect plants as much as they affect friend groups. To have a better hand on your indoor grow situation, all gardeners should have a playlist composed of sounds mimicking real-time life, including arguments and pain. While too much of anything is detrimental, a hint of pain and sass can provide some benefit to your plants (think: trichomes and terps!) Stick to what you know, and try to refrain from heavy bass and heavy metal. Plants don’t know what you’re saying but they can tell how you’re saying it.
Don’t know where to start? Check out our Weed Radio playlist on YouTube; curated vibes to play for your children while you’re out and about.
Happy Growing!
