Electroculture – Basics

Retranscription and translation of the original french document (Rustica Magazine # 458 from 20 to 26 September 1978) OK_electriser_le_potager_1978.pdf

The new green wizards

Leeks as big as the arm of a gardener, strawberries as beautiful as oranges, garlic even four times more beautiful, it’s the giant vegetable garden. The vegetable garden of electroculture, this queen of gardening with miraculous methods.

“A bulb of 800 g! This is nothing says Mr. Thévenin. It might happen once. No, what is needed is not to harvest one but hundreds. You see this square of 25 sqm, with planted garlic, the harvest will surely be of 100 kg instead of 10 compared to traditional methods.”

We were at the end of june when Mr. Thévenin told me that. End of july, at the time of harvest, I went back to see him and he wasn’t lying. The garlic plants lying on the soil sunbathing and drying. They offered bulbs from 900 g to one kilo. 100 kg of garlic on a vegetable garden of 25 sqm, Mr. Thévenin had won his bet. 800 g.. The needle of his scale stabilised and announced 800 g. To the left, in the plate a large weight, to the right in the other plate a bulb of garlic. You read that well! It was clearly a 800 g garlic bulb that Mr. Thévenin had put on his scale. It was big, five times larger than a normal garlic bulb.

Electroculture, the fairy of gardening

The author of these incredible results, this fairy of gardening, this gardening muse is called electroculture.

“So, you know!

- Yes, wires attached to a generator and then we let electrical currents flow through. It’s not natural…

- No, no…”

No, electroculture and electricity providers have nothing in common. Of course it is a matter of current, but it is not produced by a powerplant. It is in the air, in the soil, in us. This free and natural electricity has several aspects:

• The Earth’s magnetic field
  The magnetic field converges to the North Pole. Proof of this is the needle of your compass, it is constantly under its influence and indicates that direction.
• Telluric currents
  These are electric currents flowing through the earth. They move from East to West, but their path varies depending on the arrangement and the layout of terrestrial layers. According to the physicists, their intensity varies according to the months of the year. In June they are at their maximum intensity, and at their minimum in September.
• Cosmic waves
  They come from the stratosphere and penetrate the Earth’s crust.

The aim of electroculture is to pick up the electro-magnetic energies for the benefit of the plants. A vegetable thus grown grows better; its seed germinates faster; the vegetable grows faster; more easily and becomes bigger. The vegetable can also defend itself more easily against illnesses and parasites. It handles more easily periods of drought and rough soils. Indeed, this energetic influx allows the roots to go deeper into the soil to find their food and also reach deeper layers of groundwater that are inaccessible to normally cultivated plants. This energy, is naturally received by all plants: through the roots (that play a role of antennas) which pick up negative electricity from the soil and then frees it through its aerial parts (which also act as antennas). These absorb the positive atmospheric electricity. The exchange of these forces determines the growth of a plant and the proper functioning of the chlorophyll system; briefly said, it organises life thanks to the ascension of sap. Plants cultivated by electroculture hence benefit as much as possible from these energies which, if not picked up, would just be wasted. This is the theory of “electrocultivators”, although some ecologists argue that electroculture  diverts these natural beneficial forces for a whole ensemble for the profit of some privileged plants. I won’t dwell into this debate, but I believe it is necessary to be aware of these two theories. Moreover, it appears that electroculture allows foremost to reveal and produce this healthy energy. As a matter of fact, every single plant is an electrical conductor of a couple of millivolts (experiment made by connecting a voltmeter on a bean plant); in the presence of an electroculture setup the voltages are amplified.

Are you interested by electroculture, are you just discovering it today. You should know that it exists since a very long time. Ancient civilisations, the Egyptians in particular, had noticed that around certain structures or rocks, and depending on orientation, vegetation grew better and was thicker/sturdier. Researchers looked at this phenomenon and found an explanation: some rocks are rich in electropositive metals (like copper), the soil being itself naturally a carrier of negative charges, they thought that at certain locations there was a natural production of forces beneficial to plants.

So, you want to setup such a system in your vegetable garden. There are many setups available. All are prototypes (you should be able to find easily light and simple materials).

In Rustica (the name of this magazine..), we showed a couple of years ago some simple setups (see schematic A).

Nowadays the “Paulin system”, named after its inventor, is the easiest to setup for an amateur. It consists of a painted metallic antenna (plumbing pipe), headed by iron spikes, insulated (porcelain insulation recovered on ‘out of order’ electric lines, or simply a plastic bottle or any non-conducting materials placed at the base of the antenna) and stuck in the ground. A copper wire connects the antenna to a mesh of galvanized iron (standard fences..) with a length of 3 to 4 meters, depending on the parcel to cultivate and of an height of about 20 cm. This mesh is buried a few centimeters deep to facilitate the use of gardening tools. Then 2 – 3 m away, opposite to this first mesh, another mesh of the same size is placed, however this mesh is composed of an electropositive metal, for example copper or brass. It is neither connected to the other mesh, nor to the antenna (Schematic B). The whole setup is oriented so as to allow the passing through of North-South telluric currents.

Another setup (oriented North-South) consists of a straight magnet (do not use horseshoe magnets) placed underground and connected to a grid of galvanised iron placed in parallel. The positive pole (North) of the magnet is directed toward the North (see Schematic C).

For other experiments, you can also use a cage of galvanised iron mesh/grid. Bury it slightly. At the center of this vertical cylinder you plant an antenna made of a copper pipe non connected to the grid at all (Schematic D). Crops sowed or planted on the inside usually have a yield two to three times higher than traditional crops. I saw at Mr. Thévenins’ place, garlics cultivated with such a method were about 10cm taller than neighbouring traditionally cultivated ones.

Wire ‘less’ electroculture

However, the ultimate method of electroculture will in the future consist of getting rid of antennas, wires, etc. How you might ask, can we pick up the energies? By building a “natural cell”: on each side of the field to cultivate we place two bands of compost. One band is acidic (loaded with positive ions) and consisting of heathland, mash-iron, fine sand quarry, rock powder, peat, wood ash, coal dust, soot, chicken manure; the other is alkaline (lacking in positive ions, e.g. negatively charged) and consisting of tuff, limestone soil, lime, masonry plaster, manure. By the principle of communicating vessels, the alkaline body attracts the positive ions of the acidic body. A mini electric current hence results from this exchange and permeates the crops culture. Hereby stimulating the vegetation as it flows through (schematic E).

Gigantic vegetables, increased production, reduced irrigation (50 to 70%) and the economy on manure for an fully organic culture, these are the benefits of electroculture. This gardening technique from the third millennia, though born in antiquity has not finished astonishing us. We look forward to hearing from your experiments.

- Frank Benjamin (Author)

The examples speak
You want to know more about electroculture, write to: C.A.E., 17, rue des Bouvreuils, 33600 Pessac. Near Bordeaux, on an arid terrain, ungrateful, and voluntarily never irrigated, without fertilizer or manure, we cultivated barley. Here are the results:

• harvest on the control plot (no setup): 354g, 149 cobs, average number of grains per cob: 15,
• harvest on the electroculture plot: 795g, 240 cobs, average number of grains per cob: 25.
  At the beginning of our century, lieutenant Basty did experiments with potatoes on two plots of 52m².
• harvest on the control plot: 610kg of potatoes,
• harvest on the electroculture plot: 900kg.

Strawberries (culture with antennas) were harvested on May 19th, other in a traditional culture on the 3rd of June only.
An American, James Lee Scribner obtained, by plunging a bean in electromagnetic baths, a plant of 7m length. He got 72 liters of beans from that giant.
In France, a plant of potatoes cultivated in electroculture attained 2m height and produced more than 4kgs of tubers of prime quality (he received the 1st prize at the National agricultural competition of Versailles in 1977). This plant kept on producing while others (normal culture) were already withered since a long time. In Pithiviers, M.Marcel Thévenin harvested a plant of tomatoes (in a galvanized iron mesh with antenna system) of more than 2m height, loaded with very big and delicious fruits.
In Ruwanda (Africa), drought and hunger prevails. Under the drive of Père Tasse, the villagers using electroculture managed to cultivate tomatoes, mil and sweet potatoes.