SONIC BLOOM,
HERE AND AROUND THE WORLD
- Bruce Kirkpatrick
On June 12, 1991, Mt. Pinatubo, the Philippine volcano, let go in one
of the most devastating natural disasters in our lifetime. Much of
the surrounding area, which had the day before been fertile farm land,
was converted into a wasteland, many feet deep in sulfur dioxin laden
ash.
Farmers who survived the cataclysm looked at their ash-covered land
and knew that there would be no way to grow crops for many years using
the familiar conventional farming methods. Test plots started since
the disaster have proven them right. In their hour of urgent need
they turned to Dan Carlson and his Sonic Bloom system. Dan has
recently returned from the area. He spent his time there conferring
with local farmers, university researchers and the research staff of
the International Rice Research Institute. Early results of tests
conducted there are very promising. It seems that the Sonic Bloom
system will be able to grow respectable crops on land that won�t be
able to support conventional agricultural practices for many years.
Astonishing to many, it�s just another day on the job for Carlson who
has been confounding the conventional for over 15 years now.
The reason Sonic Bloom works so well is still a bit of a mystery. We
know that the sound causes the little breathing pores in plants
(called stomata) to open. We know that the foliar spray supplies many
trace minerals in chelated form as well as amino acids and other
necessary compounds. These elements, all organic in form, have been
proven by research to be absorbed and translocated by plants at many
times the normal rate.
Carlson markets large sound generators and spray in bulk quantities
for farm and greenhouse operations as well as a kit for home
gardeners. The kit contains a bottle of spray concentrate that will
make over 40 gallons of plant spray, a high quality spray bottle,
instructions for use, reprints of some newspaper and magazine articles
about Sonic loom, and a cassette tape of music and the patented Sonic
Bloom sound. "The music, much of which is by composers like Bach and Vivaldi, is mostly for the gardener" relates Carlson,
"It's the other
sounds on the tape that really make the plants react." The Sonic
Bloom sound has been described as sounding somewhere between the
noises made by birds and those made by crickets. Most people find the
sounds rather pleasant, especially when combined with the music as it
is on the cassette tape in the garden kit.
Arguably the worse place in the world to grow crops is Mongolia. It
is like the badlands of New Mexico at five thousand feet. Very little
has grown there in the past. Dr. Hou Tian Zhen of the Xinjiang
Academy of Forestry has become something of a celebrity there, at
least in academic circles, for developing a type of poplar tree that
can survive the climate, making the people of the area self-sufficient
in firewood for the first time in history. Not one to revel in past
accomplishments, Dr. Hou next turned his efforts towards finding a
method of feeding the people of the area. As a result of his three
years of experimenting, he has come to the Minneapolis/St. Paul area
to study with Dan Carlson for a year before returning home to
implement the Sonic Bloom system on a wide scale in his homeland.
Experiments by Dr. Hou showed the Sonic Bloom system to give a 30 to
90% increase in crop yield over conventional methods.
The sound is thought by many researchers to increase the metabolic
rate of the plants, letting them grow faster naturally. The organic
spray is formulated in such a way to supply those elements that soils
are often lacking. The presence of these trace elements and other
compounds in a totally available form reduces the stress that a plant
might otherwise experience because of drought or heat or some other
situation.
In the desert of Israel at the research center of Kibbutz Ketura, 450
varieties of rare and endangered trees are helped being kept from
extinction by a group of dedicated scientists. They have tried many
different programs of fertilization and have found the best results
come from the use of Sonic Bloom.
Success with Sonic Bloom is not limited to nasty areas of the world.
Successes in nicer growing areas are equally impressive.
An established apple orchard in Prescott, Wisconsin, starts using the
Sonic Bloom system and sees their apple production triple. The
orchard also finds that the number of apples lost to disease and
insects is reduced by over 80%. "This is not an unusual situation,"
states Carlson, "the Sonic Bloom system raises the trace element and
complex sugar content of plants. Those changes make the plant much
healthier and less susceptible to attack by diseases and insects."
While all plants respond to Sonic Bloom, some seem to have more
amazing results than others. Dan has found that plant varieties
referred to as 'open pollinated'� seem to respond the best. Open
pollinated is basically the opposite of hybrid. With open pollinated
seeds, characteristics breed true from one generation to another. A
hybrid variety is one that is the product of the cross breeding of
specific varieties to induce certain characteristics, such as size,
production, and specific disease resistance. These are the types of
seeds that everyone used for many generations. Then the seed
companies discovered that there was big money selling seeds that the
farmer could not save from one season to the next. Since hybrids do
not breed true, the farmers were forced into buying seed every year in
order to have these new varieties the seed companies and county
extension people told them were better, healthier, and more
productive. Not all people fall into this trap. "Hybrid seeds give a
predictable response, but much of the genetic potential that the
original ancestor varieties may have had has been lost," states
Carlson.
"Many
of those parent varieties had the potential, with proper care, to be far
superior to anything that is commonly seen today."
The Indians of the San Juan Pueblo in New Mexico are able to grow
phenomenal corn with Sonic Bloom on land that for three hundred years
was only sued for making adobe bricks for their houses because it is
so hard. Even today, they must dig individual holes to plant each
plant. The ground is too hard to be rototilled. The Indians do not
use hybrid seed. They use the same seed their grandparents did. At
the same San Juan Pueblo, the ancient Indian grain amaranth has been
grown using Sonic Bloom for the past two years. The first year, the
production of grain was three times the per acre average of all other
amaranth growers worldwide, despite the fact that this crop was grown
in conditions far below average. The biggest news, however, came the
following year when seed from that first crop was replanted. That
crop produced twice the grain per acre of the previous crop. "We see
this effect all the time," relates Carlson.
"Seeds and cuttings from
plants grown with Sonic Bloom consistently outproduce their parents by
a wide margin." A tomato grower in Arkansas will eagerly attest
to that, he has been growing greenhouse tomatoes using Sonic Bloom for two
years now. A short time ago he stopped planting new seedlings for
each new crop and instead planted cuttings from the plants that were
currently in production. Tomato varieties that normally took 90 days
to produce ripe fruit are now producing superior fruit in 55 days.
The plants he's using now are third generation Sonic Bloom cuttings.
States Carlson, "It's exciting to think how much better the next
generation cuttings will be."
In an area where all the neighbors' gardens failed, a home gardener in
Colorado uses Sonic Bloom and wins the title, "Most Beautiful Garden
in Colorado." "The satisfaction of being able " states Carlson,
"and to win a contest like this is the icing on the cake." But this
year for the first time Dan Carlson's Sonic Bloom system gets to
compete in the granddaddy contest of them all, the Chelsea Flower Show
in England. "A number of the large estates in the UK are now using
Sonic Bloom. Their entries in the contest should cause quite a stir,"
related Carlson with obvious pride.
Growing a garden is a labor of love. Using a system that gives your
plants a much more stress free and balanced environment in which to
live and grow should make both you and your plants very happy.
--
Llewellyn's 1993 Lunar Organic Gardener
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