Read this discussion over at herbicides/pesticides.
Physically, however it is done, phosphorous and nitrogen are required for the growth of plants optimally. We currently utilize many unsustainable, toxic, and soil-destroying mechanisms to push into plants these two elements.
The following short video discusses how to escape the dependency on increasingly toxic low quality phosphate rock with a recycling program that yields methane bio-gas--and the bio-gas 'waste products' are phosphorous-rich materials that can be applied to plants. It is being done in Europe in combined bio-gas/phosphorous fertilizer plants already:
City To Farm Composting Project
7:15 min
Betsy Kettle explains the City to Farm Composting Project. This is a different method of collection and processing urban food scraps that could potentially supply the farmlands around major cities with an odourless, leachate free compost. The security of the urban food supply may be dependent on growing locally without dependence on petrochemical-based fertilizers and minimal transport. Organic agriculture based on compost may be our future food security and also create a more sustainable agricultural system.
What about nitrogen? Well, do some selective planting of fast growing nitrogen-fixing trees, like tree lucerne, that provide nitrogen rich soils for other plants in the area. Cut these trees regularly and use those products for something else. The following arrangement is shown raising milk goats with tree lucerne cuttings because they are high in protein. In two parts, this is a short 20 minute documentary about the co-inventor of permaculture concepts, David Holmgren. The first few minutes solve the nitrogen issue:
Permaculture co-originator 'Holmgren', Pt1
9:09 min
'Eco-Centric', a story by reporter Tim Lee from the 2004 ABC program 'Landline' about permaculture co-originator David Holmgren, whose "pivotal role in developing permaculture has scarcely been recognised" http://www.holmgren.com.au.
Permaculture co-originator 'Holmgren' doco Pt2
9:06 min
Another way to create durable soils full of required minerals and other materials is to draw upon rediscovered Amazonian soil fertility strategies:
Unravelling Human Creation of Amazonian 'Terra Preta'/Dark Soil (Or, How to Make Permanent, Self-Renewing Soil); 7 min.:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kUvgOPAPnA
This is a short excerpt from a BBC Horizon documentary entitled "The Secret of El Dorado". It recounts how a previously unknown highly populated area of Eastern Bolivian Amazonia extending into the Amazon River Basin gave the area a major urban/agricutural society. It completely disappeared as Europeans arrived. However, it left its 'terra preta'--the dark earth of the Amazon--that is still mined and carried off because it is so beneficial a soil. And it still self-replicates--long after the original human/indigenous creators have died off and their secret lost. We are slowly unravelling how to recreate this perpetual self-renewing soil. Some secrets of it are featured in this short video clip. One secret is slash-and-char instead of slash-and-burn. The charcoal mixed later into the soil creates a slow release of minerals instead of burned ash that is eroded away very quickly. Very smart. See the amazing differences of scale of yields by only varying the addition of charcoal! Watch the longer video below for more detailed information about other aspects of the terra preta.
BBC - Horizon - The Secret of El Dorado
49 min
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2809044795781727003
New evidence that advanced societies flourished in the Amazon Basin before the arrival of Europeans. It was the most notorious wild-goose chase in history: the Conquistadors' search for El Dorado, a fabulous kingdom of gold that Indians said lay hidden in the jungles of the Amazon Basin. But now, at last, archaeologists have uncovered the truth behind that myth. They have found evidence of a huge society, as advanced as the Egyptians or the Incas, right in the heart of the rainforest. And this is more than the story of a lost world rediscovered. For it seems that the people of the real El Dorado possessed a secret with the power to transform our world and their secret in the soil could be the solution to solving famine in the Third World and other nations [by making local independent and autonomous agricultural sound for poor soil areas--because you can invent the soil out of nothing in a low-tech way!] once and for all.
8 comments:
Interview Steve Varga, ProGrass Landscape Horticulturist.
WHAT: Wilsonville-based ProGrass announces NaturalCare: Natural
Solutions For A Healthy Landscape. ProGrass NaturalCare becomes the
safest, most natural landscape care service available to Oregon
homeowners.
WHERE: Yard, Garden & Patio Show, Convention Center, Booth # 1030
WHEN: Friday, Feb. 24 - Sunday, Feb. 26, 2006, 10a-9p Fri & Sat, 10a-6p Sun.
WHY: Concern for the environment
Concern for the health; safety of children; pets
Confusion about how to create a vibrant, healthy landscape
Confusion over the when/how/why to use chemicals in landscape care
To improve the health of your landscape by improving soil quality
NaturalCare creates sustainable landscapes by providing long-term solutions rather then short-term results
NaturalCare provides a new way of caring for your landscape. Your goal will be lots of biological activity in the soil so healthy grass
can form a thick cover to discouraging weeds and an extensive root system that is resistant to drought. Healthy soil means lots of
earthworms and microorganisms, which need plenty of organic matter to flourish. Doing this successfully is a difficult task for homeowners and requires specialized knowledge and products not available to the general public.
When you use only chemical fertilizers, your lawn can become more susceptible to drought and disease. Over time, lawns can become chemically dependent. Natural organic fertilizers work in a different way, providing the key elements to develop rich, healthy soil that is the building block of healthy plants.
VISUALS: Steve will demonstrate how NaturalCare provides a safe & healthy alternative for landscape care. Comparison chart listing ingredients of both NaturalCare and well-known national fertilizer products.
GLOSSARY OF SOME NATURALCARE TERMS:
· Mychorrhizae - Naturally occurring soil organism which promotes
root growth in plants. This contributes to water absorption, nutrient
uptake, general plant growth, decreases in plant diseases and improved
tolerance to heat and stress.
· Humates - Organic acids which are abundant in natural minerals.
They help transfer nutrients from soil to plants, improve water
retention of soil and stimulate the development of microorganisms in
the soil.
· Fishmeal - Natural form of nutrients and soil mulch used by
Native Americans. Supplies nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium.
· Organic fertilizer - Dry and sterilized form of animal manure,
bone meal or feather meal which release nutrients when decomposed.
· Sea kelp - Provides natural plant hormones and nutrients for plants
· Yucca -- Natural extract from desert plant acts as wetting agent to allow materials to move in the soil freely.
· Biological control- Insect control derived from a
naturally-occurring bacterial or fungal spores such as Bacillus
subtilis
· Botanical control - Insect controls derived from plant extracts such as pyrethrum.
· Horticultural soaps - Insect control products from soap-based fatty acids which kill soft-bodied insects.
CONTACT: Jack Rubinger, Media Relations, 503-788-7325
Steve Varga, ProGrass Horticulturist, 503-969-8950
Rock Dust Grows Extra-Big Vegetables
By Paul Kelbie Scotland
Correspondent
The Independent - UK
3-20-2005
For years scientists have been warning of an apocalyptic future facing the world. With the prospect of an earth made infertile from over-production and mass reliance on chemicals, coupled with an atmosphere polluted by greenhouse gases there seems little to celebrate. But belief is growing that an answer to some of the earth's problems are not only at hand, but under our feet.
Specialists have just met in Perth to discuss the secrets of rock dust, a quarrying by-product that is at the heart of government-sponsored scientific trials and which, it is claimed, could revitalise barren soil and reverse climate change.
The recognition of the healing powers of rock dust comes after a 20-year campaign by two former schoolteachers, Cameron and Moira Thomson. They have been battling to prove that rock dust can replace the minerals that have been lost to the earth over the past 10,000 years and, as a result, rejuvenate the land and halt climate change.
To prove their point, the couple have converted six acres of open, infertile land in the Grampian foothills near Pitlochry into a modern Eden. Using little more than rock dust mixed with compost, they have created rich, deep soils capable of producing cabbages the size of footballs, onions bigger than coconuts and gooseberries as big as plums.
"This is a simple answer which doesn't involve drastic life changes by anyone," Ms Thomson said. "People don't have to stop driving cars to do this, just spread some rock dust on their gardens. We could cover the earth with rock dust and start to absorb carbon in a more natural fashion which, along with reducing emissions and using a combination of other initiatives, will have a better and faster response."
Before the Thomsons began their "good life" experiment, erosion and leaching were so severe in the glen where they set up home that nothing had been grown there for almost 50 years. The basis of their theory is simple. By spreading a thin layer of the dust over the land, they are able to mimic the earth's glacial cycles which naturally fertilise the land.
Since the last ice age three million years ago, the earth has gone through 25 similar glaciations, each lasting about 90,000 years. "We are 10,000 years into an interglacial - a hiatus between ice ages - meaning modern soils are relatively barren and artificial fertilisers are needed," Mr Thomson said.
"By spreading the dust we are doing in minutes what the earth takes thousands of years to do - putting essential minerals in the rocks back into the earth."
Over the years the couple, who established the Sustainable Ecological Earth Regeneration (Seer) Centre charitable trust in 1997 to test their ideas, have slowly convinced others of their theory. They recently won a grant of almost £100,000 from the Scottish Executive to conduct Britain's first official rock dust trials.
The couple claim the technique may also play a significant role in the fight against climate change as calcium and magnesium in the dust converts carbon in the air into carbonates. Such is the interest in the theory that Nasa in the US is examining it in preparation for growing plants on other planets.
The couple say that the rock dust means that crops don't need water to produce harvests of magnificent vegetables. "It would be perfect for Third World countries that are usually unable to grow crops because the land is so dry," Ms Thomson said. "This could hold the solution for them."
"There is no doubt that, when rock dust is mixed with compost, it has a dramatic effect on crop yields," said Alistair Lamont, president of the Chartered Institution of Waste Management, who is impressed by the Seer experiment. "Future waste strategy is going to rely heavily on the diversion of biodegradable municipal waste from landfill, and one of the treatments involved is composting so we need to find a home for that compost.
"Agricultural land is something we need to work on and the benefits of rock dust in combination with compost can be seen at the Seer Centre at harvest time. We need to get farming to take on board the value of remineralisation and re-fertilisation.
Mr Lamont added that evidence showed that, since 1940, the mineral content of vegetables had fallen dramatically in this country. "We might be encouraged to eat a lot of vegetables but many don't contain the quantities of minerals that we need," he said.
2005 Independent News & Media (UK) Ltd.
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/environment/story.jsp?story=622128
Soil Remineralization can be simultaneously a fertlizer substitute as well as form of herbicide/pesticide by increasing the hardiness of the plant as well as by seemingly repelling pests by application. Thus, with soil remineralization, a seasonal dousing with (particularly treated) rock dust could simultaneously be soil aid and herbicide/pesticides--in one treatment.
"Remineralization has been shown to cause a phenomenal growth of the microorganisms in the soil. It increases the nutrient intake of plants. It counters the effects of soil acidity, prevents soil erosion (for this reason alone, it would be worth applying rock dust), increases the storage capacity of the soil, contributes to the building of precious humus complexes, has anti-fungal properties, and when you spray it on plants it repels insects as well. The plants and trees become highly resistant to insects, disease, frosts, and droughts."
http://www.remineralize.org/about.php
[additionally see the summary at the soil/hydroponics category.]
[this will of course start to cause huge agricultural shakeout and agricultural consolidation as an externality...though interesting use of technology and non-toxic fertilizers: sound.]
fertilizers
sonic bloom
SONIC BLOOM
Organic Farming made easy!
The best organic fertilizer in the world!
Sonic Bloom has increased production by
50-500% !!!
STOP PRESS: In June 2003 the Indonesian Government put on an expo with 100 tables - but the main purpose of the show was to show off a five or so acre field of corn that had been grown with Sonic Bloom - and so was 13' tall, not the usual 5' tall!!! There was not a clicker on the gate, but it is thought that upwards of ONE MILLION people attended!!!!
Previously, the Indonesian government got a 100% increase in rice and a 100% increase in tea using Sonic Bloom. They are now planning (April 2002) to grow ONE MILLION HECTARES of rice with Sonic Bloom!
SONIC BLOOM UPDATE: Last year Dan Carlson, inventor of Sonic Bloom, was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize!
Wilson Mill's Circle K Orchard in Wisconsin, has used Sonic Bloom for 8 years. He gets larger, healthier trees, bigger yields, better fruit quality, fewer insects, higher sugar level, earlier maturity, and a shelf life of five months. He beats his competitors to market by two weeks! Yield is 490+ bushels/acre (vs. 290 average).
LEFT: Without Sonic Bloom
RIGHT: With Sonic Bloom
(Note the massive amount of fruit increase)
Sonic Bloom consists of a combination of sounds which are the same frequency as the singing of birds, plus leaf spray organic fertilizer.
While academics have a hard time believing that sound can affect plant growth, all we and many farmers can says is - IT WORKS!!!
Organic Farming Results from using Sonic Bloom (below)
History and Explanation of Sonic Bloom
Questions and Answers about Sonic Bloom
PHOTOGRAPHS
Sonic Bloom PRODUCTS (for Organic Farming)
Article from the Star Tribune July 1999 with PHOTOGRAPHS
Note: The following results can be seen on the video ``Seeing is Believing".
History and Explanation of Sonic Bloom
Extracted from the excellent book "Secrets of the Soil" by Peter Tompkins & Christopher Bird, 1989
Gardening Tip: READ `SECRETS OF THE SOIL'!!! It gives DOZENS of wonderful ways to greatly increase the growth and productivity in your farm or garden, and to repair out planet.
Plants, says Steiner, can only be understood when considered in connection with all that is circling, weaving, and living around them. In spring and autumn, when swallows produce vibrations as they flock in a body of air causing currents with their wing beats, these and birdsong, says Steiner, have a powerful effect on the flowering and fruiting of plants.
A bird's-eye view across country south and east of La Belle, midway between the great Lake Okeechobee and Sanibel Island, reveals an ocean of citrus orchards cut by a skein of dusty 'sea lanes', extending for miles toward the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, once a paradise for seashell hunters until ravaged by pollution.
Any bird overflying this greensward in the mid-1980s would have been perplexed by the lack of avian fellows among millions of orange trees growing in the confines of Gerber Grove, saturated by a fog of chemicals laid down to ward off swarms of insects - except in Section 1. There a multitude of feathered fauna darted among the trees or perched singing in their branches.
To this oasis the birds had been attracted, not by a natural concert of their colleagues; but by a sonic diapason* closely resembling birdsong, which to human ears, incapable of distinguishing its varied harmonics, recalls the chirping of a chorus of outsized crickets. *(diapason: The full range of notes)
This sonic symphony was being emitted from a series of black loudspeaker boxes set atop twenty-foot poles, each resounding over an oval of about forty acres. Its purpose was not so much to attract birds as to increase the size and total yield of a crop of fruit, 'hung', as they say in Florida, on trees as if it were a collection of decorative balls at Christmas time.
"I have hung oranges the size of peas, shooter marbles, golf balls and tennis balls, some still green, others fully ripe, all on the same tree, all at the same time," said Roy McClurg, a former Union City, Indiana, department-store magnate, part owner of the Gerber Grove.
We had driven down at dawn to his 320-acre holding, where two young field hands, brothers-in-law, each with a tractor and a trailer tank of foliar feed* had started off between two long rows of trees, dousing them with an aerosol mist from top to bottom while a speaker, similar to the ones on the poles, tuned to maximum volume, shrieked a whistling pulse easily audible above the roar of the tractor motors. *(foliar feed: liquid food nutrient which is applied by spray to the leaves)
Pointing to one of his many trees, McClurg raised his voice: "This is the typical fruit I'm getting with this brand-new method called Sonic Bloom. It synchronously combines a spraying of the leaves of any plants, from tiny sprouts to mature trees, with a broadcast of that special sound. With that process, simple but scientifically unexplained, I've been able for the first time to get fruit all over the inner branches of my orange trees, greatly adding to the 'umbrella'-type set which is everywhere the norm.
Back in his pleasantly refurbished clapboard house, oldest in the county, McClurg took from his refrigerator a dozen oranges the size of a small grapefruit. "These were picked at my grove yesterday, he explained. "Ordinarily oranges as big as these would be pithy and woody inside, with very little juice. Slicing four of them with a razor-sharp butcher's cleaver, McClurg held up several of the hemispheres dripping with juice to show off rinds no thicker than an eighth of an inch. An electric juicer processed three of them to nearly fill a pint-sized glass.
"Oranges like these," said McClurg, "will give me a crop with at least a 30% increase in yield and a marked rise in 'pounds solid'. Add to that the fact that the Garvey Center for the Improvement of Human Functioning, a medically-pioneering research group in Wichita, Kansas, has tested the juice to show an increase of 121% in natural vitamin C over normal oranges, and you can understand that this new 'Sonic Bloom' discovery we're talking about not only improves quantity, but also quality. I've run blindfold tests with scores of ordinary people who have compared the taste of my juice with that of oranges from many other groves, and they all selected mine as the most lip-smackingly superior."
While McClurg was happily harvesting his oranges, Harold Aungst, a dairy farmer milking a 200-head herd of Holsteins in McVeytown, Pennsylvania, was equally happily applying the Sonic Bloom method to a 100 acre field of alfalfa.
That year Aungst took off five cuttings, one shoulder-high and so thick he had to gear his tractor down to low-low to pull his cutter through it. With this harvest, Aungst won the Pennsylvania State 5-acre alfalfa growing contest over 93 other contestants by producing an unheard of 7.7 tons per acre as against a state average of 3.3 tons.
To dairyman Aungst, the size of his harvest was not its most important characteristic. Hay from this alfalfa fed to his herd that winter allowed the cows to step up milk productions form 6,800 to 7,300 pounds per hundred-weight of cow, yet eat 1/4 less feed. "I could hardly believe it," said Aungst, third-generation owner of his property. "My cows were devouring the alfalfa, stems and all. Other years they'd let the stems just lay. A cow's nose is the very best barometer to tell how good your crop is. Cows are really finicky about what they eat. I threw down hay from another of my fields alongside this record-breaking alfalfa and the cattle first went for the feed exposed to that funny sound every time, changing over to the other only when the good stuff was all gone."
One clue to the cows' preference was revealed in a test run on protein analysis by an infra-red scanner at the Pennsylvania State University "Ag-Days" exhibition and fair. Aungst's sound-exposed hay scored a record 29% for protein and an extremely high 80% for Total Digestible Nutrients (TDNs). At the fair the same test showed similar percentages for Aungst's soybeans.
Across the United States in the Tiwa Indian pueblo of San Juan, New Mexico, twenty minutes' drive north-west of Santa Fe, the highly alkaline desert soils, composed of playa clay called adobe, can be as hardpacked and impenetrable as a New York sidewalk. Yet a garden under the ministration of the same aurally-spiced nutrition as used in McVeytown and in Florida was growing as if in Eden.
Alongside more than fifty kinds of herbs, vegetables were flourishing, including tomatoes and carrots never before grown in that arid region at the confluence of the Chama and Rio Grande rivers.
To Gabriel Howearth, a bearded, pony-tailed master gardener employed by the tribe, veteran of several years' working with Maya Indian farmers in Mexico's Yucatan peninsula, Sonic Bloom was as miraculous in its results as was the Maya's ability to grow crops with no chemical additives by simply mentally communicating with them in some mysteriously hermetic way.
"As you can see," said Gabriel, parting the purplish-green leaves of a German beet to cup his hands around the top hemisphere of a swollen mauve-maroon root much larger than a softball, "I can't get my hands completely around it. All these beets, which normally scale at not more than 4 pounds, will weight at least 9, possibly 10."
THE ORIGINS OF SONIC BLOOM
The idea was seeded in the mind of its developer one bitter cold winter day in 1960 in the Demilitarised Zone between North and South Korea. Dan Carlson, a young Minnesota recruit serving with the US Army motor pool, happened to see a young Korean mother deliberately crush the legs of her 4 year old child beneath the back wheel of a reversing 2 ton GMC truck. Tearfully, the woman explained in distraught and incoherent English that, with 2 more children starving at home, only by crippling her oldest boy could she beg enough food in the city to feed her entire family.
There and then, Carlson decided he would single-mindedly devote the rest of his life to finding an innovative and cheaper way to grow food, accessible to anyone with even the smallest and poorest plot of land. Back home in Minnesota, he enrolled in the University's Experimental College. Like David Vetter at Ohio, he was allowed to design his own curriculum and reading program in horticulture and agriculture.
Soon he concluded that in poor soils, if plants could be appropriately fed, not through their roots, but through their leaves via the minute mouth-like openings called stomata (which plants constantly use to exchange gaseous aerosols and mists with the surrounding atmosphere) they might flourish and even grow rapidly in soils that were acidic, alkaline, salty, arid, desert or other otherwise deprived of balanced nutrients.
But some motive force, he soon realised, was needed to awaken the stomata to action. Puzzling as to what this might be, Carlson stumbled on a record called "Growing Plants Successfully in the Home", devised by George Milstein, a retired dental surgeon who had won prizes for growing colorful plants. Milstein's innovative idea had been to get a recording company, Pip Records, to amalgamate into a popular tune the pure sound frequencies broadcast by University of Ottawa researchers to increase wheat yields, which he had read about in "The Secret Life of Plants".
Picking up where Milstein left off, Carlson focused on finding frequencies that would motivate the stomata to open and imbibe. Though he did not at first suspect a tie with the sound that caused the birds to flock to McClurg's orange grove, he managed through a stroke of spiritual insight to hit upon a combination of frequencies and harmonics exactly accordant with the pre-dawn bird concerts that continue past sun-up into morning.
To help create a new cassette tape of popular music into which his non-musical sonics could be embedded for inclusion in a Sonic Bloom home kit for use in small backyard gardens and greenhouses and on indoor plants, Carlson enlisted the technical expertise of a Minneapolis music teacher, Michael Holtz. Within seconds of hearing Carlson's 'cricket chirping' oscillating out of a speaker, Holtz realised its pitch was consonant with the early-morning concert of birds outside his bedroom window.
The first cassette, using Hindu melodies induced stomata to imbibe more than 7 times the amount of foliar-fed nutrients, and even absorb invisible water vapour in the atmosphere that exists, unseen and unfelt, in the driest of climatic conditions. But this sound proved irritating to most American horticulturalists and farmers.
Looking for western music in the range of Carlson's highest frequencies, the ones which in Hindu experiments had shown the best bumper crops of corn, Holtz culled several baroque selections from "The Dictionary of Musical Themes", settling on the first movement of Vivaldi's "The Seasons", appropriately called "Spring". "Listening to it time and again", said Holz, "I realised that Vivaldi, in his day, must have known all about birdsong, which he tried to imitate in his long violin passages."
Holtz also realised that the violin music dominant in "Spring" reflected Johann Bach's violin sonatas broadcast by the Ottawa University researchers to a wheatfield, which had obtained remarkable crops 66% greater than average, with larger and heavier seeds. Accordingly, Holtz selected Bach's "E-Major Concerto for Violin" for inclusion in the tape. " I chose that particular concerto," explained Holtz, "because it has many repetitious but varying notes. Bach was such a musical genius he could change his harmonic rhythm at nearly every other beat, with his chords going from E to B to G-sharp and so on, whereas Vivaldi would frequently keep to one chord for as long as four measures. That's why Bach is considered the greatest composer that ever lived. I chose Bach's string concerto, rather than his more popular organ music, because the timbre of the violin, its harmonic structure, is far richer than that of the organ."
Holtz next delved into what for him was a whole new world of bird melodies. In the 1930s, Aretas Saunders, author of "Guide to Bird Songs", had developed a method of visually representing, through a newly devised audio-spectrogram, the arias of singing birds that can neither be described in words nor adequately shown with any accuracy on a musical staff.
Soon Holtz came to see where the various predominating pitches in birdsongs could be calibrated by reference points on the musical scale and their harmonics. Dan Carlson had instinctively hit upon frequencies that were the ideal electronic analogues for a bird choir. "It was thrilling," said Holtz, "to make that connection. I began to feel that God had created the birds for more than just freely flying about and warbling. Their very singing must somehow be intimately linked to the mysteries of seed germination and plant growth."
"I guess Rachel Carson was right," Holtz said nostalgically. "The spring season down on the farms is much more silent than ever before. DDT killed off many birds and others never seem to have taken their place. Who knows what magical effect a bird like the wood thrush might have on its environment, singing 3 separate notes all at the same time, warbling 2 of them and sustaining the others!"
One morning while Holtz was mentally bemoaning all the species of birds that had vanished from Iowa, a yellow warbler, looking for all the world like a canary, flew, as if reading his mind, to perch on the top of a tree outside his bedroom window and, as if cued by his band maestro's baton, burst into song. Holtz grabbed his tape recorder and managed to register an aria that went on and on for 9 to 10 minutes. In the field guide he found that the little bird registers a high 8,000 cps. (Cycles per second). Drawn deeper into the subject, Holtz consulted books that detail the structure of birdsong, such as "Vocal Communication in Birds", "Born to Sing" and "Bird Sounds and Their Meanings". He also consulted biological texts to find that tiny villi (minute shaggy hairlike tufts in the cochlea of the human inner ear) vibrate to certain "window" frequencies.
"What I was trying to figure out with Dan Carlson was what exactly we were oscillating in plants", Holtz explained.
Looking at drawings of a cell, Holtz further discovered the representation of a subcellular structure within the cyptoplasm known as a mitochondrion. Pointing to the enlarged drawing of one of them he asked, "Of what does their shape remind you?" A glance suggested the form of the sound box of a violin.
"That's right!" Holtz exulted. "And I found it more than of passing interest that the resonant frequency of mitochondria is 25 cps, which, if interpolated upward, gets to a harmonic of 5,000 cps, the same frequency used by Dr Pearl Weinberger to grow winter wheat 2.5 times larger than normal with 4 times the average number of shoots, as reported in Dorothy Retallack's "The Sound of Music and Plants". It could be that the frequencies he used vibrated not only the mitochondria in the wheat seeds, but the water surrounding them, increasing the surface tension and thus enhancing penetrability through the cell wall."
Holtz connected this to Retallack's having also discovered that the transpiration rate rose, indicating greater growth activity in her experimental plants when they 'listened' to Bach, 1920s jazz, or the Indian strains of Ravi Shankar's sitar - whereas exposed to hard rock, with the same rate nearly tripled, within 2 weeks the plants were dead.
"I believe such frenetic music," said Holtz, "was too much for their overall systems. The intense, grindingly monotonous energy in that rock sound could have virtually blown the cells apart! Young volunteers for the US Navy who have listened to that type of music since childhood have been rejected because of partial deafness, even before reaching the age of 20."
Asked if one could simply play the recording of a crescendo involving all of a symphony orchestra's instruments with their hundreds of frequencies and harmonics and allow plants to select those best suited for their needs, Holtz replied: "You have to take into account a law of diminishing returns. Too big a dose of anything is not necessarily of greater benefit than just a little or even a tiny dose."
It seemed significant that Holtz, the musicologist, could say this without any knowledge of homeopathic 'potentising'.
Carlson, who we met in Kansas City at one of Charlie Walter's annual eco-agriculture conferences, explained his approach with lively enthusiasm. "What I've tried all along to do with the sonic part of Sonic Bloom," he expostulated, his jet-black hair and pirate beard reflecting the hue of the Western-cut suit he wears for public lectures, giving him the air of an Amish elder, "is to stay within boundaries set by nature. I think there are certain cosmic forces which can account, however 'unscientifically', for much of our success. Properly adapted they will get plants to grow better … or even inspire people to relate to one another more harmoniously. There's plenty of evidence that various frequencies of both sound and color can be curative. But 'hard rock' is not consonant with nature's own harmonics. I believe birds exposed to it for long periods would fall ill and die, just as Retallack's plants withered away."
He waved his hands like an evangelist. "I get over a hundred calls a year, from people experimenting with my broadcasts. Most of them say that when the sound is turned on plants actually turn away from the sound to grow toward the speakers! Always! To me that means the sound is as important to plants as whatever we understand about photosynthesis. Perhaps that's what Rachel Carons meant when she intimated that 'spring' might one day be silent without Vivaldi's violins.
With a cold Minnesota winter coming on, and limited space in which to carry on his early experiments in a VHA-financed home, Carlson took a big step: he spent 88 cents on a tropical Gynura aurantiaca or purple passion vine. Known also as a velvet plant, native to the Indonesian island of Java, its fleshy teardrop leaves are densely covered with violet veins and hairs, and its yellow-orange dishlike flowers exude a nasty smell. But to Carlson this was his cherished baby. Once a month with a cotton swab he applied doses of nutrient to the top of his vegetal pet, almost homeopathically weak doses, while simultaneously getting it to 'listen' to his sonics. The swabbing turned the top a withering brown, but quickly a new sprout burgeoned forth one leaf below the dead tip to grow at an accelerated rate. Within a few days, the original tip had completely recovered and was spurting rapidly ahead, both shoots exhibiting thick, healthy stalks and exceptionally large leaves.
As the vine crawled upward out of its pot, Carlson screwed teacup hooks into the wall of his kitchen, 6 inches apart, to support it; and so fast did the vine race for the hooks, he had to add half a dozen every week.
At which point he made another startling discovery. If he snipped the growing tips with a scissors, the Javanese plant, far from daunted, put out a new shoot at the first leaf node below the cut.
As novel as this seemed to Carlson, he was even more puzzled by his pet's growing not only the teardrop leaves characteristic of its species, but also saw-toothed ones typical of its Indian cousin Gynura sarmentosa, along with completely alien split leaves previously never seen on any purple passion plant. The sound-plus-solution treatment appeared to be strangely affecting something to do with his vine's genetic qualities even as it grew.
In a paper on his experiment submitted to his profession, Carlson presciently asked: "Does one cell of a plant genus contain all the characteristics of all the species of that genus? If not, why has my plant, grown from a Gynura aurantiaca cutting, developed leaves, over 90% of its length, peculiar to the Gynura sarmentosa and, at the same time, exhibited an entirely new split-leaf form? Could the combined application of nutrient and audio energy result in such rapid growth rate that the very process of evolution is condensed? Have I enabled my plant to adapt more quickly to its environment? Is this the reason for the different leaf characteristics appearing on one plant? If any of these questions can be answered 'yes', can this knowledge be applied to other plants? Could food crops be treated to achieve more rapid growth and better adaptability to their own or alien environments?"
As winter wore into spring, and summer into fall, Carlson noticed another oddity: his plant had bloomed not the usual once, but twice.Even more fantastic was its incredibly extending length. In only the first 3 months, the vine, which normally never exceeds a length of 18 to 24 inches, had grown a total stem of 150 feet !!! During the rest of the year it pushed on at the same rate, out of the kitchen through a 1.5 inch hole bored in the wall leading to the living room, where it roved back and forth along the ceiling on wires strung 18" apart, to attain a length of over 1/10 of a mile.
During the next year Carlson began snipping 4" shoots from his vine, which he started in small plastic pots. 400 of these, labelled with his address and phone number and a request to call him for a replacement should the shoots die, he took to a flea market, where they rapidly sold for $4 apiece.
"I had many calls," he reminisced, "but none were to complain about sick or dying plants. Instead the callers wanted to know why the offshoots from my mother plant were growing 20, 30, 40, 50 feet long, and even more. I at once thought that this unheard-of development might give rise to the possibility of whole new strains of hardier superflora.
Despite this achievement, worthy of Luther Burbank, when Carlson, in happy excitement, asked member so his university committee to come to his house to see for themselves what he had done, their only reaction amounted to a yawn.
Didn't he realise, they asked, that, because his results had been obtained on a non-edible house plant, they were of no commercial value or interest? (Despite the fact that he had made $1,600 from a plant that cost him 88 cents).
Desperate to get anything into the public record that would substantiate his achievement, Carlson wrote to Guinness Superlatives Limited in Middlesex, England, publisher of the famous Guinness Book of World Records, which sent to Minnesota to check his claim "specialists in the matter of freaks in the plant kingdom."
Carefully measuring his plant's stem, inch by inch over its entire length, the freak specialists congratulated Carlson. That same autumn the new edition of the record book had an entry on page 113 extolling his find. To counter the notion that his new method was commercially valueless, Carlson next began to supply portable sonic equipment and nutrient mix to backyard gardeners who had called him after the Minneapolis Star ran a huge photo of the Carlson family standing under the passion plant, its leaves intertwined in the supporting chain of a chandelier before proceeding, through additional holes in the wall, into his children's bedrooms.
Not to be outdone, the St Paul Dispatch, describing his African violets, with more than 400 blooms in a full spectrum of colors, and his morning glories, purple, blue , white, red and pink, as enveloping his house from its foundation to its roof eaves, quoted Carlson as foreseeing a Jack-and-the-Beanstalk world with gigantic flora capable of feeding multitudes while their stomata increased the Earth's supply of oxygen.
It occurred to Carlson that if Luther Burbank could coax a spiny cactus into losing its thorns by informing the plant that it no longer needed them because he would 'protect it', (see "Secret Life of Plants), he too might get his climbing plants to adapt to human desires.
"I subscribed to Burbank's idea," Carlson told us, "that at the highest level, plants are capable of creating what is in the mind of man as a means of assuring their survival into future generations. I did not discount the many stories about trees which had borne no flowers or fruits for years, suddenly blossoming and bearing when threatened with an axe."
One spring, as he collected the seeds from his morning glories for successive annual planting, Carlson and his 12 year old daughter, Justine, meditated on how to get the vines to respond to their lovingly felt desires by focusing on their favourite hues, purple for Dan, pink for Justine. "We believed," said Carlson, "that the plants might respond to the colors we favoured and draw closer to us as we were mentally and emotionally drawing closer to them." By late summer when the vines were putting out the usual mixed spectrum of blooms over most of Dan's house, he found massed all around his daughter's bedroom window nothing but pink flowers and around his own bedroom window only purple ones.
"This confirmed to me," he said, "that we can, in some still undefined way, communicate with plant life, which is even capable of altering the colors of flowers and the shapes of leaves. It must somehow be based on trust. The plants must feel your intent and realise that if they respond you'll save their seeds to assure their flourishing continuance."
Even more intriguing was Carlson's belief that his method would allow him to determine the very likes and dislikes of plants. By exposing them to a varied menu of nutrients hitherto unavailable to them, he aimed, through their reactions, to find out which selections they might prefer, instead of just forcing them to accept what is believed is good for them.
This he hoped might ultimately lead to the elimination of deficiencies resulting in bad-tasting fruit or vegetables and the eradication of plant disease.
"What I began to realise," said Carlson, "was that my method was challenging the seeds' potential, a potential maximised with the right number of Sonic Bloom sprays - which have turned out to be 5 - put on 2 weeks apart." Striking a massive fist on the table for emphasis, he added: "I believe I've come across a new principle that can be called indeterminate growth! It shatters the idea that plants are genetically limited to a given particular size or yield."
This belief in a lack of limitation led Carlson to another principle: geometric progression.We began regularly to discover that plants treated during one growing season would pass along whatever changes were taking place in them, and create, right through their seeds, a successive generation 50% larger and more fruitful, even when the newly generating plants remained untreated with Sonic Bloom. I also call this genetic elasticity, the latent ability of plants to exhibit characterisitcs hidden in their gene pools, pulling out advantageous ones that may have been hidden for hundreds of years. This is connected to the ever-bearing trait brought out in McClurg's oranges."
SONIC BLOOM QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
Q: To begin, what exactly is SONIC BLOOM?
A: SONIC BLOOM is a revolutionary new organic system to enhance plant growth naturally.
Dan Carlson, a research scientist, developed a concept which involves the unique combination of sound and a specially developed foliar spray.
Q: Yes, but how does it actually work?
A: The special sound is made up of harmonic frequencies which stimulate the tiny pores of plant leaves to open. When these pores, called stomata, are open, the plant is able to increase its uptake of Sonic Bloom Balanced Nutrient (an organic fertilizer) by over 700%.
Q: That is a big increase! The sound is obviously very important, but what about the Nutrient?
A: The Nutrient itself is really the important thing. It's a combination of over 100 trace minerals, amino acids and naturally-occurring growth hormones. The sound is a tool to increase the effect of this organic foliar spray. 45 minutes minimum sound stimulation is necessary before and after the leaves are sprayed.
Q: Yes, but if this sound increases absorption by so much, won't any foliar spray work with the Sonic Bloom sound?
A: This is an important point. Dan Carlson discovered the sound almost 20 years ago, but it took 15 years of painstaking development to create a balanced nutrient to complete the system. The problem was that the huge increase in absorption tended to magnify any imbalances and elements could become locked up as a result. So the sound and the balanced nutrient are inseparable. This is the world record-breaking combination. Trials have shown other combinations to be ineffective.
Q: Okay, so Sonic Bloom is the clever balance of a sound and a nutrient. Now, how often do they need to be applied?
A: This varies from crop to crop. Vegetables, for example, require sprays every 7 to 10 days, while tree crops need a monthly spray. 5 to 7 sprays is ideal for most things. The sound should be applied as often as possible, particularly early in the morning when the dew is still on the leaves. Dew actually contains free-floating nutrients and when it is absorbed so effectively it can provide both drought protection and increased growth.
Q: Now, how exactly are the spray and sound applied?
A: The Sound Units are activated by a solar cell which turns them on at daylight and off at nightfall. They are powered by a 12 volt battery and are fully weatherproof. They are usually mounted on a pole or tree in the middle of the growing area. These units are available in three different sizes:
1. Model I unit covers 1 to 5 acres.
2. Model II unit covers 25-40 acres and
3. Model III unit covers 60 acres.
Multiples of these units are used for larger acreages.
Q: Will the sound affect my animals or annoy my neighbors?
A: No, the sound doesn't worry animals at all and is inoffensive, so there's no problem. The smallest commercial unit includes a volume control to govern the right amount of sound for the size of the area to be treated. The larger commercial units should not be situated near a house. From a distance they become a back-ground noise similar to crickets; but if too close, they could annoy.
Q: Are fertilizers still necessary or is Sonic Bloom the complete substitute?
A: Sonic Bloom is NOT a fertilizer. It is a plant growth enhancer. We always recommend that the grower continue to fertilize as usual. After Sonic Bloom treatment you can expect rapid growth, earlier maturity and good yield increases on top of what you would normally expect. You can experiment later and reduce fertilizer costs. Many of our growers do, but initially it's best to carry on as normal.
Q: Sonic Bloom apparently has the ability to heal sick plants. Can it be used as the perfect problem solver?
A: No. It's a mistake to treat Sonic Bloom as a "cure all". It can, in fact, heal sick plants, but if you have a problem, soil analysis is recommended. Sonic Bloom will not overcome a major soil deficiency. It may help, but ultimately the problem must be addressed.
Q: Is the system easy to use? Is it as simple as "play, spray and grow" or is a degree in chemistry necessary to follow instructions?
A: Yes, basically it's just "play, spray and grow", but there are a few rules that must be followed to fully benefit from the system. These are clearly explained in the Sonic Bloom Manual.
Q: The nutrient is totally organic, but isn't it a bit like force-feeding the plant, using sound to increase absorption?
A: The only way to answer that is to suggest that you look at the end result. Sonic Bloom-treated plants are obviously more luxuriant and healthy. They are more disease and pest resistant, produce more and live a lot longer. It depends on your criteria, but it would be very hard to deny that these are happy plants.
Q: Does the foliar spray have a `use by' date?
A: Because the foliar spray is organic, it should be used within a year of purchase.
Q: Now, the big question: How much does the system cost?
A: Every Sound Unit is sold with a minimum Nutrient purchase. The reason for this is to preserve the integrity of the Sonic Bloom system. It is human nature to try other foliar sprays with the sound, but they simply do not work and it makes our system look bad.
Q: Should you leave the sound on all the time?
A: It is adviseable to play the sound only when birds normally sing. That is, sun up and sun down. Otherwise, the stomates will open up in the middle of the day and may cause dehydration. However, if the stomates are open at sun up, they can absorb the dew etc. and decrease water demands by as much as 50%.
Q: How does the Sonic Bloom sound affect others?
A: People get very used to the Sonic Bloom sound that is like crickets whistling quite quickly. It attracts song birds and birds of prey, and appears to make animals more peaceful.
GARDENING TIP: Since it has been found that the singing of birds helps plants to grow, grow plants that will attract birds. The best thing to plant are BUSHES rather than trees. Bushes provide SHELTER and a place for the birds to sit that is low to the ground, as well as food and nesting places. Have bushes at least every 100 yards, because birds will eat insects within 50 yards of their perching place.
The price of our Sound Units provides a very low profit margin for us initially, but it ensures that growers achieve maximum benefit.
The system costs about $80 to $120 per acre per crop per season for a full program for field and row crops. A yield increase of just 2-10% is all that's necessary to cover the cost of treatment. Local yield increases have GREATLY exceeded this.
Add to this EARLY MATURITY, DROUGHT RESISTANCE, INCREASED PEST and DISEASES RESISTANCE, HIGHER SUGAR LEVELS and associated TASTE IMPROVEMENT, EXTENDED SHELF-LIFE and RAPID BALANCED GROWTH, you begin to see a situation where SONIC BLOOM becomes a gilt-edged investment.
Sixteen Foot Tall Corn Stalks with ears two feet long, more nutritious and better tasting, grown with Sonic Bloom
Not only is this cabbage huge, it was still being eaten six months later without preservatives. Grown with Sonic Bloom Organic Fertilizer and Sound System
Normally the purple passion plant grows to a length of no more than 18". This plant was grown by the inventor of Sonic Bloom, and is in the Guiness Book of World Records.
SONIC BLOOM PRODUCTS
Sonic Bloom CD 1*:
* Classical Music with the frequency (good for calming babies too!)
* Photos
* Articles
* Short Video
Sonic Bloom CD2:
* Music with the sound like crickets singing in the background. Plus TRACK 15 has the sound of crickets singing with NO human music. Sorry - this sound goes for only 30 seconds. You will have to program your CD to repeat this track. This is the only CD with the whistling/cricket sound with no human music.
Sonic Bloom CD3:
* The frequency both as inspirational violin music, and the crickets singing
Sonic Bloom CD Set
* May also be useful for calming babies. All three CDs for only $39.50. Save $5.50!!!
IMPORTANT NOTE: Your plants will gain some benefit from the frequency alone, but for truly amazing increase in growth the foliar spray WITH the sound is ESSENTIAL.
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Email:Stephanie@relfe.com
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SONIC BLOOM™
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Sonic Bloom grows plants bigger, better, faster naturally
What is it?
Sonic Bloom™ is a plant growth enhancer that combines a unique system of sound with an organic nutrient spray, producing healthier plants and crops much more quickly and naturally.
And the result?
Sonic Bloom™ dramatically enhances the yield, taste, shelf life and nutritional content of your fruits and vegetables, while helping to reduce watering and fertilizer use.
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Does Sonic Bloom pay off?
With Sonic Bloom you can expect improved yields from 20 to 200% with a cost per acre per season of from $80 to $120 which includes the amortized life of the Sonic Bloom sound unit. This is for a full program for field and row crops so a yield increase of just 2% and 10% is all that's necessary to cover the cost of treatment. When you consider early maturity, drought resistance, increased pest and disease resistance, higher nutrient levels and associated taste improvement, extended shelf-life and rapid balanced growth, you can see how a Sonic Bloom investment really pays.
How does Sonic Bloom work?
Sonic Bloom is a patented concept uses specific sound frequencies, which were found to be similar to those of birds' songs, to stimulate and increase the rate at which plants absorb nutrients.
Sonic Bloom includes an organic nutrient spray specially formulated to ensure maximum and easy absorption of 64 trace elements and minerals that provide a properly balanced and nutritional diet for your plants.
Tests prove it...
Plants treated with Sonic Bloom™ can absorb seven times more nutrients than untreated plants, as proven by tests in a leading U.S. scientific laboratory.
Wilson Mills knows Sonic Bloom works!
An apple orchard operator in southwest Wisconsin has used Sonic Bloom™ for the past 8 years. He claims larger, healthier trees with increased yields, less insect problems, higher sugar levels, earlier maturity, reduced fertilizer use, and an improved shelf life. Whereas the state average seasonal yield is 290 bushels per acre, this grower regularly exceeds 400 bushels per acre. Lab reports reveal that the apples he grew using Sonic Bloom™ boast increases of 400% in copper, 1,750% in zinc, 300% in chromium and 126% in potassium. Shelf life jumped from 30 days to 5 months.
Sonic Bloom works miracles around the world
100% increase in tea production in Indonesia.
A tomato grower in Arkansas observed that average greenhouse crop yield increased from 9,000 to 19,000 pounds. Once picked, these tomatoes stay unspoiled up to three times as long as untreated tomatoes, and this grower reported no problems with tomato disease.
Dan Carlson appeared
January 5, 2004
Alex Merklinger's
Mysteries
of the Mind
click here
to hear a streaming audio rebroadcast.
New Zealand’s Growing Today, May 1994. “The Sound and the Glory”,by Stephen Jones. Published by Growing Today, Ltd. PO Box 333, Kumeu
T L C for Plants, Canada’s leading gardening magazine, Tender Loving Care for Plants, Spring 1991 “Brave New Waves”, author Michael Spillane,
Published by Garden Vale Publishing Company, LTD.’
1 Pacifique Ste’ane de Bellevue, Quebec, Canada
Acres, U.S.A., A Voice for Eco-Agriculture, 1985,‘86,’87,'98 Articles written by Christopher Bird. Charles Walters, publisher, Kansas City, Mo.
AgriAlternatives, July/August '98
Published by Media Discoveries, Canton, Georgia
Minneapolis Star Tribune, July 24, 1999 “Green Acres”
By Deborah Caulfield Rybak
Bio/Tech News, Bio/Tech Publishing, Special Report, 2000. “SuperrrSONIC!”
Southwest Feed & Livestock
AgriFX provides the positive flora, enzymes, bacteria, and pH to enable the plant OR animal to achieve maximum delivery of nutrients, oxygen, and bring strength and balance to the immune system, homeostasis. Consistent use of AgriFX may result in less need for sporicide, fungicides, and even fertilizers. A great natural complement to Sonic Bloom. click here for more information
MaraPine Pycnogenol is the super-antioxidant that has been tried and tested by over 30 years of research for numerous acute and chronic disorders.
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1(541) 592-6652
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SONIC BLOOM™ SOLVES AGRICULTURAL PROBLEMS WHILE INCREASING PRODUCTIVITY
Sonic Bloom™ allows the gardener/grower to harvest in fewer days with 50-80% less herbicide and pesticide, using 50-70% less water, yielding 50-400% larger crops, with 30-1000% more nutrition and double-triple the nutrient retention with low capital expense and simple installation. I've used Sonic Bloom™ in my organic garden for years. Sonic Bloom™ works!
Sonic Bloom has created an agricultural, horticultural wonderland on a farm near River Falls, Wisconsin. Corn shoots 16-feet high, an African violet plant sports 300 blooms of various colors (30 is normal), trees put on ten years of growth in four years, tomato plants produce twice as much fruit in half the time, and huge strawberries, some weighing one quarter of a pound, grow from April to October--without petrochemicals or artificial fertilizers. Sonic Bloom provides one other important factor that makes gardens grow--sound.
Dan Carlson had a vision to provide food for the world’s hungry people. As a soldier in Korea, Carlson saw a desperate mother who laid the legs of her small child beneath the rear wheel of an army truck: crushed legs created an authentic cripple, entitled to a family-saving food subsidy from the US Government.
Back home after his duty in the armed forces Carlson spent several years at the University of Minnesota Agricultural Experiment Station studying plant physiology. He concluded that plants were able to obtain 72% of their nutritional requirements through their leaves via the stomata, the mouth-like pores on the lower surface of the leaves. Plants could flourish in very poor or unsuitable soils and climates – provided a way could be found to increase the uptake of nutrient into the leaves. He knew that plants translocate any excess nutrients from their leaves down to their root system, thus conditioning the soil and storing nutrients for future use.
His work led him to eventually find a range of sound wave frequencies which stimulated the stomata into action and thus increased the uptake of ‘free’ nutrients available in the atmosphere, including nitrogen and moisture in the form of humidity in the morning dew. The sound frequency Dr. Carlson utilized has turned out to be in the same range as some songbirds, particularly during some of the spring mating and courtship rituals. This finding has led some people to suggest that the spring birdsong may be one of Nature’s signals, a trigger for trees and plants to break dormancy and begin to grow. If so, the implications of that alone are considerable for modern horticulture, which tends to discourage birds. Sonic Bloom is the aspect of the environment that even organic gardeners have forgotten.
Experimenting with various plant extracts, trace minerals and amino acids, Dan finally came up with a combination of organic nutrients that gave the most rapid and balanced plant growth. After several years he came up with a nutrient blend, which when applied with the sound frequency, produced rapid and balanced growth on over a hundred different crops, from avocados to zucchini. Sonic Bloom was born!
Dan Carlson achieved world-wide recognition for his Purple Passion plant, which grew so big with Sonic Bloom™ that it is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the world’s largest indoor plant. It eventually grew to 1300 feet in length. But the purple passion plant experiment was of novelty value only. Scientists were not interested in this success because it involved a non-edible plant of no commercial value.
So Dr. Carlson approached farmers and commercial growers to try Sonic Bloom™ on as many crops as possible. He managed to encourage the U.S. Department of Agriculture to become involved in barley growing trials involving fifty varieties and different growers. They reported an average 68 percent increase in yields across the board, with several varieties treated with Sonic Bloom™ producing more than 100 percent yield increases.
SONIC BLOOM INCREASES YIELDS
In 1986 Acres U.S.A. magazine reported 30 percent increases on oranges and the reversal of the disease, ‘Young Tree Decline.’ Papaya showed 300 percent increases. A macadamia tree considered past the age of production became virtually ever-bearing. Yield increases of 400 percent for cucumbers, African Violets with up to 300 blooms per plant instead of 30, and 300 percent yield increases on sweet corn were among many other successes. In forests, perhaps the greatest potential for this revolutionary technology lies in forestry -–with the promise of shorter tree rotation times and exceptional wood density qualities. In the U.S., pines have halved their maturity time with Sonic Bloom™. With Sonic Bloom treatment you can expect 1/3 larger potatoes, 1/3 more yield, a denser potato and each generation shows an improvement over the last.
The senior editor of Professional Farmers of America magazine, a definite skeptic, tested Sonic Bloom™ and reported 100 percent yield increases in soybean yields. The treated soybeans were visibly larger, with an increase in pods per plant and pods numbering from 60 to 100. In Wisconsin, soybean plants produced up to 300 pods per plant; 30 to 35 is considered to be the norm.
Harold Aungst won the Pennsylvania State alfalfa-growing contest using Sonic Bloom™ with no herbicides, pesticides or expensive fertilizer. He managed 7.6 tons per acre after achieving the state average of 3.4 tons in his first cutting. Cows preferred the Sonic Bloom™-grown alfalfa and ate the entire plant, stalk and all.
SONIC BLOOM IMPROVES NUTRITION AND FLAVOR
Growing bigger with Sonic Bloom™ apparently doesn’t mean a loss in flavor. Growers report exceptional quality and taste with fruit, vegetables, and nuts treated with Sonic Bloom™. Oranges from Sonic Bloom™-treated trees have been found to contain 120% more vitamin C content. Protein in soybeans nearly doubled. Apples from the Circle K Orchard had 1,750% more zinc, 400% more iron, 326% more chromium, and 126%more potassium. With Sonic Bloom, a Florida citrus growers’ total orange production increased by 66%. Not only did the orchard flourish, its fruit, tested at the Garvey Center for the Improvement of Human Functioning, in Wichita, Kansas, contained 121% more natural vitamin C than oranges not treated with Sonic Bloom™. Because of the high nutrient content, most fruits and vegetables have a doubled or tripled shelf life. Pineapple have double the sugar, 1/3 the acid, a fully edible core, and maturity increased by 1/3. And the terminal fruit (first ratoon) often weighs 8-11 pounds, double the norm. Normally the lateral fruits (second ratoon) are only 2-3 pounds and are often discarded. With Sonic Bloom treatment, the second ratoon left on the plant mature to 4-6 pounds, a marketable size. If cuttings are made of the second ratoon and planted separately, the fruits will often grow to 8-11 pounds like the first ratoon. In either case, this provides a second crop where normally only one crop is harvested and this along with the larger size more than doubles the harvest.
The commercial possibilities of a product like Sonic Bloom™ are enormous. Sonic Bloom™ is a completely organic technique that enhances plant development through natural nutrients and sound frequencies that stimulate absorption of the nutrients. The system has been approved by the International Organic Growers and Buyers Association (OGBA). Many rigorous field tests have yielded reams of data showing that Sonic Bloom™ works. See Grower's Results
SONIC BLOOM MEANS FEWER PESTS AND DISEASE PROBLEMS
Commercial growers and home gardeners using Sonic Bloom™ reported far fewer pest and disease problems. Healthy plants are not so susceptible to damage by insects and disease organisms. Treated plants actually kill or intoxicate pests because of the alcohol associated with high levels of complex sugars. Their digestive systems can’t handle the high sugar levels.
These alcohols are the building blocks of amino acids. Since alcohol is basically antifreeze, this may partly explain the ability of plants to withstand frosts. It could be the reason outdoor, California varieties of strawberries treated with Sonic Bloom™ are surviving the harsh winters of Wisconsin, and baffling experts who said they would never grow there.
While the jovial and extroverted Carlson is having lots of fun with the astounding results of Sonic Bloom™-treated crops, he hasn’t forgotten that perhaps the greatest feature of his sound and nutrient method is its ability to grow better crops in poor soils and low rainfall.
Not only do crops treated with Sonic Bloom™ grow in areas where crops had not grown previously, they’ve thrived. In New Mexico, they’re making world record claims for Amaranth. Not only were the heads the biggest ever encountered, the treated Amaranth matured 56 days earlier, on poor, adobe-sand soils with a pH ranging from 7.7 to 7.9. In the first year, the Amaranth grew one-half pound heads. The next year, the seeds taken from those heads produced heads weighing more than a pound.
Sonic Bloom™-treated plants also apparently produce seeds that grow as well as their parents without further treatment. However, those seeds when further treated with Sonic Bloom™, grow to become even better than their parents. Sonic Bloom™ helps plants realize their genetic potential. Sonic Bloom™ optimizes the latent ability of plants to exhibit characteristics hidden in their gene pools, activating advantageous genes that may have been hidden for hundreds of years. There is no need for genetic engineering because the most productive genes are already there.
Alan Kapuler, of Peace Seeds Oregon, reported on the effects of Sonic Bloom™ on the germination of 89 kinds of flowering plants. Apart from dramatically stimulating the germination of several plant types including squash, sweet corn, peppers, paulownia, and three species of rare solanums, four of the plants germinated only in the presence of Sonic Bloom™.
SONIC BLOOM REDUCES HERBICIDE USE
Although the Sonic Bloom™ sound/nutrient system is organic, it also possesses another feature that could have far-reaching implications for this planet. The concept has been nicknamed "Sonic Doom", or sound aiding in the absorption of herbicide. Tests have shown that by employing the sound 45 minutes prior to spraying, even hard-to-kill mature weeds can be sprayed with 50% less herbicide, resulting in faster, total kills. The sound is so efficient at getting the herbicide into the plant that it doesn’t matter if it rains an hour after application. While we do not advocate the use of herbicides, using 50% less will obviously result in less damage to the environment. We like the idea of farmers reducing their herbicide bills by half or more and using the savings to buy Sonic Bloom™ nutrient to increase their yields! The Sonic Doom concept may also make the less effective, but environmentally safe, weed killers more efficient.
In the U.S., many farmers are on a ‘set aside’ program, where the U.S. Government pays growers not to grow anything. Further, the agricultural colleges, dependent on large grants from chemical companies to maintain their fiscal vitality are reluctant to “rock the boat” with new, non-chemical agricultural solutions. As a result, Dan Carlson’s achievement is probably more recognized in countries other than the USA. In 1993, the Bio-Research Committee in Japan, which represents 8,000 organic farmers, declared Sonic Bloom™ to be the best thing that they had experimented with in recent years. China and Afghanistan have employed Sonic Bloom™ in their forestry. Organic authorities in New Zealand and Australia, are registering Sonic Bloom™. Agricultural ministers in Indonesia and Malaysia are bringing Sonic Bloom™ technology to the agricultural institutes throughout their countries. In 1991, Carlson was asked by the Philippine Department of Plant Industry to work with Philippine farmers whose land and crops had been devastated by toxic ash spewed from Mt. Pinatubo’s eruption. Presently, farmers there are awaiting registration of the product for large-scale commercial use.
Dr. Carlson is spreading the word about Sonic Bloom™ to potential growers in Mongolia and the Ukraine. Dr. Hou Tian Zhen, from Mongolia’s Zinjiang Academy of Forestry studied with him for a year. Taking Sonic Bloom™ back to Mongolia, Hou has realized a 30-90% increase in yield of the tested food crops, such as watermelons and potatoes. Sugar beet farmers in the Ukraine are experimenting with Sonic Bloom™ and evaluating its potential to feed people in a shorter time, with larger, longer-lasting, more nutritious products.
In 100 countries and in every state in the united States, Sonic Bloom™ is making a difference, increasing productivity and nutrients, reducing the use of water and herbicides, speeding crops to market ahead of the competition, withstanding early frosts and insect depredation, speeding germination and maturation of seedlings, releasing the full genetic potential of the plants.
Contact: Allen Aslan Heart
White Eagles Soaring
211 Aries Lane
Cave Junction, OR 97523
(541) 592-6652/Fax: (928) 833-3207
whiteaglesoaring@yahoo.com
29 June 2006
Second Agricultural Revolution In The Offing
Scientists at the John Innes Centre, Norwich and Washington State University, have managed to trigger nodulation in legumes, a key element of the nitrogen fixing process, without the bacteria normally necessary for this to occur. Detailing their work in Nature, the researchers say their investigations could lead to the ability to trigger nitrogen fixation in non-legume crops, which would dramatically reduce the world's need [sic, let's just say crony use] for [expensive, degradating] inorganic fertilizers.
Modern [bulk supply-sided] agriculture depends heavily on inorganic fertilizers that provide nitrogen, a nutrient that is critical for plant growth.
The production of nitrogen fertilizers requires a large amount of energy and is estimated to constitute an incredible 50 per cent of the fossil fuel usage of the modern agricultural process.
Inorganic fertilizers also cause environmental headaches, leeching into surrounding water systems and triggering events like algal blooms.
The plants used in this study - legumes - are an important group as they have the ability to fix nitrogen themselves, thanks to a symbiotic relationship with nitrogen-fixing bacteria in their root nodules.
Farmers often use legumes as a rotation crop to naturally enhance the nitrogen content of soils without fertilizers. Scientists have been working for a number of years to understand the symbiosis between legumes and rhizobial bacteria, hoping that one day they can transfer this trait to crop plants, the majority of which cannot fix nitrogen themselves.
(Pictured: Nodules occur on the roots of legumes, in this case the pea. The nitrogen fixing bacteria live inside the cells of the nodule.)
In this new study, the researchers have used a key gene that legumes require to establish the interaction with the nitrogen-fixing bacteria to trigger the growth of root nodules, even in the absence of the bacteria.
"We now have a good understanding of the processes required to activate nodule development. The nodule is an essential component of this nitrogen fixing interaction as it provides the conditions required for the bacteria. Nodules are normally only formed when the plant perceives the presence of the bacteria. The fact that we can induce the formation of nodules in the plant in the absence of the bacteria is an important first step in transferring this process to non-legumes. If this could be achieved we could dramatically reduce the need for inorganic nitrogen fertilizers, in turn reducing environmental pollution and energy use. However, we still have a lot of work before we can generate nodulation in non-legumes," explained lead researcher Dr Giles Oldroyd.
Source: Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council
http://www.scienceagogo.com/news/20060528231843data_trunc_sys.shtml
Fertilizers that can be missing, and still be there, rather cheap to let water carry the memory of the fertilizer instead:
Vol 3 No 5
Digital Biology and the Memory
Effect of Water
with Jacques Benveniste, M.D.
by Wynn Free
Will the eternal "Understand I do not, therefore it is not" prevail forever in science? Can we not say once and for all "bye-bye" to Galileo-style prosecution and replace it with genuine scientific debate?
Given my painful ten-year experience, we may as well start by throwing out the "pire-review" system which has become, behind its facade of excellence, the main antibody blocking the nearly deceased scientific free exchange which once was the cornerstone of scientific progress.
—Jacques Benveniste, M.D.
Dr. Jacques Benveniste is a medical doctor who has discovered certain scientific properties of water which defy explanation by the tenets of mainstream physics. His science, which he calls Digital Biology, is based upon two breakthrough observations that he can prove in experiments that have been duplicated by other scientists:
1. If a substance is diluted in water, the water can carry the memory of that substance even after it has been so diluted that none of the molecules of the original substance remain; and
2. The molecules of any given substance have a spectrum of frequencies that can be digitally recorded with a computer, then played back into untreated water (using an electronic transducer), and when this is done, the new water will act as if the actual substance were physically present.
The applications of Digital Biology are endless. Some of them include digital fertilizers and growth enhancers, detection of contaminating organisms in agriculture, digital pharmaceuticals, digital homeopathics, water analysis and purification, and electromagnetic pesticides.
Dr. Benveniste is a French medical doctor and researcher who studied at the Scripps Institute in La Jolla, California, for three years. We spoke with him by phone at his research facility in Paris, France.
Wynn: Could you just briefly state what it is that you have discovered?
Jacques: It's known as the "memory of water." When you add a substance to water and then dilute the water to the point where there are no more molecules of the added substance left in the water, you can still measure effects of the water as if the originally diluted substance were still present.
Wynn: What made you curious enough to start your research?
Jacques: It was an accident. There was a technician in my lab who accidentally diluted more than she thought, and realized that for the amount of molecules that were left there shouldn't be any indication of the original substance. But there was.
We kept diluting, and the action kept coming back. So we knew we had a new phenomenon.
Wynn: That would it mean if I had a giant lake and I poured something into the lake...?
Jacques: No, it doesn't work that way.
First you have to add the substance to the water in a fixed proportion: one to ten, one to a hundred, one to a thousand... So it's a very small amount of information that you bring.
Wynn: Why do you think those specific proportions are meaningful?
Jacques: We don't know. But out of serendipity and experience, we have shown that without those proportions, it doesn't work as well.
Then, between each dilution, you have to agitate violently for 20 seconds to incorporate the little amount of information you put into the test tube.
So for instance you might put one drop of the diluting medium into nine-hundred-ninety-nine drops of water, then agitate for twenty seconds with a violent motion — in what we call a vortex.
Only then do you get the transmission of the information.
You wouldn't be able to shake your lake.
Wynn: A vortex is like a spiral?
Jacques: Exactly, like a funnel inside of the water.
Wynn: How do you determine that the water has the memory of the original substance?
Jacques: You get a specific effect.
Here's an example. Let's say that you apply a histamine to the skin of an animal and it creates an irritation, like a blister. Then if you apply water that has been given the memory of histamine to the skin of the same animal, you will also end up with a blister. That's what I mean by a specific effect.
We added histamine to an isolated guinea-pig heart and found that the effect was the same whether we used a high dilution or the original strength. We did the same with other compounds and got the same result.
We can take this one step further. We can record the activity in the water that has a diluted substance on a computer, and then play the recording to untreated water. And the computer-treated water will have the same effect as the water that was treated with an actual substance and diluted.
Wynn: Let me see if I understood what you just said. Instead of putting the substance in the water, you can put the frequencies of the substance in the water?
Jacques: We don't like to use the word "frequency," because that implies we know what the frequency is. In fact, it's exactly the same thing when you record something on your computer — a song or a voice — and then you replay it. Your ear is vibrating the same way as if the person were in the room. The ear is fooled by the recording. The ear reacts just as if the singer were singing live in the room. You don't know the frequencies involved, you just know that the voice coming out of the speaker exactly emulates how the singer would sound if they were live in the room.
In the same way, you can record the frequency spectrum of a substance.
Wynn: By what interface do you get the spectrum from the treated water into the untreated water?
Jacques: Instead of replaying to a loudspeaker, we use the loudspeaker outlet of the sound card, and plug in a copper coil. The frequency spectrums are always within the audio range of 20 to 20,000 cycles per second.
The point is that we have solved one of the mysteries of classical biology. The phrase "molecular signal" is one of the most used references in biology, except no one has known or asked, "What is the physical nature of the signal?" And we have discovered that at least a good representative signal of the molecule is between 20 and 20,000 Hertz, which makes sense, as only a low frequency can get through water.
Wynn: How do you record a signal from a substance?
Jacques: Think of a microphone without a membrane, just an electromagnetic coil. You plug that electronic coil into the female receptacle of the sound card. Then you put the molecules in a test tube next to the coil. When those millions of molecules in this liquid vibrate, it's enough for the coil to pick them up.
We are just using commercially available components to measure this.
Wynn: So these experiments sound as though they can be duplicated very easily.
Jacques: Actually, it takes very stringent conditions for the experiment to be repeatable. That's because when you replay to water, the water may or may not take the signal, depending upon local electromagnetic conditions.
For example, now you are recording my voice on tape, and if you put a magnet over the tape, you will erase my voice. But if we were talking face to face, you could put the magnet in front of my mouth and you would still hear my words. So there is a difference between the electromagnetic recording and the real voice, even though they both sound the same.
So the electromagnetic fields in the environment affect whether or not the signal is transferred back to the water.
A lab in Chicago duplicated my experiment where they recorded 26 samples, of which half, or 13, were a control group of random frequencies, and half were actual molecular signals of various substances. Then they sent the untitled computer .wav files to me — so my lab didn't know which was which. But we were able to recognize and identify the 13 real substances, as separate from the control, with a very high significance.
When I published this, no one believed it at first. They thought it was impossible to send molecules over the Atlantic. But they never could point to anything wrong with the experimental protocol.
Wynn: What is it in water that holds the memory?
Jacques: This is the multimillion-dollar question. People will have to rethink the ideas they have on water.
From the get-go, water doesn't behave as it should. There are more than 30 physical constants of water that are "wrong."
For example, water is a mixture of two gases, hydrogen and oxygen, that become liquid at ordinary room temperature. That's totally impossible. Water shouldn't exist.
Why is water liquid? The physicists don't understand this. None of this can really be understood by the common laws of physics. So even though it's inexplicable, all I can do is to repeat my experiments and demonstrate that it works.
Wynn: What's the connection between your discoveries and homeopathy?
Jacques: That has actually become an area of controversy. I am not an alternative practitioner, but a very classical doctor. But I was accused of supporting homeopathy. Regular doctors get very upset when you do something that seems to validate homeopathy.
Yet my experiments do show irrefutably that even when you highly dilute a compound, you can still get activity. So in essence my experiments give a scientific explanation of how homeopathy can work.
It's like a CD. When you break open a CD, the singer is not inside. But you can get the same effect. You don't need the real thing.
Wynn: What are some of the other applications of your discovery?
Jacques: One application is that you can put a detector anywhere in the world and detect any bacteria that are around. You can go to the middle of nowhere in Africa, and if you have a telephone or satellite, in seconds you can send anywhere the signal of the bacteria which are in proximity to the detector. You can then identify the specific bacteria. We do it every day in the lab.
The old way of doing this is to manually collect samples of water and send it to the CDC (Centers for Disease Control), where they will manually analyze the water for traces of bacteria.
Wynn: So if you were working with a very contagious bacterium, you could analyze it without being in direct exposure to it. But couldn't the signal of the bacteria make someone sick?
Jacques: I don't believe so, unless you would put this person inside of a huge coil and send thousands of watts with the signal of the bacteria through the coil. Then if the bacteria generated a toxin in the body, the toxin could be duplicated through the coil. But by diffusing the signal in the air, it would just be too weak.
Wynn: What are some other applications?
Jacques: We think we could detect the AIDS virus at concentrations way below what is commonly measurable. If someone is contaminated with AIDS, there is a period where the antibodies do not appear, yet the person is very contagious. This is a nightmare for blood banks. This could be done very cheaply as compared to DNA analysis.
So far, we are working on a very small budget, so we've haven't been able to develop these protocols yet.
Another application would be killing pests with the field. This would allow pests to be eliminated without contaminating the environment with toxic chemicals.
Wynn: How have you funded your experiments?
Jacques: I am not funded at all. I have created a company with my collaborator called Digi-Bio. We financed our company with small investors, but we are currently looking for larger sponsors so we can develop applications for this technology. There are many other possible applications yet to be discovered and proven.
Right now there are only three people working on this project. But someday I believe there will be thousands of researchers experimenting on this technology, and then the applications will develop fast. But perhaps that will be 30 years from now.
There's nothing described in physics that explains why, when you put two molecules in proximity to each other, there would be any kind of exchange of information except with radioactive substances. The only way that molecules could communicate is by their vibrations. It is known that molecules vibrate. This has been known for 50 years.
So what we are saying is that the vibration is not separate from the molecule. And these vibrations are the way molecules communicate. Digi-Bio is demonstrating the validity of this communication, and this is a significant breakthrough.
Wynn: Thank you very much for taking your time to explain this research to our readers.
Jacques: Thank you for giving me the opportunity.
NOTE: This is a bilingual pun: The French word pire, which is pronounced the same as the English word peer, means "worse."
Dr. Jacques BenvenisteJacques Benveniste is a Doctor of Medicine and a former resident of the Paris Hospital System and research director at the French National Institute for Medical Research. He is known worldwide as a specialist in the mechanisms of allergy and inflammation, and achieved recognition in 1971 by his discovery of Paf (Platelet Activating Factor), a mediator implicated in the mechanisms involved in allergy pathologies (for example, asthma).
In 1984, while working on hypersensitive (allergic) systems, by chance he brought to light the so-called "high dilution phenomenon," which was picked up by the media and labeled "the memory of water."
The DigiBio website contains a wealth of information about experimental protocols that support Dr. Benveniste's discoveries, the many applications to which this new technology might be put, and the beginnings of a theory to explain how molecules actually communicate. You can contact him by email at JBenveniste@DigiBio.com.
Though other methods above are more ideal, this is more 'laterally useful'. It removes and closes a cycle of animal wastes (dried blood) and sea wastes (crustaecan shells) into something useful--though it is of course premised on clean animal and sea wastes.
It is a recipe treatment for fertilizer from certain organic nitrogenous wastes admixed with other phosperous wastes (like crustaecean shells).
The secret is the size of the granules--below 2 mm. This is independent confirmation of the general principle noticed in the rock dust fertilizer above.
A patent summary:
Fine granulated fertilizer formulation for seed/plant placement at seeding or transplanting
US Patent Issued on May 14, 2002
"
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
It has now been unexpectedly discovered that it is possible to prepare a fertilizer composition for use during sowing and transplanting, which possesses numerous applicational advantages, considerably limiting the impact of the above-mentioned drawbacks.
It has been noted the fact that, in the case of the most widely used granulated fertilizer compositions, suitable for local application, in the past exclusively, granules with a diameter greater than 2.0 mm were used and it has been surprisingly found that brilliant results may be obtained by preparing new fertilizer formulations in the form of granules with much smaller dimensions, ranging between 0.1 and 1.5 mm, based on the synergic association of a selected organic fraction with a mineral fraction.
A particularly suitable organic fraction consists of an organic nitrogenous component able to supply organic nitrogen in a form which can be readily assimilated by the cultivations. More specifically two highly effective organic nitrogenous components, which can be used individually or in combination, have been located and selected, the first being an organic nitrogenous substance of natural origin and the second being a synthesis slow-release organic nitrogenous substance.
Advantageously, in the composition according to the invention, the two organic nitrogenous components are present in the following predefined ratios, for example 50:50, 25:75; 75:25.
It has also been determined that granules with an average diameter comprised between 0.3 and 1.2 mm, more preferably between 0.5 and 1 mm, are particularly suitable for local application operations during sowing or transplanting.
DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS
In accordance with an aspect of the present invention, a fertilizer composition in the form of granules for local application during sowing or transplanting of agricultural crops, in which said granules have an average particle size ranging between 0.1 and 1.5 mm, is provided, said composition comprising an organic nitrogenous substance of natural origin, a synthesis slow-release organic nitrogenous substance and a phosphate or phospho-nitrogen compound.
In accordance with another aspect of the present invention a fertilizer composition in the form of granules, for local application during sowing or transplanting of agricultural crops, in which said granules have an average particle size ranging between 0.1 and 1.5 mm, is provided, comprising an association of an organic nitrogenous component with a humic derivative and a phosphate or phospho-nitrogen compound.
Organic nitrogenous substances of natural origin which are particularly suitable are chosen from the group comprising dried blood, meat meal, hydrolyzed animal epithelium [the whole hydrolization of oil process should be banned as a health hazard], crustacean chitin, chrysalis meal, horn and hoof meal and wildfowl feathers and mixtures thereof, among these degreased and dried animal blood being preferred.
Animal blood, degreased and dried, is advantageously produced using the technique of "spray drying" performed at high temperatures and pressures, but for short durations and with large volumes of air, so as to obtain a product with a nitrogen content higher than 13%, a moisture content of less than 7% and a water solubility greater than 85%.
"
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http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/6387145-fulltext.html
[shows similar effect to the control, i.e., little effect at all! Though interesting use of a waste without much other use I guess?]
New Use For Human Hair
Thursday, January 1st, 2009
by Lockergnome
Agricultural crop production relies on composted waste materials and byproducts, such as animal manure, municipal solid waste composts, and sewage sludge, as a necessary nutrient source. Studies have shown that human hair, a readily available waste generated from barbershops and hair salons, combined with additional compost, is an additional nutrient source for crops. Although human hair has become commercially available to crop producers in the past couple years, it has not been proven to be an exclusive source of nutrients in greenhouse container production.
Vlatcho D. Zheljazkov, Juan L. Silva, Mandar Patel, Jelena Stojanovic, Youkai. Lu, Taejo Kim, and Thomas Horgan of Mississippi State University recently published a research study in HortTechnology designed to determine whether commercially available noncomposted hair waste cubes would support plant growth in horticulture crops as a sole source of nutrients.
The study compared the productivity of four crops: lettuce, wormwood, yellow poppy, and feverfew, grown in commercial growth medium using untreated control, noncomposted hair cubes at differing weights, a controlled-release fertilizer and a water-soluble fertilizer. Results showed that, with the addition of hair waste cubes, yields increased relative to the untreated control but were lower than yields in the inorganic treatments, suggesting that hair waste should not be used as a single source for fast-growing plants such as lettuce.
Zheljazkov suggests that, “once the degradation and mineralization of hair waste starts, it can provide sufficient nutrients to container-grown plants and ensure similar yields to those obtained with the commonly used fertilizers in horticulture. However, it takes time for the hair to start degrading and releasing nutrients, as is reflected in lower yields in the hair treatments relative to the inorganic fertilizers for lettuce and wormwood.”
Because of possible health concerns, further research is necessary to determine whether human hair waste is a viable option as fertilizer for edible crops.
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http://www.lockergnome.com/news/2009/01/01/new-use-for-human-hair/
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