BIOLOGICAL YIELD BOOSTERS – SONIC BLOOM

Sonic Bloom is a plant growth enhancer sprayed on crops as many as five times during early growth through blooming. A unique part of the treatment: You spray while plant metabolism is stimulated with an audible sound.

A battery-powered loudspeaker, modulated by a computer chip, warbles like a robin, desperate for a mate in spring. Lab studies show that nutrient movement within plants climbs as much as 700% under this sound frequency. It apparently helps the plant absorb and translocate nutrients and hormones in the spray.

A wide variety of farmer and lab tests with Sonic Bloom show 20% to 100% yield increases on fruit, vegetables, and field crops. The sound/spray process was developed in 15 years of research by Dan Carlson Scientific Enterprises of Blaine, Minnesota. Dan, a lone inventor, focuses most of his energy on research. He has not turned over his product to a major chemical company for marketing. Thus he hasn’t had the budget to buy standard land-grant plot tests typical of plant growth regulator development. He works mostly with farmers and a few scientists who aren’t afraid of concepts that literally sound a little weird.

Carlson says all of Sonic Bloom’s ingredients are "generally recognized as safe." He expects the product to qualify as an "organic" practice for certification with state organic marketing groups.

LandOwner tested Sonic Bloom for two seasons. Two to three applications typically increased soybean yields 30%. When we treated five times and increased the time of sound exposure, soybeans began behaving like bush beans. Branches twined around each other and climbed up any support such as nearby weeds. We counted up to nine pods per cluster, with three beans per pod.

It takes some social self-confidence to test Sonic Bloom. Neighbors will snicker, "Why don’t you just sing to the plants, instead of playing that squeaky sound?"

Also, the current pricing -- $50 per acre for the product, plus costs of five applications, will need to drop before it attracts many farmers to use it on soybeans worth $4.80 a bushel or on corn under $2.

The greatest benefit: cost ratio for Sonic Bloom, as we see it, is for fresh fruit and vegetables.

Gardeners and commercial growers tell LandOwner that fresh foods from cauliflower to strawberries "taste better, yield more, and last longer after picking" when treated with Sonic Bloom. This is apparently related to a higher cell content of solids, including sugars.

To use, the response to Sonic Bloom sounds similar to test results which USDA researcher Henry Yokoyama recently reported with a hormone named DCPTA, synthesized from two common compounds. Protein content also rises with DCPTA. The same thing happens with Sonic Bloom. This doesn’t mean that the formula is identical. However, both products apparently make the plant’s photosynthesis more productive, increasing the assimilation of carbon and other growth elements.

Two of our soybean plots which were given five sprays, and extra sound yielded over 70 bu., compared to 35 bu. From unsprayed beans of the same variety. We intend to test a dozen replicated bean plots again this year.

When a group of Japanese scientists visited the Landowner soybean tests last fall, Dan advised them, "Soybeans treated with Sonic Bloom won’t have many root nodules."

The Japanese dug up several samples of soybean plants treated with the spray, and found almost no nodulation. In a nearby untreated field, the roots of the same variety of soybeans were heavily nodulated.

"I suspect that the soybeans treated with Sonic Bloom use up nutrients normally stored in those nodules during the growing season," says Dan.

Mark Schlosser, a dairyman of Hennepin County, Minnesota, harvested 48-bu. soybeans after treatment with Sonic Bloom in 1985. He estimated untreated beans in the same field might have yielded 41 bu., but they lodged severely in a late, wet fall.

We found little confirmed data on Sonic Bloom tests with hybrid corn. In Allamakee County, Iowa, James Blake sprayed Sonic Bloom on six commercial single-cross corn hybrids. Yields on the treated varieties ranged from97.7 bu. to 130.3 bu., despite six weeks without rain in July and August. Treated plots averaged 124.9 bu., almost 30% more than untreated. One variety, Henry’s 12A, shot 95% double ears when treated. Blake says, "Other treated varieties were 40% to 60% double-eared."

An increase of multiple ears with Sonic Bloom showed up in open-pollinated strains studied by Gabriel Howearth, a researcher in Rio Arriba County, New Mexico. He’s helping Pueblo Indians at San Juan Pueblo, New Mexico, upgrade drought-resistant open-pollinated corn varieties.

Indian corn varieties treated with Sonic Bloom frequently set three and four ears per plant. Howearth planted the few available seeds of ancient germ plasm in 90-ft. rows, and counted the harvested ears. One variety, treated with four spays of Sonic Bloom, yielded 427 ears from 108 plants. The adjoining row, treated with sound only, produced 255 ears from 120 plants. Other replications showed similar results.

"This corn normally sets one ear per stalk," Howearth says. "Ears on sprayed plants averaged twice as long as normal." Treated plants matured in 99 days; 120 is normal.

Howearth tried Sonic Bloom on several kinds of amaranth, a small-seeded desert grain which was a staple among Southwestern and Central American peoples. Treated amaranth varieties yielded 2,200 lbs. per acre versus 1,600 lbs. for untreated checks.

Amaranth matured in 93 days, "15 days early," says Howearth.

Sweet corn growers report corn has a sweeter taste, earlier maturity, and an increase in multiple ears when treated with Sonic Bloom. In western Iowa, a Cherokee County couple reports their full-season, high-lusine corn treated with Sonic Bloom grew much faster and matured earlier. "We didn’t make yield checks on the corn, but we took progressive photos that show taller stalks and more multiple ears on the treated corn," says Mrs. Eldo Kahl. "Untreated corn wasn’t as tall and hardly matured by the first freeze."

Minnesota sweet corn grower, Tom Knaeble, says Sonic Bloom doubled his sweet corn yield, mostly from double ears. He also was able to start picking eight days earlier than usual. "Response from my customers was overwhelming," he says, "A lot of old-timers told me it was the best corn they’d ever had."

Will Krahn, a former securities specialist turned pro gardener in St. Croix County, Wisconsin, found sweet corn treated with Sonic Bloom often produced three well-filled ears per stalk. A South Dakotan in Lincoln County had a similar experience with sweet corn. Lorentz Updahl says, "The treated corn produced larger ears. There was more multiple earing on the sweet corn we sprayed. The best thing was the taste. We sold a lot of it in Sioux Falls, out of a pickup, and had people coming back for more. They said ours tasted best."

Grasses and small grains also respond to Sonic Boom. Although the economics of spraying are doubtful at $50 per acre for the materials, some tests in Arizona show that the sound alone has yield benefits.

Tom Doman of Herman, Michigan, harvested 75-bu. barley after spray and sound treatment. It was on land that had never raised half that yield before. "Some barley heads were 19 in. long," he says.

In 1984, LandOwner rode a potato harvester in central Minnesota and watched 19% more potatoes roll out of strips treated with Sonic Bloom.

In our own spud tests, potatoes matured about two weeks early. We though the vines had simply died – until we began digging and found an abundant crop.

Two years of farmer experience with Sonic Bloom on alfalfa shows increased palatability, extra leafness, and added yields. Since alfalfa is a perennial, there may be some carryover response from one year to the next. For example, Harold Aungst of Mifflin County, Pennsylvania, says after the second year of treatment, "we noticed that when making the third cutting that fresh branching was already emerging near the ground, as if the alfalfa had already been cut."

Aungst, a 124-cow dairyman, is one of those individuals who regularly challenge the establishment. He took some young, first-year alfalfa, treated with Sonic Bloom to a farm show, had it tested for protein on a Penn State electronic tester. The technician took the reading, but refused to give Harold the printout: It read 29% protein, and the technician figured something had gone wrong with the testing device. Harold later sent someone else back to the tester with another sample, without telling the technician it was the same alfalfa. Again, it came up 29%.

Last year, Harold weighed the hay from a fourth-year alfalfa field which had been sprayed with Sonic Bloom after each cutting. Three cuttings showed a 7.6-ton yield of hay. A fourth cutting, taken late in the year, "would have added another three-fourths of a ton, but the weather turned bad and we let it lay," says Harold.

Hydroponically-grown cucumbers "go crazy" under the sound and hormone treatment, claims Don Jansen of Fort Meyers, Florida.

He raises commercial cucumbers on trellises over long troughs which contain nutrients in a solution of sea salts. The "seaponic" brine is one-fourth as concentrated as sea water. When he sprayed Sonic Bloom with the sound treatments in 1985, cucumber yields "almost doubled," he says.

"Normally, a cucumber vine approaches maturity by quitting production near the base," says Jansen. "With treated vines, we had new cucumbers every week, down by the base where the first blossom had come. Each week there’d also be a new blossom on new growth at the vine’s end, too."

Roy McClurg of Hendry County in southern Florida tried Sonic Bloom on 40 acres of oranges last year and found "treated trees yielded 30% more fruit. First, it really upsizes the oranges. We get oranges half again as big as normal, sometimes twice the size. Second, we got a lot of fruit inside the tree canopy, where there usually isn’t much."

Solids per 90-lb. box of fruit climbed from an average of 5.47 lbs. up to 5.87 pounds. "Nearly a half-pound of solids per box," McClurg says. He’s already spraying the 1986 crop.

We’ll follow up to check this season’s results. Most growers who used the treatment last year are trying it again. That should generate enough revenue so the inventory can run plot trials at universities to "prove" it the formal scientific way.

-- LandOwner