It was more than a little ironic while driving through the city of Petaluma, Ca. recently when I looked up at the sign on the front of a stately old bank building and saw the words Seed Bank gilded in gold. I had to laugh
as I am regularly contemplating what’s of real value in the world and nothing spoke louder than this sight. While the value of the dollar is swerving, if not plummeting, what is of real value is rising in mass consciousness – like seeds.
I excitedly pulled in with my girlfriends and started gathering an array of the tiny packets to help Scott, myself and our loved ones feel more in charge of our future food supply. I was a kid in a candy shop searching through lovely pictures of heirloom vegetables from Europe and the Americas. Bill Gates has nothing on the Seed Bank of Petaluma!
With record high teperatures at the end of October and early November, I arrived at my planter boxes in the nick of time to get our broccoli, red cabbage, cauliflower, lettuces, chard, spinach and kale into the ground. While I can’t say that I am necessarily proficient at gardening, Mother Nature has been patient and good humored with me and supports my little vegetables in spite of the fact that my enthusiasm outweighs any real skills. Thank goodness for people who do know what they’re doing.
A regular CMN viewer was kind enough to suggest I take a look at the site of a man named Dan Carlson, the inventor of a system of gardening called Sonic Bloom, which you can find at originalsonicbloom.com. Our CMN friend had apparently had some success with the growing system.
Dan, meanwhile, is no ordinary farmer. After serving in the Korean conflict where he witnssed a great deal of suffering from short supplies of food, Dan made a commitment to do all he could to aleviate starvation globally. For his efforts he has been graced with many prestigous awards including having been nominated for the Nobel Prize in Economics, 2001; 2002, 2003 and Humanitarian of the Year, “for his unceasing dedication to alleviating hunger, pain, disease, and sufferings for the Peoples in the world”, Institute for Human Potential, 2002. Dan cares about food and people and feels that to make the latter happy, the plants must be happy.
Dan’s Sonic Bloom is comprised of two elements – a sound box that creates a birdlike sound and organic nutrients. Many of you are well aware of research that’s been done on plants and music to promote good health and increased growth/yields. If this is new to you just do a search under ‘music and plants’.
Dan’s customer’s report having yields more than double of what is normal as well as larger sized fruit and reduced consumption of water. Intrigued, I called Dan and had him set us up.
Sonic Bloom sound box with solar panel
The system requires a 12v battery, such as that used in motorcycles. Scott took the initiative to enclose the battery inside a weatherproof plastic project box, attach a solar panel to trickle charge the battery and then mounted the speaker. The speaker is light-activated, meaning it turns off at dusk and back on at sunrise. The sound is said to cover a five acre area, which is overkill for us, but may spill over into my father’s mandarin orchard.
Our winter seeds and seedlings are only a few days in the ground, the sun is high and the box is chirping away. We won’t know for another few weeks what kind of crop we’ll have, but I can say that a couple of my seedlings that were too long awaiting planting, seemed to stand up and stretch their little leaves within hours after we started playing the Bloom box.
We’ll keep you updated as the crops come in.