The Peroxide Phenomenon-Gardening Miracle
Paul Tukey
He unabashedly begins his stories in newspapers, magazines and
online by proclaiming, “This will be the most phenomenal
article you will ever read.” He claims to have cured his own
cancer, to have removed his own warts and to be the most robust
82-year-old on the planet — ever since he discovered the miracle
solution known as hydrogen peroxide.
Bill Munro immediately grabbed my attention with a story titled
“Gardening with H2O2” in Acres U.S.A., the highly respected
farming journal from Austin, Texas. In 13 years of applying
hydrogen peroxide to his gardens, Munro said he has experienced
better yields, faster seed germination and far fewer insect
infestations.
“Try it,” he said during our phone interview from his home in
Michigan. “The peroxide will change the way you garden forever.
If you let it, it will even change your life.”
If you type the phrase “Bill Munro peroxide” into Google on the
Internet, you’ll quickly come up with all sorts of articles that
talk about his experiences curing his cancer by inhaling
hydrogen peroxide several times daily. He cites a book titled
Hydrogen Peroxide: The Medical Miracle by Dr. William Campbell
Douglas, and offers detailed instructions for using this
commonly available liquid to improve your health. Much of the
traditional medical community doesn’t seem to put much stock in
hydrogen peroxide as a health aid except as an antiseptic, but
it is known that white blood cells do produce small amounts of
hydrogen peroxide in our bodies to help fight infection and
disease. Even the skeptics say inhaling hydrogen peroxide
probably won’t hurt you if you decide to give it a try.
For our purposes, however, we were most interested in Munro’s
gardening claims, all of which appear to be true.
Extra Oxygen Makes Magic
Readily available in drugstores and supermarkets in familiar
brown bottles that block light, hydrogen peroxide is simply
water (H2O) with an extra oxygen molecule that is loosely
attached to form H2O2. That extra oxygen is highly unstable in
the solution and vaporizes easily upon contact with other
substances, thereby accounting for the fizzing that occurs
whenever hydrogen peroxide touches your skin. The 3 percent
solution most commonly sold in stores is widely used to clean
cuts and abrasions in pets and humans, and for numerous other
cleaning and sterilization applications around the home. The
federal Food and Drug Admini- stration has approved hydrogen
peroxide to be used for “aseptic” packaging in the food
industry, and many people use H2O2 as an environmentally
friendly alternative to chlorine in pools and, especially, hot
tubs.
That same oxidation action that keeps water clean apparently
also has a positive impact in horticulture. Numerous hydrogen
peroxide manufacturers recommend soaking seeds in H2O2 prior to
planting to speed germination rates. Watering with hydrogen
peroxide is also recommended to help keep fungal and bacterial
diseases at bay. Most instructions call for diluting the 3
percent solution to a few tablespoons per quart of water prior
to soaking your seeds or spraying your plants.
Munro’s instructions are quite different. He uses an 8 percent
solution, which he produces by diluting the 40 percent solution
that he purchases at hair-salon supply stores.
“This was just trial-and-error on my part,” he said. “Having no
prior knowledge of what strength to use, I started my
experiments with 8 percent and the plants didn’t die. I’ve
stuck with the 8 percent ever since. At some percentage, I’m
sure, the peroxide could burn the plants, but I can assure you
that at 8 percent it doesn’t.”
Munro said he soaks many seeds in peroxide prior to planting
and has found germination rates to be as much as 50 percent
faster. Depending on the seeds, he’ll soak them anywhere from a
few hours to overnight. He said he sprays all seedling roots and
their planting holes, and also sprays all trees, shrubs and his
lawn. He said his only fertilizer is the ash from his wood
stove, and his water is from his own well.
The seed soaking doesn’t work for everything — especially beans
— but he said it works really well for potatoes, corn, squash,
cucumbers and radishes.
“I’ve got one of the best gardens around,” he said. “You can
ask anyone who has seen it.”
Munro has plenty of fans, including Acres U.S.A. founder
Charles Walters and online journalist Joyce Morrison, author of
the web site http://NewsWithViews.com.
“Although we have never met in person, Bill Munro and I have
talked over the phone and e-mailed for several years, and I
have never known Bill to tell me anything that was not
well-researched,” Morrison said.
Recent experiments conducted in Australia also support some of
Munro’s theories about hydrogen peroxide. Researchers
reportedly included peroxide in the drip-irrigation systems for
crops of zucchini, which in turn produced 29 percent more fruits
weighing 25 percent more than the fruits produced without
hydrogen peroxide treatment. Yields of soybean pods increased
82 to 96 percent compared to crops that were not treated with
hydrogen peroxide.
Fewer Insects in the Garden
Yields and germination rates aside, Munro’s most compelling
claim about hydro-gen peroxide in the garden concerns insect
infestations.
“I started spraying just about everything that was green in my
yard with the peroxide, and the results were a huge surprise to
my wife and me,” said Munro. “We had no mosquitoes or other
flying bugs in our yard. There were a few ladybugs, but they
were few and far between. I don’t think the peroxide did any
harm to the ladybugs, but since there are so few other insects
for them to eat, the ladybugs just don’t come around.”
According to Rene Larose, a retired microbiologist from
Manchester, Conn., hydrogen peroxide does reduce insect
populations — not by eliminating adult insects, but by
oxidizing and killing their eggs and larvae. Larose developed
and owns U.S. patent 6455075, defined as “a method for control
of insects on plant tissue, which includes applying a solution
that includes hydrogen peroxide to the plant tissue.”
The hydrogen peroxide in Larose’s formulations has a
concentration of 0.05 to 3 percent and includes other
proprietary ingredients such as acetic acid and phosphoric
acid.
“These other ingredients add to the efficiency of the hydrogen
peroxide,” said Larose, who formed a company in Glastonbury,
Conn., known as BioSafe Systems LLC that is now run by his son,
Robert. “Hydrogen peroxide is capable of doing everything
(Munro) said it can do. Our products simply increase the
efficiency. I can tell you that it’s not snake oil. It’s just
as good as it sounds.”
BioSafe produces several products for the horticulture,
farming, turf, food and sanitation industries. All of the
products are billed as environmentally friendly and many are
certified as organic by the Organic Materials Review Institute
(OMRI), which now sanctions most mainstream organic lawn and
garden products. Oxidate, for example, is sold as a
broad-spectrum bactericide and fungicide, but the
peroxide-based product also has the side effect of adding
oxygen to the leaves of plants and to the soil.
“We don’t really talk about the beneficial side effects of the
products, because the FDA is very strict about what claims you
can make,” said Larose. “But everything grows better in the
presence of extra oxygen. That’s basic botany. In Latin
America, farmers spray this product from airplanes as a
fungicide on crops, and they can stand in the field while the
plane passes overhead. They aren’t using any pesticides and
their yields are greatly improved.”
Where Has This Been All Our Lives?
The question, obviously, is that if a product as common as
hydrogen peroxide offers so many benefits in the garden, why
hasn’t everyone been utilizing it for years? Why isn’t BioSafe
a household name brand after 11 years in the marketplace?
“That’s what we want to know,” said Larose, with a laugh. “I
can tell you that the EPA loves us because the products are 100
percent, absolutely safe alternatives. I can tell you that
science gives you perfectly rational explanations for how this
works. But I can also tell you that the chemical companies
don’t like this because of course it cuts into what they’re
doing. The universities don’t like this because they didn’t
develop the concept.”
Munro agrees. He theorizes that in a world driven by profit,
the economic powers have little motivation to promote something
as inexpensive and commonplace as hydrogen peroxide.
Our disclaimer is that we don’t have any personal experience
with peroxide in the garden. We’ll be trying our own dilutions
of H2O2 as well as some of the BioSafe products this season
right along with many of you, and we’ll report back to readers
in a future issue. We’ll experiment with different percentages
of peroxide in seed soaking and also spraying of plants, and
we’ll compare the results with seeds and plants that are not
treated with peroxide. We also hope to hear right away from
anyone with personal experiences with peroxide and related
products.
It is important to use hydrogen peroxide with caution, testing
it on limited crops prior to spraying the entire yard and
garden, and to only use pure H2O2 or “food grade” formulations.
Some brands of peroxide may contain harmful byproducts.
Another important consideration is dilution of the peroxide
when the percentage is higher than 8 percent. Concentrated
peroxide of 35 or 40 percent is highly corrosive and would
certainly be harmful to plants and soil.
“Anyone ought to see what works for him or her,” said Munro,
the outspoken octogenarian whose instructions can be found all
over the Internet. “I think people need to see that this works
for themselves.”
About The Author: http://www.pplants.com
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