Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Biodynamics
I want to include a brief section on biodynamic farming and gardening because it's po-
tentially the most important method of gardening. I hope everyone will be doing it some
day. This section can't even be considered an introduction to the topic because I don't have
enough experience in it yet. I'm not a biodynamic gardener and I don't like talking much
about things I haven't done myself. I've incorporated some of the biodynamic ideas into
my gardening, and that is all I wish to show here.
The original ideas behind biodynamic gardening came from Rudolf Steiner and were
first described in a series of eight lectures in 1924. To most people, myself included, many
of these ideas seem complicated. His thoughts on how plants grow are very different from
what you would find in a modern botany textbook.
The goals of biodynamics are very similar to organic, with perhaps even more emphasis
on working with nature and the sun, moon, planets and stars. The soil and soil food web are
seen as the basis for plant health, but there is more emphasis on energy. Everything is en-
ergy. Even this idea has crossed over into organic soil management, where we think of fer-
tilizers not only as suppliers of minerals, but as sources of energy, or as increasing the en-
ergy in the soil.
Biodynamic farmers often plant by the phases of the moon. They weren't the first to do
this — there are actually other cultures that use the moon even more for their gardening
schedule, but biodynamic practitioners have developed their own system.
The basics are as follows. The full moon helps to draw water into plants, so according to
biodynamic thought, the best time to plant seed is in the second quarter, just before the full
moon. That's when the moon is facing left, waxing crescent (with the right side visible).
The best time to plant root crops and do transplanting is when maximum root growth oc-
curs, in the third quarter, when the moon is facing right, waning crescent (with the left side
visible). Nothing is planted in the fourth quarter. Following these rules can make a big dif-
ference in the health of your plants.
My first time putting a biodynamic practice to work was actually when I did my Perma-
culture Design Certificate. We made and applied a tree paste of manure, clay, sand and a
biodynamic preparation that we then rubbed onto the trunk of some fruit trees. The goal
was to strengthen the bark, control disease and even improve fertility.
The biodynamic preparations get a lot of attention. They require a bit of a leap of faith
for most people before they'll try using them. They are a series of nine remedies for the
garden, used in homeopathic doses. While conventional gardening tends to frown upon
them, there is much experiential evidence that they work.
For example, prep 500 is one of the main preparations. It's made by taking cow manure,
packing it into a cow horn and burying it in the ground over winter. This is said to concen-
