Gardening with the Moon & Stars

John Hunt Publishing Ltd.

Contents

What is Biodynamics?

Biodynamics is using a set of eight preparations (the BD preps) made from vegetable/herbal, animal and mineral compounds to enhance the soil and the plants.

Biodynamics is also about working in harmony with Nature rather than trying to force nature to conform to some human idea. It's about learning more of how she works – after all she's been at it a lot longer than there've been humans around

Scientists estimate that humans branched off from their common ancestor with chimpanzees about 5–7 million years ago. Several species and subspecies of Homo evolved and are now extinct. Archaic Homo sapiens evolved between 400,000 and 250,000 years ago – a mere spit in terms of the age of the Earth which has been determined to be 4.54 billion years. So Mother Earth has lived eleven thousand, three hundred and fifty times as long as there have been humans on the planet ... a mind-boggling thought! You realise she must know her job of weaving the strands of Life together rather better than we do.

Agriculture – manipulating the Earth to get our food – is at most 10,000 years old. China and Japan are thought to be the earliest known agriculturalists, nineteen thousand years old, but even this is nothing to the 4.5 billion years the Earth has existed.

Its beginnings took place in the Fertile Crescent of the Middle East about 10,000 years ago and spread outwards from there into Europe. The diverse climate and major climatic changes in the region encouraged the evolution of many annual plants which produce more edible seeds than perennial plants – understandably, as they need to reproduce themselves every year. These region's edible plants were available for early experiments in cultivation. Most importantly, the Fertile Crescent possessed the wild progenitors of the eight Neolithic founder crops important in early agriculture – the wild progenitors to emmer wheat, einkorn, barley, flax, chick pea, pea, lentil, bitter vetch. As well, four of the five most important species of domesticated animals – cows, goats, sheep, and pigs – lived there. The fifth species, the horse, lived nearby. As a result, the Fertile Crescent is famous for sites related to the origins of agriculture. The western zone around the Jordan and upper Euphrates rivers gave rise to the first known Neolithic farming settlements which date to around 9,000 BCE. We humans, and our farming, have been around for hardly a mere spit in time, it is well worth learning from our very experienced Mother.

Gardening with the Moon & Stars – Biodynamics (BD) – is about learning to work with the Earth's cycles. I've found this fascinating even if I don't understand why the cycles work. But then, I don't know why lots of things happen, like electricity, gravity and the weather. I know how to turn the light-switch on, I can read weather charts, I can appreciate gravity but I don't know why these things happen. Nor, I suspect does anyone else. They know how to make them happen, how to make electricity, how to read the signs for the weather. They have ideas and theories (a posh word for a guess) but their proofs are largely experiential and run on the lines of nobody's proved them wrong yet. That's quite OK, I can live with that. My gardening methods are much the same.

We use the BD Preps (biodynamic preparations) in time and rhythm with the cycles of the Earth, the moon and the constellations with the help of the star calendar – more on all this later – so we garden with the Moon and Stars.

Biodynamic gardeners use very limited external inputs – no chemicals or bought-in fertilisers, just re-cycling garden and kitchen waste through the compost, with maybe a bit of sand, gypsum, lime and some animal manure not available in the garden. So biodynamics has a low impact on the environment. And the quality of the produce is enhanced. The superior colour, fragrance and good health of trees, shrubs, flowers and vegetables, as well as the latter's flavour and keeping quality, all show very quickly when you work biodynamically.

Biodynamics can be applied to any organic garden or horticultural project, including nodig and permaculture. It's very practical, anyone can do it without having to know all the philosophy behind it although many people find they want to know more ... once they've seen the results of doing it.

The Biodynamic Method Includes ...

• Using the horn manure spray, Prep 500, to stimulate biological activity in the soil and improve the transference and retention of nutrients provided in the soil itself as well as that added through animal manure and vegetable compost.

• Using the horn silica spray, Prep 501, to stimulate the parts of the plant that you wish to use or work with – e.g. rose or cauli flowers, lettuce or hosta leaves, beetroots, holly berries or tomato fruits – to come to their full potential.

• Composting all organic waste products and enhancing this compost by adding the 6 compost preparations. This includes adding them to manure heaps, local authority waste, leaf mould and your own kitchen waste, as well as vegetable and weed compost.

• Converting from chemical pest and weed control to biodynamic methods to discourage them, along with prevention strategies based on good plant nutrition and careful cultivar selection.

Biodynamics is a systems approach where the garden, allotment, nursery or other horticultural undertaking is viewed as a living whole – similar to the Gaia Principle of James Lovelock – in which each activity affects the others. You put the preparations on the soil and plants, and into the compost heap, in time with the rhythms of the Earth, Moon and Stars, which you can easily check using the star calendar (see chapter). You also use your own observations – each garden is individual so, within the basic parameters of biodynamics, you adjust yourself to suit your own land. This produces strong and healthy plants in a healthy, well-structured soil that is rich in humus and high in biological activity ... all prerequisites for any sustainable horticultural system.

Over eighty years, since 1924, worldwide experience with Biodynamics (BD) has shown that these soil qualities can be encouraged, and degradation reversed, by BD techniques. Up to now, it's been mostly used in farming but the time is ripe for gardeners and horticulturalists to get going with it as well. Although animal manure has to be brought in, unless you live on a farm, the techniques still work excellently well in gardens, as our own garden here at Archenland shows. There are already many excellent organic gardeners out there, now let's use biodynamics to really make the soil sing.

Pest and disease control is generally managed by developing the garden as a complete organism that is in balance with itself and its surroundings – the Gaia Principle again. However, BD recognizes that things do go out of kilter now and again and enables gardeners to make use of specific substances for weed and pest control, made from the weeds and pests themselves. Weeds and pests, as you may already know, are useful indicators of imbalances in and between soil and plants. If you know what the weeds and pests are telling you about the state of the soil you can work on the cause rather than putting a sticking plaster over the resulting hurt.

I often say biodynamics is good organic practice with added oomph.

The oomph is added through the Preparations. They are fundamental to biodynamics. They are used in conjunction with, not instead of, good established organic practices such as composting, manuring and crop rotations. The Preparations work directly with the dynamic, biological processes of the soil and with the cycles, which are the basis of soil fertility, as well as with the growing plants themselves.

The Preparations are not fertilisers in themselves but they greatly assist the whole growth process. As such, they only need to be used in very small amounts a few times a year, so going biodynamic isn't going to mean you have no time for anything else!

How did biodynamics come about? Biodynamics is the oldest organised form of organic gardening and agriculture. It was concern about the worrying trends developing in agriculture that led farmers to ask Rudolf Steiner to give his 'Agriculture Lectures" in 1924, on which the biodynamic agricultural movement is founded. The farmers' concerns were ...

• increasing mechanisation of agriculture

• a sense that nature is becoming degraded, losing its vitality

• pollution of the environment

• signs of illness in trees

• violent changes in the weather

It seems nothing is new.

The farmers' concerns resulted in the series of eight lectures that Steiner gave at the house of his friend Count Keiserling. The lectures began a movement which now spans the world. Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, India, Europe, Ireland, the UK and the USA all have very strong biodynamic movements and I've recently had enquiries from Japan. It seems that Poland has chosen to make its government-supported agriculture biodynamic. Biodynamics is particularly prominent in wine-making where such experts as Oz Clarke say biodynamic wine is the best wine they have ever tasted. Many famous chefs also prefer to use biodynamic produce.

So biodynamics is not a "weirdo, long-hair and sandals brigade" thing. Nor is it some bizarre magical pseudoscience. It's true that we may not be able to explain everything about it as fully as we can, say, bread-making or steel production but ... have you ever tried to say "why" (not how) electricity works? And physics comes up with wonderful apparent paradoxes like "is light waves or particles, or both?" We seem quite able to cope with not having a complete scientific knowledge of these things. Perhaps experiencing the pleasures of biodynamics, seeing the beautiful plants, eating the good food, drinking the excellent wine, will help us overcome our doubts and fears of this well established form of growing.

Who was Rudolf Steiner? He was a Croatian doctor of philosophy from the University of Rostock. He spent his life researching many subjects and is perhaps best known for his pioneering work in education which has resulted in the Waldorf Schools, begun in 1919. He began the Anthroposophical Society in 1923. His last piece of work in a very busy life was founding the biodynamics movement in 1924. Steiner's philosophy is about people, how they do things best, how to encourage this and how to work in harmony with nature. Wikipedia has a good section on him if you want to read more and there are various web sites. Steiner House in London is the home of the Anthroposophical Society and you will find all his work there. They are on the web and do a mail-order library if you want to borrow the books. They also run all sorts of workshops.

The Eight Biodynamic Preparations ...

Spray Preparations: 500 & 501

Preparation 500: HORN MANURE. This enlivens the soil, increasing the microflora and mycorrhiza so increasing the availability of nutrients and trace elements and making them available to the plants. This availability is key to plant growth. There may be lots of nutrients in the soil but if the plant can't absorb them then they might as well not be there, the plant starves. The horn manure preparation also helps root growth, in particular the fine root hairs that are essential for the plant to take up water and nutrients. It also helps and increases humus formation of the soil itself, as well as improving the soil's structure and water holding capacity.

Preparation 501: HORN SILICA. This helps the plant to come to its full potential – such as a flower, tree, fruit or vegetable – and so have better form, colour, aroma, flavour and, for vegetables and fruit, better nutritional quality.

Compost Preparations: 502 to 507

• 502 – Yarrow Achillea millefolium

• 503 – Chamomile Chamomilla metrecaria recutita

• 504 – Nettle Urtica dioica

• 505 – Oak bark Quercus robur

• 506 – Dandelion Taraxacum officianale

• 507 – Valerian Valeriana officianalis

These increase the humification so helping the cation exchange (more about these later). These help the dynamic cycles of the macro- and micro- flora and fauna in the compost heap, so increasing the nutrients formed in the composting process as well as its structure and water-holding capacity. This helps the whole garden.

How Doing Biodynamics Can Help You

• The preparations increase the soil biology to work for you

• Using the preps naturally creates deeper topsoil – this really happens, it's one of the things that convinced me

• The water holding capacity increases, helping both drought and flood – we see that in the garden here, especially now climate change has set in

• Plant health, beauty and yield improves

• Weeds and pests are reduced to easily manageable levels

• The beneficial animals and insects are encouraged to live in your garden

• You don't have to spend lots of money at garden centres every year on compost, chemical fertilisers or pest controls

• Working with the rhythms of the Earth, Moon and Stars optimises the plant growth-cycles so vegetables and flowers look, smell and taste good, and keep longer

• The garden quickly looks and feels gorgeous, so you feel good too

• Far less stress – everything works with you

• Low impact on the environment through limited external inputs

Biodynamics is easy ... I want to say this right from the beginning. It does not mean you have to spend many hours making strange brews or spend loads of money. You can buy all the preparations, ready to stir, from your local or national biodynamic association – see Contacts. You buy a star calendar from Amazon as well as your local BD association too, to show you when to do what. The likely cost for the calendar and a year's supply of preps for the average-size town garden is probably going to be under £25 – less than 50p a week.

This book shows you how you too can work this way – easily and without having to take on any strange philosophies.

Actually using the eight preparations, in conjunction with the star calendar, is what biodynamics is about; using the preparations is the corner-stone of biodynamics. It's about getting the preparations on the ground, on the plants and in the compost heap; this is what does the magic.

Added to good organic practice, the preparations increase soil and plant health and vitality, enhance colour, form, fragrance and flavour as well as helping plants resist pests and diseases.

There are two types of preparation – the Spray preparations and the Compost preparations.

The spray preparations that are used directly on the soil and plants; they are made using a cow's horns as the container and are sometimes known as the "horn preps".

The compost preparations that (as their name suggests) work in the compost heap. They are made in all sorts of things and are more complex to make. How they are made is dealt with in the chapter Making the Preparations but you don't need to do this unless you wish to. All the preps are available for sale, cheaply, through your national biodynamic association.

What you have to do is turn them into a form that the soil and plants can use.

We are going to work first with the two spray preparations. They are the easiest to use and the ones your land needs you to begin with. With both horn manure (500) and horn silica (501) you do this by stirring a very small portion of whichever you need in a bucket of water for an hour, on the right day and time of the month according to the star calendar. You then spray it onto either the soil (Prep 500) or the relevant plant (Prep 501) so doing the magic.

For this, you need the Star Calendar. You can get one easily and cheaply from Amazon and it would be useful to get one now so you can look at it as you read this chapter.

The Star Calendar

"Planting by the Moon" is quite well known but biodynamics is far more than the phases of the moon. In BD we see the moon as a lens that focuses the energies of each of the twelve constellations (of stars) onto the Earth as she passes in front of them during her 28 day period each month.