Biodynamic Farming

Plants in Biodynamic Farming

In order to appreciate fully the reasons for various bio-dynamic practices we have to build up a rather more vivid concept of plants than is customary in conventional thought. They are usually regarded as mechanisms subject only to the same laws as hold good in a physics or chemistry laboratory or in the working of a machine. People seem to be so dazzled by the brilliance of the research into such things as the genetic code and single cell metabolism and by the ideas put forward to explain them, that certain vital more holistic aspects have been overlooked. Each new discovery, though it may appear to provide an answer to a question, more often than not poses further questions. The frontier of the unknown may be pushed back a little, but it remains as impenetrable as ever. Although the processes of growth, reproduction and decay are all deemed to be controlled by various communication networks which switch genes on and off, one is still left with the old Latin conundrum, Quis custodiet ipsos custodies? (Who is there to control the controllers?). Who or what is there to read the genetic code and operate the switchboard?

Let us begin by comparing a rock or a crystal with a plant, and for the sake of simplicity we will take an annual plant—it is not too difficult to apply the same concepts to perennials or even to trees. To make the imagination more realistic we might choose at random a definite mineral, say quartz, and a definite plant, say a broad bean. On the one hand the quartz crystal gives us the strong impression that its shape, its beautiful form, has been imposed on it by influences coming from outside; it is a piece of finished work, and can only be changed by some external physical force. The form of the bean plant on the other hand, though just as beautiful in its own way, has quite a different quality; it is never precisely the same from one moment to another, and this continuous change arises from out of itself. What we see at any given time is like one frame of a long ciné film comprising a rhythmic pattern of development, fruition and decay. Even this pattern does not quite represent the whole broad bean which has connections with all past generations and also with the generations still to come. Instead of a static entity like the crystal, we have in the bean plant a centre or focus of highly organised activities. Together with a few of today's leading biologists, we are almost irresistibly led to postulate the supersensible presence of a body of organising formative forces: Rudolf Steiner called this the etheric body. Just as any separate piece of matter has a centre of gravity derived from the whole gravity field of the earth, so every living creature acquires an etheric body derived from the earth's etheric field; this has been described by H. Poppelbaum as a morphogenetic field and can be seen as the link between material manifestation and the higher spiritual worlds beyond. This whole complex of activity, this weaving, vibrant, pulsating essence as Rudolf Steiner put it, is the sphere in which homoeopathic remedies and substances in very high dilutions are effective.

The etheric body of an individual plant could perhaps be seen as the switchboard operator which earlier we failed to find. It interprets the general pattern of the particular plant and modifies or adapts it to fit into the individual niches in which single specimens are growing. It heals any wounds which may occur, and reacts in the most favourable way to any changes, physical or supersensible, earthly or cosmic, which may take place in the environment. The patterns themselves, the ciné films, have their home in the next spiritual plane above the etheric, usually known as the astral.

Continuing our imagination of the bean plant, let us now look at a plant as it stands with its roots reaching down into the earth, its leaves spread to receive the incoming cosmic stream, its flowers opening up to the heavens and to the insect world. Just as the roots merge almost imperceptibly into the soil, into the element earth and water, so leaves and blossoms with their continual interchange of substances can be thought of as merging with the elements air and fire (warmth). The former feel the pulse of the earth's rhythms, the latter connect with the influences of the starry world, with the circling paths of the planets. Selflessly each individual plant passes through time, performing its own special part as a member of the plant kingdom in the cosmic task of giving. Through photosynthesis plants remove carbon dioxide from the air and give out oxygen in its place for the benefit of the earth as a whole and for man and animal in particular. They give their substance in various forms for the nourishment of man and animal including the insects. Some give themselves as healers, some, as we shall shortly see, are there merely to help other plants growing near them. A few, like some rare human beings, create an atmosphere of wellbeing by their mere presence. But whatever people with electrical gadgets and boiling prawns may say, plants have no direct feelings of pleasure and pain like animals or men; they have no organs for such experiences. This does not imply that such experiments have been rigged, but just that they have been misinterpreted. In fact if one takes the concept of an etheric field as valid, it would be surprising if the instruments had not reacted under the circumstances described.

If different plants, say a wheat plant, a cabbage, a carrot and a bean, are grown close together so that the roots of each have access to the same soil conditions, if they are subsequently burnt and their ashes analysed chemically, it is quite remarkable how the proportions of the chemical elements in the various ashes are entirely different. Though the amounts will vary slightly according to the soil, the patterns are just as characteristic for each species as are the leaf and floral forms. A plant can select what it needs from the soil in which it is growing, always provided that its needs are there in the first place. There are, however, exceptions. On the one hand, if the soil solution has been affected by the application of soluble fertilisers, the plants may be forced to take up more of certain elements than they require, and their whole metabolism may then be so disrupted that they become sitting targets for pathogenic organisms. On the other hand, some species of plants have as their special function in Nature's household the collection of some one or other of the chemical elements out of the atmosphere. This phenomenon can be seen as a kind of depotentisation—the opposite of potentising—for it seems (contrary to current dogma) that we are surrounded by matter in what E. Lehrs calls its imponderable state, or in statu nascendi (in a state of becoming). That this is no idle fancy is demonstrated by the Spanish moss (Tillandsia usneoides) which grows on telegraph wires in South America out of all contact with the soil. It is vigorous and can be shown to have a full complement of all the major chemical elements together with a wide range of the trace elements. The quantities involved are so large that they could hardly have been absorbed from the sporadic rain which in any case has only the smallest trace of phosphate in it. The only explanation is that substance has been condensed out of the air. It is interesting to record that the opposite process has recently been proved experimentally: pine and pea seedlings have been shown to disperse into the air soil contaminants such as cadmium and zinc.

Experiments on somewhat similar lines were conducted in the former Soviet Union. They grew maize and a type of bean together in mixed stands. On some plots they persuaded the bean to fix a radioactive isotope of nitrogen, and by means of a Geiger counter they very soon found some of this nitrogen in the maize plants. On other plots they sprayed the maize foliage with radioactive phosphate and before long it had found its way into the beans. So it seems that plants not only draw nutrients out of the soil solution, but that they are also able to contribute to this solution for the benefit of plants of other species. Thus a pool of nutrients is created in the soil by the plants growing on it: if their species are diverse and well mixed, the pool will be rich; but in a monoculture or with incompatible species the pool will be nonexistent. These facts shed an interesting light on companion planting, and may also give us cause to revise our ideas about weeds: perhaps they are not so universally bad as is usually supposed.

From our picture of a plant standing between heaven and earth it is not surprising that sunlight, either direct or obscured by cloud, has a very strong influence on the way in which a plant develops its inherent qualities. Everybody knows how root crops stored in a dark cellar produce elongated, rather shapeless shoots and tiny leaves quite devoid of colour. This is of course an extreme case, but it does indicate how closely plant nature and light nature are interwoven. Some plant species, particularly those belonging to the lower orders such as ferns and mosses, are attuned to cool, shady conditions; but others requiring full sunlight will languish when shaded by taller companions. These facts will influence the planning of a garden and care needs to be taken that taller vegetables do not unduly restrict shorter neighbours; orientating the rows north and south will help to solve this difficulty.

Even more important for the growth of many annuals and perennials is the seasonal effect of longer and shorter days. Some plants need a long day before they can form flower buds, others must have short days. For instance, beetroot bolts if sown too early. Apart from the length of day there are other more subtle differences in the quality of the sun's light according to the constellation of the zodiac in which it is standing at any given time. It is at present difficult to specify these effects for practical planning, but they should always be borne in mind when trying to assess the reasons for unexpected phenomena. Perhaps it is something of this nature which renders groundsel and some other common weeds very susceptible to rust diseases after the middle of August. All this points to the desirability of sowing annual crops so that they mature in their proper season. We have so many plants at our disposal covering the whole year that it is rather unnecessary to try to grow any of them out of season; it is senseless to complain of lack of success, of pest and disease attacks, if one does attempt to do this.

Trees fall into a category rather different from annual and herbaceous plants. One feature, as Grohmann so clearly points out, is that the side shoots of an annual are arranged in a pattern determined by its phyllotaxis; the branches of a tree spring from the trunk in patterns quite unrelated to the succession of its leaves on the twigs. The forms created by the branches are characteristic of each individual species, a fact which can be noted with great interest in winter when the deciduous trees have shed their leaves. The whole development of trees takes place in their own special milieu of formative forces.

From an imaginative point of view it is possible to regard the trunks of trees with their main branches as raised mounds of soil, each leaf-bearing shoot and twig being a separate plantlet growing out of this enhanced kind of earth. This is not the place to go more deeply into the idea.

In any general account of plant life as seen from the bio-dynamic standpoint it is perhaps fitting to conclude with a description of Goethe's far-reaching observation, conducted over many years and brought to fruition in his Metamorphosis of Plants. He was inspired to this study when he asked himself the questions, How do we know that an object in front of our gaze is a plant? What are its essential characteristics? He felt that there must be some universal underlying pattern behind the form and development of every plant species. Contrary to the common practice of starting with the lowest type of plants from which the higher orders are supposed to have evolved, he took his stand at the outset on the higher flowering plants, and saw the lower orders as less successful strivings towards the higher goal. He eventually found the secret in the green leaf with a node at its base. He saw how in many plants the leaves develop from the shapeless cotyledons of the seed, gradually exhibiting their particular form and then withdrawing it as flowering approaches: buttercups and delphiniums are especially good for studying this phenomenon. In other plants the leaf shape is more or less constant from the start. After this display, or sometimes concurrent with it, the leaf forms contract and gather together to make the calyx for the flower. There is an expansion as the blooms open out followed by a contraction into the floral organs, anthers and ovaries; but the latter are in fact metamorphosed leaves. One example which led Goethe to this latter conclusion was the comparatively common sight of a small leaf appearing instead of an anther in the flower of a wild rose. After fertilisation another expansion occurs as the fruit and seeds begin to swell; but the carpels enclosing the seeds are again metamorphosed leaves, a fact which is often obvious when picking peas—the leaves look like pods.

Thus Goethe's archetypal plant arose in his mind's eye—expansion into leaf, contraction into flower bud, expansion into flower, contraction into floral organs, expansion into seed and fruit and a final contraction into the ripened seed. This Ur-plant is not to be seen as a physical primaeval ancestor from which the whole plant kingdom has descended, but is a fundamental pattern in the world beyond the senses, and into it there can flow an infinite number of forms and rhythms to produce different species in the physical world. In the lower plant orders parts of the pattern are omitted or coalesce. Rudolf Steiner developed this theme further to include the root, and glimpses of his adaptations are to be found throughout Agriculture. This theme has been extensively elaborated by G. Grohmann who has shown in what ways the lower plant orders—gymnosperms, ferns, mosses and so on—can be seen as less successful strivings towards a more perfect goal.

The Four Elements

The concept that everything in creation is composed of the elements, fire, air, water, and earth, is ancient indeed, forming a great part of pre-Socratic speculation about the nature of the universe, and continuing through our history until it was replaced by Mendeleev"s periodic table of nearly one hundred elements. We feel that we have advanced a long way, and that the idea of four elements is rather simplistic. Yet, we should be cautious, for what the sages of old meant by an element is different from what we mean by an element of the periodic chart.

Aristotle, for example, sees primary matter as chaos that has only potential existence until it is impressed by the ordering formative forces derived from the cosmos. These forces have four manifestations in the four elements. Matter is made manifest to us in the continual interplay of fire, air, water, and earth. In brief, Cornelius Agrippa of Nettesheim writes:

There are four elements and primordial basis of all formed things: they are Fire, Earth, Water and Air. All natural things of our world are formed of them not by mere aggregation, but by transformations and intimate combinations, which, when destroyed revert back to the original elements. None of the empirically sensible elements are in pure form, all are more or less mixed together... Plato is of the opinion that... the elements transmute into earth or into each other. Each element has two specific characteristics, one principle one and the other that serves as a connecting medium to the other elements. Whereas Fire is warm and dry, Earth is dry and cold, Water is cold and wet (moist) and Air is moist and warm. According to these characteristics, the elements form pairs of opposites, such as Fire and Water, Earth and Air. Other ways in which they form opposites are that Earth and Water are heavy while Air and Fire are light, for which reason the Stoics called the former passive and the latter active elements. Plato notes further distinctions, pointing out that Fire is sharp, rare and mobile, whereas Earth is dark, dense and at rest. In that Fire and Earth are opposites... etc.

Let us examine this a little more closely: Fire is the least dense element and, hence, the most spiritual. It has a purifying, transmuting character; it is anything hot, colorful, and quick, from a burning faggot to a choleric temper. Earth is most dense, and is manifested in anything in a solid, cold, and dark state, from a piece of lead to a solid thought. Water, flowing and sensitive, willing to assume all forms, is cold and dark, yet lets light travel through it. Air is found in anything that is light, warm, and moving, be it the wind or in the soul.

In the manifest world, the elements are always mixed as, for example, in a wood fire: Fire is present in the heat and darting flame; Air in the light, smoke and fragrance of the burning logs; Water in the melting pitch; Earth in the ashes. Water, that is, our H₂O, can similarly be found in its earthy elemental state as solidly frozen ice, in its watery state as a liquid, in its airy state as vapor, and in its fiery state as a boiling substance.

The four elements are not just confined to the inorganic and mineral world, but bring into manifestation the other kingdoms of nature as well. In the plant kingdom, the earth element predominates in the roots, the water element in the leaves and fluid system of the plant, the air in the lightness and fragrance of the flowers, and the fire in the ripening of fruit and seed. We can characterize some plants as having a special affinity to the heavy earth and water element, such as cabbages, potatoes, or beets, and others, such as cereal plants or aromatic herbs, as having affinity to the light and warmth element.

In the human and animal organisms, we can assign the earth element to bones and nerves, the water element to the lymph and fluid system, the air element to the respiratory system, and the fire element to the pulsating of the warm blood. Overall, one can imagine how the earth element predominates in the mineral kingdom, the water element in the plant kingdom, the mobile air element in the animal kingdom, and the fire element in the human kingdom.

Of what use is the concept of the four elements to us as farmers and gardeners? For one thing, the manifestations of the four elements are directly available to our senses, while the one hundred and some elements that the chemist talks about are not there for us to experience directly. Mendeleev"s elements are available primarily to our intellect, but not to our senses. This is not to discount the careful work of diligent scientific specialists, rather it is to point out a way that the ordinary farmer and gardener can sharpen his or her own observation and trust his or her own judgment once again. In the four elements, we have a conceptual system that can be applied to everyday work with nature; it worked well in a time of direct unmediated experience and observation, not so much as a theory, but as an ideational description of what is already there. As we shall see later, it is a valuable way of describing and experiencing the seasons, the growing habits of plants, the quality of manure, the processes occurring in composts, etc. In farming, one can speak of cold, wet soil such as clay, which is too much earth, or of sandy soil, which is too light and heats up too quickly, as too much air and fire. Compost can be diagnosed as too watery, too earthy, too airy, and too hot; and how such compost will affect the vegetables can also be studied in these terms.

It is a good exercise to practice detecting the four elements and try to describe all observable phenomena in these terms. Many secrets of nature reveal themselves to the observer, and do so without the aid of complicated instruments (microscopes, spectroscopes, soil-test kits) or the technical literature that abounds with abstract jargon. If practiced correctly, one has at one"s disposal a means of finding the keys to successful gardening without the aid of a distant specialist. This is one way of overcoming the alienation from immediate experience that ails so many modern people. I have seen traditional farmers look at the sky and know what the weather will be like in the next forty-eight to seventy-two hours on the basis of just such repeated observations, while the neighbor who had lost self-confidence in his or her own judgment and observation abilities will listen to the weather report on the radio to know whether or not to make hay. Since the weather patterns are much influenced by local idiosyncrasies, especially in the mountains, it is little wonder that the traditionalist"s judgments were often more accurate than those who relied on experts who were far away in some city office where the predictions were made.

The four elements are not obvious and easy to discern at first, but a meditation on water will help, watching it change from ice to water, boil and evaporate, condense and freeze. Then compare dry ice to this. Where is the difference? Cooking, especially on a wood fire, if done correctly, is one of the finest contemplations of the transformations and interplay of the four elements (TV dinners do more than give an upset stomach; they also impoverish inner life by depriving one of the chance to experience these elemental transformations). It is in meditations like these that the alchemists experienced their work not only as externally changing, transmuting one substance into another (lead into gold, muck into humus), but of changing a base mentality into a heart of gold and a mind of crystal.

In the days of yore, the four elements found imaginative personifications as the workings of the gnomes and dwarves (Earth) who worked in crystal mines and on plant roots, nixes and undines (Water) found in all water interfaces, sylphs and fairies (Air), and fire spirits and salamanders (Fire). Nature can correctly and effectively be described in terms of the interaction of such elemental spirits.

When dealing with the four elements, biodynamic researchers tend to talk of formative forces, or etheric formative forces:

the life, or earth, ether;
the chemical, sound or water ether;
the light ether; and
the warmth ether.

The ethers are the formative forces whose effects can be read in the forms and appearances in the physical world. In themselves, they are super-sensory, or discernable to inner perception if this is trained. By looking carefully at the gesture a plant makes during its growth, one can read what forces were working on the plant to give it the shape and characteristics it has.

Etheric formative forces sculpt our visible world. As a cursory example, let us look at the physiognomy of leaves. Hemp leaves, for example, are formed by forces of light and warmth that gradually melt away the substance and leave only lacy, pointed lances as leaves that are filled with resin and aroma. By contrast, the fleshy, succulent leaves of cabbage are predominated by the forces of water and earth that swell them with substance. The two plants are, by the way, good companion plants, complementing each other through positive allelopathy, such as to keep hungry insects at bay. In the stomach, too, heavy foods such as cabbage and potatoes are best complemented when seasoned with caraway seeds, for example, a plant that is formed by light and air ether.

The gardener can see to it that plants with an affinity for the earth and water ether (cool weather lovers) get the moister, cooler spots in the garden, for if the air and light ether become too strong, they will bolt. Those plants that have affinity to light and air ether should be aided to keep them from getting stuck. In his Agricultural Course, Steiner gives hints on how to aid the flow of these etheric forces by the use of silica preparations which aid the light absorption capacity of plants; to strengthen the life and chemical (earth and water) etheric formative forces, he prescribes the use of calcium and cow manure preparations. These preparations will be discussed in the second part of the book.

A number of researchers have developed methods for making these etheric formative forces visible. The formation of floral and foliar ice crystal patterns on window panes in the winter, and the vibrations from musical instruments that can arrange fine dust on paper into various organic-looking, symmetric figures (Chladni"s patterns) are examples of visible indications of these formative forces.

The method of capillary dynamolysis developed by Lili Kolisko, using plant saps to be tested in a solution of silver nitrate, and then studying the characteristic patterns that are created by the capillary movement of this solution up a role of filter paper, provides picture images of the effect of these etheric forces that are working in substances. Characteristic differences between biodynamically grown food and chemically grown food, between plants germinated during different lunar phases, can be shown by this capillary method.

Another method is the sensitive crystallization procedure developed by Ehrenfried Pfeiffer. Here, substances drawn from plant, animal, or human tissue are tested by crystallizing them in a solution of copper chloride. The patterns of crystal formation are characteristic. For example, roots will yield more compact crystals than flower extracts. The method is being used in anthroposophic medicine to diagnose various disorders by crystallizing blood, as well as in biodynamic research to test the quality of wine.

Photographing the characteristic movements of water streams and drops through a viscous fluid, such as glycerin, is a method developed by Theodor Schwenk to make visible the formative forces of the water element. Formative forces of sound, such as the spoken word and of musical instruments can be made visible by a sound-sensitive flame.

In a discussion of the basic four elements, the fifth element, or quinta essentia, must be included. This fifth element can be interpreted as referring to the human element, human consciousness, as vital an essence as the others, but of a different nature. Thus for compost, for example, one must have enough solid matter, there must be enough moisture for the metabolism of the small organisms, there must be air spaces for gas exchange, and a heated metabolism must come about. But for all of this to happen properly, it takes the quintessence, the gardener, who arranges the compost heap. All four elements are present everywhere on any piece of ground, but by themselves, they do not form a garden: it takes the ordering principle, the quintessence, to arrange the four so that the garden can flourish in harmony. What the gardener is in a microcosmic sense, Christ as the master of the elements is in the larger sense. Considerations like these might provide a key to humankind"s place in nature.

Processes: Sal, Mercurius, Sulphur

Besides the four elements and their mutual interactions, the alchemists also talked about basic processes, which tie in with them. What goes on in the universe as movements, functions, and states of being can be understood as essentially three processes: that of sal (salt), referring to precipitation, crystallization; sulfur process, referring to dissipation, dissolution, going into sublimation; mercury (quicksilver) process, which mediates the exchanges between the opposite poles, the contracting, centripetal salt process, and the centrifugal sulfur process.

As an example, in the plant, the concentrated nature of the root, drawing water and minerals, shows that the salt or sal process is stronger here than in other parts of the plant. The mercury process is evident in the breathing, assimilating leaves and in the stems (xylem and phloem) with their transport functions; and the sulfur process is evident in the delicate flower and fruit, which dissipates itself in fragrance, pollen, and seed. This can be illustrated by an annual weed, noting the difference between the coarser lower leaves and the leaves as they move upward toward the flower; one can observe the leaves becoming lacy, more delicate and pointed, less substantial, as though the plant is dissipating itself.

In the annual seasons, we see these processes at work also: winter with its freezing, crystallizing character, drawing all things tightly together, is a salt process; spring and early summer with winds, rains, and the rapid growth of vegetation indicate a mercury process; while late summer and fall with the heat and the dissolving of the lush vegetation into myriad color and fragrance show a sulfur process. This, in turn, gives way to a salt process in late fall when the birds gather into tight flocks to fly south and plants retreat into seed, into the roots and bark, or into the ground, hugging it tightly as a rosette formation.

In plants, animals, composts, and soils one can detect imbalances in the processes, or abnormal and one-sided expressions of the processes: as for example, fruits and vegetables that are too hard and woody, or stems that have hard knots on them, indicate an excessive sal process. On the other hand, the plant might rot, develop odors and mucus in the stem, leaf, or even root area: here we can say that the sulfur process is taking place too early, or is in the plant at the wrong place and at the wrong time. According to Paracelsus, sal, mercur, and sulfur have to be kept in balance by the Archeus (ether body). If this Archeus does not function, the process will split up and the organism will fall apart. Depending on where the imbalance lies, the organism will burn up, dry up, rot, or grow rank.

All of this can be carefully observed in nature. The observations can be diligently practiced at any time without the need for special equipment or instruments. One can see sulfur, mercury, and salt in a burning log: in the darting, dancing flames, the smell and odors of the smoke, and the remnant of the ashes. Just as with the four elements, we can meditate on this trinity in cooking, baking, pottery making and, of course, gardening. We can see plants such as the carrot, which bring sulfuric color and fragrance all the way down into the taproot. Pines bring the salt process all the way to their flowers (cones), which are dense and woody, while at the same time the sulfur penetrates leaf, stem, and root in the fragrant pitch. Composts in which the sulfur process is too strong dissipate their nutrients as foul-smelling methane or ammonia gases. Earthworms, by carrying decaying organic substance into the ground and mineral substance upward, carry on a mercurial function in the soil; initiating a sal process by applying ammonium sulfate will drive them off. The examples are endless.

The alchemists found these processes not just on the physical, material plane but as processes of the mind and spirit, as well. Here, sal is present as clear crystallizing thought; mercur as the ever-moving feeling and sensing; and sulfur as the will. A good gardener has to know these inner aspects of the processes, also, for they are to be found in he or she who is the quintessence of the garden. Proper thinking, feeling, and willing are as important ingredients to a garden as are water, fertilizer, and seeds. There is an inner gardening that accompanies the outer gardening; it is perhaps the key to the often talked about green thumb, the good vibes, that turn wastelands into gardens of Eden. They might account for the phenomenon of the so-called Backster effect (the fluctuating electric potential in plants in response to human presence, measurable by a galvanometer).

Microcosm-Macrocosm

Elements and processes work within the world of nature and the world of man. This takes us to another important universal concept found in ancient and primitive man alike, but difficult for the twentieth-century thinker: that of the macrocosm and microcosm. Man is a little world that contains all of the elements of the greater world. Both worlds contain an inner and an outer aspect. Man lives within the outer world of nature that reaches from the stars of the heavens to the sand grains of the seashore, and includes minerals, plants, and animals; through thoughts, feelings, instincts, through dreams, memories, imaginations, and intuitions he or she perceives the inner side of the macrocosm. Because the microcosm is of the same nature as the macrocosm, man can understand and has affinity with all that exists macrocosmically. As Goethe expresses it: Thou art like the spirit thou doest comprehend. (Faust I)

Certain Renaissance scholars, such as Giordano Bruno, Agrippa of Nettesheim, Marsilio Ficino, et al, drawing upon the hermetic-cabbalistic and Neo-Platonist traditions, postulated a spiritual origin of the universe, both macrocosm and microcosm, in which the creator, through his word, created the universe in a series of pulsations. From the pure spirit emanated the world of soul (world soul), out of which the ocean of life forces (world ether) emanated, which then crystallized into the physical world. Other thinkers have the microcosm evolve out of the macrocosm, symbolized by an animal recreating itself by laying eggs (the Easter Bunny with his eggs might be a remnant of this lofty concept). The same forces that created the universe at large with its kingdoms of nature, created the human being with all of its faculties. Thus, there are correspondences and sympathies between the world of nature and the world of man all along the line. The one is the mirror image of the other: As above, so below, proclaims the meditation formula of Hermes Trismegistos.

What is concentrated in man, the salt (sal) of the earth, is spread out in nature as millions of separate entities. What is laid out before him, as the animal kingdom in the macrocosm is found in man"s soul as the many passions, desires, and feelings seated deep in his blood, respiration, and muscle tissues. What is called the plant kingdom in the macrocosm is the endlessly sprouting, growing, wilting, and decaying life of the imagination in human being with its base in the lymph and vegetative system. What is the solid mineral kingdom of the macrocosm, obeying rigid physical and chemical laws involving causality and exclusiveness, is in man the faculty for clear, logical thinking that has its physical locus in the bone and nerve tissue, which is most mineralized and least alive of the body tissues. This is one of the reasons why the logical, abstracting mind can deal so effectively with the physical, material world—because that world can be treated as a mechanism and its laws can be abstractly formulated. However, this faculty is not enough to understand the world of plants and animals, which engage the gardener, because these are more than mechanisms; they are living, etheric organisms, which can only be understood by making the proper imaginations (imago = picture) come to life in the mind.

Nature can be seen as man exteriorized, and man is nature internalized. Because everything found in external nature is found somewhere in man and everything found in man is found in some transformation in the realm of nature, the Renaissance Neo-Platonists postulated that in order to study the human being, one must study nature and in order to study nature one must study the human being.

The correspondences are found on all levels (physical, etheric, astral, spiritual), which we can only indicate within our context here. Again, it takes a lot of practice and imagination to get the feel of what is meant by them. Where, for instance, are the eagles and sparrows found in the microcosm? Are they not like high, soaring, lofty ideas or daily little fluttering thoughts? Where are snails or slugs to be found in man? Is it not in the tongue, for instance? Do snails not taste their way through the world and in a deeper sense are they not found in the character of slushy indulgence? And thunder and lightening... are they not like flashes of anger or flashes of insight whose manifestation—both externally and internally—was personified by the ancients as Thor, Jupiter, Perkunas, Indra, Thunderbird, or Michael?

Very archetypal imaginations of correspondences are those of the seven visible planets. Each planet has a signature working by means of etheric formative forces in order to manifest in nature and in man. Thus, Venus is not just a tiny speck of dead light in the starry sky, but has a macrocosmic signature in the color green, in the metal copper, in sexual attraction and reproduction, in plants such as mallows and birches, in animals such as cats and doves. And it is present in the microcosm as love, sensual or aesthetic, negatively in the livid green of jealousy, in the physical body as kidneys and their function. Jupiter"s signature is in the color yellow and royal purple, the metal tin, in stately creatures such as stags and eagles, in chestnut trees and maples, in the microcosm in wisdom and the sense of justice, negatively in gluttony and drunkenness, in the body in the liver, etc. Mars is found in red, iron, nettles, and oaks, in the gall formation on oaks and in animals, in warlike fierceness and courage and, negatively, as cruelty. The sun"s signature is found in gold, uprightness, and goodness, and has the heart as its organ. The moon has silver, growing and decaying, snails, worms, dogs, etc.; in the microcosm it shows its presence as dreaminess and lunacy. Mercury has quicksilver, any movement, speed, message bearing, commerce, healing, vines and creepers, snakes, etc. among its signatures. Lead, dark colors, pines and beech forests, time, old age, etc. are among the signatures of Saturn. The list is endless because the world of phenomena is endless. Neither is it as simple as some astrologers have us believe, because the spheres of the planets interpenetrate each other and the influences are mixed so that seldom does the signature come out clear and unequivocal. Alchemists have always indicated that it is a difficult task to perceive these signatures and correspondences that exist in nature correctly; it takes keen external observation and perception of the senses matched the inner perception of the appropriate imagination.

Alchemists agreed that just as it takes clear senses to perceive the external world, so it takes a clear mind, not clouded by wishful thinking, lusts, and bad will, to perceive the supersensible qualities of the object under study. For, to the alchemists, the mind does not primarily think, but is a mirror that reflects what exists in the universe into the conscious part of the soul (that is why, for example, the brain was assigned to the lunar sphere which reflects the light of the sun). If the mirror is distorted by virtueless living, the images perceived will also be distorted.

The discussion of imaginative perception and of goetheanistic science will aid the methodology of our endeavor to understand these images.

Imaginative Perception

Just as there can be logical, clear thoughts that correctly apprehend the phenomena of the physical world, as opposed to illogical, obscure or erroneous thoughts, so there can be living imaginations that apprehend something of the life, soul, and spirit of the world. These imaginations must be distinguished from wild and idle fantasies that only confuse and do not explain or point out anything. Logical, discursive thought and imagination are not mutually exclusive; both account for different aspects of the same phenomena.

As an example: Walk through the orchard in late fall or early spring, just before sunrise. Delicate frost crystals growing on the bare, black branches sparkle in the light of pre-dawn. Quickly, the first beams ray over the hill and strike the branches. The crystals disappear at the touch of the sun-rays, filling the still grove with a rustling, sounding like footsteps or squirrels scurrying about as they fall onto the dry leave mulch. This lasts for a moment until the sun is up higher and then it is still again. The hoarfrost is gone.

This is a phenomenological vignette of what one might experience. Given the same phenomena, one can explain it in the fashion of logical, discursive thought that remains on a materialistic level, or one can explain it imaginatively. Both approaches are correct and one is not exclusive of the other.

A materialistic, mechanistic explanation would have the hoarfrost grow due to the special bonding nature of H₂0 when the relative humidity has reached 100 percent (dew point) while the temperature is on or below zero degrees Celsius. As the position of the planet Earth shifts relative to the sun, the solar radiations warm, first of all, the black twigs (black absorbs the entire spectrum, converting the light into thermal units). As the branches heat above four degrees Celsius, the portion of the crystals attached to them liquefies, subjecting the remaining crystal structures to gravitational pull. The impact of the crystals on the mulch causes acoustically audible waves. In a matter of a few minutes, the air temperature, generally, has been warmed to such a degree that the fallen crystals liquefy, drip off the mulch, and are absorbed by the ground.

An imaginative explanation draws not so much from the abstractly formulated laws of physics and chemistry, but uses the metalanguage of age-old cultural tradition based on visions and images that have been passed on through the generations. The explanation of the phenomena might go like this: Helios, the sun king, is approaching; heralds in pink and tender blue vestments announce his approach. Gnomes and dwarves, who work with the crystallizing forces of nature, with ores and precious stones in the dark recesses of the universe, do not like to see the sun god directly. They prefer to hear about the sun through what the growing plant roots tell them during the summer. And they certainly are not on speaking terms with dumb sylphs who dance on sunbeams. So they scramble back into the earth, causing rustling sounds as they snatch up their precious crystals, losing most of them to the undines, the water spirits, who turn the crystals into liquid.

Sometimes, imaginative explanations serve the purpose of obtaining a holistic concept, a gestalt, of what is going on, better than a materialistic abstraction does.

In gardening, we are dealing with such innumerable factors—the minerals, insects, birds, plants, weather, and cosmic influences—that often imaginative pictures comprehend the essence better than a materialistic, discursive form of thinking. Imaginations comprehend gestalts, that is, they grasp multifaceted totalities. They can deal with aspects that necessarily lie outside the parameters of our limited thinking. The gardener who thinks only materialistically is tempted to treat the soil, the plant, the animal like a machine or mechanism, which they are not; he or she is tempted to use abstract concepts of chemistry (NPK), fuel-energy input-output ratio models for the organisms, formulas, etc. in an analysis of a garden or farm organism. This is inevitably harmful, for it does not understand their true nature. Living processes must be understood by living thoughts. For bio-dynamic gardening, living picture imaginations are necessary, but they must be correct and fit the phenomena. They must give a clearer concept of reality.

Unfortunately, there is currently much occultist, one-sided, spiritualistic nonsense written about gardening; fantastic accounts of talking with plants, drug-induced dreams of beings and forces that do not connect with the phenomena, but are idle, fluttering fantasies and illusions that will not help in a realistic way to create beautiful, productive gardens.

The Spheres, or Planes

To help us understand what plants, animals, man, and minerals are in relation to each other and to the universe, there lingers in the background of biodynamic epistemology the concept that the universe is arranged in a series of interacting, interpenetrating planes that are presided over or occupied by a hierarchy of beings, souls, essences, and spirits. Earliest cosmologies, similar to those still maintained by shamanistic tribes of Siberia, illustrate it as a Cosmic Tree, at whose roots the primordial dragon dwells, where all beings live on some level along the branches, while eagles live at the top. Such cosmologies are again imaginative expressions of content of inner and outer experience.

Starting with the empirical world, one can experience solid rock formations always on the bottom, followed by a layer of water (lakes, seas), then a level of air (atmosphere) above which light and warmth (sun, moon) originate. This is how one experiences the physical world, not the other way around, though there are many intermediate realms and mixed states. This can be referred to as the hierarchy of the elements.

Some creatures are more at home in one element than in the other: worms and moles in the ground, fish in the water, fowl and butterflies in the air and light. Though these creatures live in the elements, they are different from them. As living creatures, they express the working of a life force, which can get a hold of and utilize the elements in its own construction. This life, or etheric, force creates a level of organization beyond the elements, a level than can be called that of the formative or etheric forces. It is characterized by vitality, endless repetition of itself (i.e., plant growing from node to node, mitosis), symmetry and levity (as opposed to gravity). Phenomenologically, the living organisms referred to collectively as the vegetable kingdom can be explained in terms of elements (physical body) and life forces (ether body).

Other organisms have something in their makeup that goes beyond the purely etheric forces, something that turns ever growing life forces into another direction, that stops the endless replication of the formative forces and changes them into sensitivity, feeling, drives, and consciousness. These organisms are the animals, where the purely vegetative, unconscious growth has been turned into organs of sensing, nerves, and inner organs, which do not have the regenerative powers of purely vegetative cells. In that animals are sensing, feeling, and increasingly conscious beings, they represent a higher state of being, that of the incarnate soul; they are truly animated (L. anima = soul). Whereas plants incarnate physically and etherically, animals develop instincts, feeling and to an extent thinking, which helps them meet the exigencies of life. In other words, their soul or astral body incarnates into the physical world.

In the human being, however, a new level is reached, characterized by symbolic and abstract thinking, impulses of a moral nature and self-consciousness, which go beyond the sympathies and antipathies of the soul life. We are here at the state of ego-hood or self-conscious spirit, where the question posed, Who is it that is thinking, feeling and willing? is answered by I am! Thus, man has a physical body, an ether body, a soul, and a spirit.

This, which has just been discussed, makes up the natural world, the place that in Germanic mythology was called Midgard (Middle Earth; the garden in the middle), which was regarded as the proper dwelling place of mankind.

Below the natural world are levels or spheres, which were in former times imaginatively called the abodes of demons and devils. These are the realms of sub-material forces that are no longer concrete matter, which the modern scientist perceives using powerful laboratory instruments and advanced mathematics. These forces—gravity, electricity, magnetism, and nuclear energy—might themselves be reflections of the formative forces, for they are known to have effects on vegetation (i.e., electro-culture). These lower levels might be called the sub-natural world.

There is also a supernatural world. The wisest of humanity have never doubted the possibility that beings can exist in nonphysical manifestation. The possibility opens that elemental spirits, angels, and other non-incarnate beings who might have etheric bodies, astral bodies, or spirit bodies but not physical bodies, exist behind phenomena, and that with our materialistic thinking and physical perception we do not perceive them. (If we think we perceive them with our physical eyes, then we are probably hallucinating). Already through imaginative thinking one has images of beings that have their effects in the physical world, but are themselves not present in it as incarnate entities. How else does one explain the universality in human culture, attested to in ethnographic literature, of dragons, flying witches, dwarves, nature spirits, unicorns, etc.? Cultural traditions of myth, art, and poetry are clothing these nonmaterial beings (essences, forces) in forms that make sense to us. With developed inner vision, true imagination, one can perceive pictures on the astral or elemental plane. A higher faculty than the imaginative one is the inspirational faculty that perceives what lies beyond the picture images. Real inspiration is said to come from heaven, a plane beyond the elemental and astral world, which is referred to as the Harmony of the Spheres, or the lower spiritual plane. Real inspiration is the rare experience of a few gifted people like Shakespeare, Dante, and Beethoven. An even higher level of perception than inspiration is that of true intuition, which realizes the archetypes by merging with the higher spiritual plane. Such intuitions, when available to an age through a great human being, are characterized as a great religious-sacred insight, bringing blessing and boons to mankind, such as the intuition of Zarathustra (or in Chinese culture, Emperor Shennong, the divine farmer) who, according to legends, first taught humanity how to do agriculture.

The various planes have been located imaginatively in external space, as well as in the inner space in the microcosm. Ancient philosophers have identified the various levels of the astral world existing in the macrocosm as the planetary spheres of Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, the sun, Venus, Mercury, and the moon. It is because of this association with the visible moving heavenly bodies that this realm is called the astral plane (Gk. Aster = star). In the microcosm the astral plane, and the true imaginations that derive therefrom, are associated with the corresponding seven main inner organs (spleen, liver, heart, etc).

The world of true inspiration has its locus in the fixed stars, the zodiac. The world of intuition is born in the realms beyond the fixed stars, in the so-called Crystal Heaven. In Christian mythology, as formulated by Dionysius the Areopagite, all these regions are populated by the angelic host, the three major choirs of angels.

It is on the lower level of the super-sensible world, the astral plane, that the animals' guiding spirits or their group egos reside. From the realms stretching from Saturn to the moon, the spirit-beings that so wisely guide the animals are to be found. The migration of flocks, the building of nests, the running of salmon upstream, rutting seasons, the spinning of pupae, paper-making by the paper wasps, etc. are usually referred to as instinct or innate behavior mechanisms for lack of better understanding. When one looks only at the animal's nervous system and cerebral development, or their chromosomes, for that matter, one really cannot explain these complex behaviors. To do so is like looking at the hands of a clock, postulating an intrinsic reason for their movement without taking the background mechanism (the cogs and wheels) into account. In earlier times one tried to come to a closer understanding of the guiding forces of the animals by seeing their behavior in light of the rhythms of the sun, moon, and the other planets as they move against the background of the zodiacal constellations (Gk. zoion = animal; kyklos = circle; Zoidiakos = animal circle). Thus it was said that the I-Am, or the guiding spirits or egos of the animals, are not incarnated on the physical plane, as are the egos of individual human beings with their ego-bound self-consciousness. For animals, only the physical bodies, etheric bodies, and souls (anima, or astral bodies) are incarnated. One can say that there is an ego, or group-spirit, for each group or species of animal. This explains why in native tribes, almost without exception, medicine people or shamans claim in all seriousness to be conversing with animals that appear to them in (culturally modified) humanoid form. Native Americans, for example, would catapult themselves onto the imaginative plane of consciousness (the world of the spirits) by ritually regulated fasting, isolation, monotonous drumming, dancing, or the use of psychotropic herbs. This allowed them to communicate with the grandfather, grandmother, or boss of the animals and ask for protection, guidance, or special favors, such as asking the grandfathers to release some of their children to be hunted and promising in return to respect certain taboos. Young Indians seeking guidance and a life's mission try to contact the animal spirits on the super-sensible plane. The mind that is incapable of imaginative consciousness considers this to be superstition and locates the causes of such behaviors in some intrinsic socio-psychological behavior mechanism or in the function of cerebral chemistry.

Whereas we have our ego-consciousness (or I-Am) on the physical plane and animals have it on the astral plane, the plants have their egos or group spirits on the plane of the Harmony of the Spheres. This plane is accessible to the form of consciousness referred to by Steiner and the early Rosicrucians as inspiration and was located by them in the realm of the fixed stars, which includes the twelve regions of the zodiac. It is from here that the plant-archetypes (sometimes called Devas) direct their children, who are their physical and etheric bodies on earth. This is expressed poetically and somewhat sentimentally in the case of violets:

When God cuts holes in Heaven
The holes the stars look through,
He lets the little scraps fall down to earth—
The little scraps are you.

These heavens are filled with Pythagoras' music of the spheres. This music gives the world its geometry and order and arranges with its euphonic, rhythmical influences everything from the dance of the atoms to the harmonious symmetries of flowers. It shows itself in the correlation of the numerical ratios between the movement of the heavenly bodies, music, and plant forms. Perhaps this gives a reason why, as a number of studies have shown, plants are influenced by the vibrations of music. It is also interesting to note that this region is often seen as the heaven where the departed ancestral spirits dwell, who then work on plant growth, on vegetation on the earth below.20

The seven planets modify with their movement and vibrations the influences radiating steadily from the plant spirit archetypes in the fixed stars. The planets, especially the sun and the moon, are responsible for daily and seasonal rhythms of the vegetation. They are the movers; they constitute the emotions (Lat. ex movere = to move out, excite) of the plant world. Thus, the ancient philosophers concluded, it is in the spheres of the seven planets that the souls of the plants reside. As Paracelsus states in his De Caducis:

Where is the workman that cuts out the forms of the lilies and roses that grow in the fields? And where are his workshop and tools? The characters of lilies and roses exist in the astral (star) light, and in the workshop of Nature they are made into forms. A blooming flower cannot be made out of mud, nor a man out of material clay; and he who denies the formative power of the astral light, and believes that something can be taken out of a body in which it does not does not exist.

The minerals have their physical bodies on earth, while their life force is found on the higher plane, where the animals have their egos and plants have their souls. The soul of the mineral is found in the fixed stars, while their archetypal spirits, or egos, are found in the highest heavens beyond the fixed stars. We can easily follow this in our thoughts, but to realize this we must have intuition, the so-called stone of the wise. This is the sphere that the ancients referred to as the Crystal Heaven, and Australian aborigines express this when they claim that crystals found on earth must have broken off the seat of the highest god and fallen to earth, and that the greatest and wisest shaman carry such heavenly crystals in their bodies.

Although this discussion of levels and spheres might seem complicated, it is nonetheless greatly simplified, for it involves complex cosmologies. We permitted ourselves to peek at these immense worlds because, as holistic gardeners, we do not want to limit our view of plants, bugs, and birds to a narrow and isolating fashion, but we want to explore their proper place in the universe in relation to each other and to human beings. The study of the works of Rudolf Steiner and careful investigation of alchemy, ethnographic records, and folklore can help to clear up our fogged vision. Steiner's works contain unusual and interesting philosophical perceptions, which he does not ask us to believe as pontifical pronouncements, but as working hypotheses to be tested against our practical work and logical thinking.

If there is truth hidden in these cosmologies, could it be possible to really have contact with and talk with one's plants and animals? Could one tell the deer's grandfather to leave the garden alone, or tell the caterpillar's spirit to go easy on the cabbage, or invite the songbirds to live in the garden? There are gardeners who claim something to that effect. There seems to be an explanation in this for the unusual garden of Findhorn, where gardeners claim to have contacted friendly nature spirits and are seeing them and talking to them with the result of growing large, healthy vegetables in cold, inhospitable northern Scotland. And perhaps the Amish are not just stubborn traditionalists when they link the powers of tractors and electricity with a demonic world; certainly the Amish have been able to maintain excellent farms without excessive destruction of the ecology.

In its more esoteric aspects, biodynamics works with considerations like these mentioned in this section, though a careful attempt is made not to take over unclear, atavistic, outmoded systems from the Middle Ages, Renaissance, or traditional native cultures, but to bring such ideas into accord with what is acceptable to modern rationality.

Transmutation, Destruction, and Creation of Matter

In nature, there is less death and destruction than death and transmutation.

Edwin Way Teale, American naturalist

Alchemy, that ancient science clothed in obscure symbols and surrounded by strange allegories, was practiced in China, India, the Mid-East, and medieval Europe. It concerned itself with the changing of substance (in its visible, as well as its etheric and spiritual form) into other substances, transmuting it into higher forms, composing and decomposing (solva et coagula) it. The aim was to permeate matter with the form-giving spirit, and to provide the spirit with substance. The alchemists studied such natural processes as the metamorphosis of vegetation, the rotting of composts, burning candles, and other instances where change of substance could be observed. Chains of transformation were carefully studied, such as when a candle is lit: the ponderable wax, cold, solid, becomes soft and malleable, then it becomes liquid, mobile, creates a reflecting surface, and then it vaporizes, becomes bright flame and, finally, dissipates itself into warmth. In steeple bells, the heavier bells give off the lowest tones, the lightest bells the highest tones. Countless observations like these led to concepts concerning matter, rules such that there is a continuity in matter ranging from ponderable, heavy, solid, earthy, crystallized substances to the light, warm imponderables that link into the supersensible, that dissipate themselves into cosmic regions. Candle wax and boiling water are examples of such disappearing matter, whereas substances like milk, dew, or falling rain can be thought of as newly created matter, which, by a series of steps, can be crystallized into solid forms such as cheese and ice.

In its solid form, matter is dense and nonreceptive, subject only to the influences of the earth (i.e., gravity, magnetism). As a liquid, matter is receptive and reflective. It can receive influences issuing from the stars and planets, so that new impressions can be fixed into it. In its imponderable, fiery and airy state, it is, given that the other factors are right, greatly transmutable. Thus, man and stars can work into and influence substances when they are liquid or volatile. Therefore, the alchemists, when carrying out their operations, studied the planets, their positions and aspects carefully. By understanding these processes, the alchemists hoped to aid nature to complete its foreordained development of matter uniting with the spirit in a chemical wedding that would lead to health, wholesomeness and perfection of creation. The search was blessed by the finding of medicine (arcanum) and the ability to transmute what is base into what is noble, such as heavy, dark lead into gold, the sun in its mineral form. They were convinced they were pleasing mother nature by their efforts. (Opens processio multum naturae placet).

In this work the alchemists, having subjected themselves to various purifications (for according to their thinking, like affects like), proceeded to subject matter to all sorts of operations in order to induce transmutations. The operations included calcination, congelation, fixation, solution, digestion, distillation, sublimation, separation, creation, fermentation, multiplication, projection, blackening, vitriolizing (the bath in sulfuric acid), and so on. If gold has been transmuted, then with the right tincture, it could be multiplied. (Though there here are reputable testaments to the effect that this had actually been achieved, I have my doubts that it happened in the real material world. But who knows?)

This view of the nature of the material universe, especially the idea of the transmutation of elements, the concept of the four elements and the making of gold, was scathingly ridiculed by Robert Boyle (1627–1691); and with the newer, enlightened scientists a new concept of matter started making its appearance. The great chemist Antoine Laurent Lavoisier (1743–1794) formulated the law of the conservation of matter: Nothing is created, nothing is destroyed, everything is transformed. By the nineteenth century, the concept of matter was well defined and posed little problem. Studied carefully by brilliant researchers operating with a modern, scientific methodology and charted into the periodic table by D. I. Mendeleev, matter is seen as composed of atoms which combine into molecules, has mass and weight, occupies space, and is subject to gravity, inertia, and the law of entropy (the second law of thermodynamics). After the original big bang (Kant-Laplace hypothesis), the law of entropy took over and now everything is seen as really in the process of winding down, like dust settling or a clock running down, until the energy is spent, the sun has burned out, and life is gone. Life and spirit are seen as epiphenomena of this inevitable process. In agriculture, this meant teaching the farmers that plant processes are chemical reactions, animals are really machines, and that Liebig's theories could deal with inevitable soil depletion.

At this time alchemy was interpreted as the crude, superstition-ridden beginnings of chemistry, or as the confidence operations of gold-hungry swindlers. On the other hand, scholars such as Franz Hartmann and C. G. Jung saw only symbolism in alchemy that was projected into the world and really referred to spiritual striving or psychological processes.

Ideas, like immortals, do not die but emerge transformed. Alchemical concepts were developed further despite rejection and ridicule on part of the new science. Samuel Hahnemann (1755–1843) founded homeopathic medicine, which makes use of a number of alchemical concepts. Utilizing the principle that like works on like (similia similibus), Hahnemann took minute proportions of those substances, mainly plant derivatives, that when given in larger doses would produce certain symptoms of illness, and placed them in a liquid medium (water or alcohol) diluted 10:1, shaking them rhythmically for a long period of time. The solution, or tincture, would then be diluted again 10:1, again rhythmically shaken (D₂), part of this would be diluted again 10:1 and shaken (D₃) and so on until a very, very dilute potion would be achieved. By shaking the liquid it would be potentized or made receptive to the forces working in the substance. At a certain point of dilution, the original substance is not even molecularly present (using the Lodschmidt formula)—only the potentized water is left. This water contains the information of the substance, but not the substance itself. Hahnemann was scolded as a quack, but the proof was in the pudding: healing was achieved in many cases where official allopathic and chemopathic medicine did not help.

The nineteenth-century researcher Baron von Herzeele published the results of some 500 experiments between 1876 and 1883 that indicated the transmutation of elements within organic substances. He showed that the ash content of certain minerals increases within seeds sprouted in distilled water. He asserted that plant organisms could transmute CO₂ into Mg, Mg into Ca, Ca into P, P into S, and N into K. Herzeele comes to the conclusion that it is not the soil that produces the plant, but the plant that produces the soil, and wherever calcium or magnesium is found in the soil, a living organism must have preceded it. These ideas run counter to everything that modern chemistry believes, such as the law of immutability of the elements, and, consequently, the publications were ignored until rediscovery by the mid-twentieth century.

When Rudolf Steiner was asked to hold his agricultural lectures in 1924 in response to the crisis in agriculture at the time, his recommendations and indications for preparations to aid the soil and compost smacked suspiciously of revitalized alchemy. He gave formulas for making preparations out of cow manure, quartz, and a number of herbs that were to be treated in various ways and then, greatly diluted, rhythmically stirred (potentized) to open them up to a number of instreaming forces from the cosmos. With this arcanum the vegetation was to be sprayed, the soil, composts, and manures treated. If homeopathic medicine works for the microcosm, then it should work in the macrocosm, to heal the ailing earth organism. Steiner treaded on thin ice when he proposed in the agricultural course that the distant planets work through the silica in the Earth to produce quality and form in plants, while the close planets (Venus, Mercury, the moon) create substance, mass, and quantity in plants and animals by working through the Earth's calcium. He speaks of transmutations that are occurring in the organic realm:

I know quite well, those who have studied academic agriculture from a modern point of view will say: You have still not told us how to improve the nitrogen content of manure. On the contrary, I have been speaking of it all the time, namely in speaking of yarrow, chamomile, and stinging nettle. For there is a hidden alchemy in the organic process. This hidden alchemy really transmuted the potash, for example, into nitrogen, provided only that the potash is working properly in the organic process. Nay more, it even transforms into nitrogen the limestone, the chalky nature, if it is working rightly.

He states that silicon, too, is transmuted in the living organism—transmuted into a substance of great importance, which, however, is not yet included among the elements at all. In another place he makes the statement that the human organism would, if within a closed room where the air consistency is somewhat low in nitrogen, create its own nitrogen. In earlier lectures (Dornach 1923), he makes distinctions between earth substance that is being spiritualized and spiritual substance that is materializing. The former are finely-wrought substances that have been thoroughly worked on by formative forces, such as the delicate plumage of birds, the dust on butterfly wings, the delicacy of flowers, and the physiognomy of a person who has spent his life in virtue and thought. The latter are new substances that are fresh in the earth-sphere, such as mother's milk, egg yolks, snow, and cow manure, which bring spirit substance to the earth. Elsewhere he talks of digestion as a process of the transformation of matter from the solid state by chewing it with the teeth to the liquid state in the stomach, to the gaseous state in the intestine, and the sublimation of matter and creation of warmth beyond the intestinal walls. The feces themselves are a waste product of this process, its ashes so to say. The process is analogous to what happens when the plant grows from the solid root or seed through the elemental phases and sublimates itself in flowering. On the other hand, the impressions of light and warmth that enter our senses condense in the body into form-building substance. Regarding the law of entropy, Steiner declares that it works in the purely mineral, physical world. But in the world of living matter, the opposite is true; forces streaming from the sun are constantly replenishing energy. We see that this philosopher is at home with concepts of the appearance and disappearance of substances, the transmutation of substances, the use of rhythm to create and dissolve forces in substances, the use of homeopathic entities, and other alchemical concepts.

What are we to make of these concepts and of what value are they? A Jungian psychologist might say that they are psychic projections onto nature, and, as such, they have value for the farmer and gardener, for as he stirs and sprays his biodynamic preparations over the land, he connects his psyche with the realm of his activity, creating a personal relationship to the land. It is, nonetheless, merely a subjective phenomenon.

Or one might realize that this approach makes sense phenomenologically. Just as the geocentric model of the universe makes sense in explaining the immediate phenomena of observable astronomic data, though actually the heliocentric model is the correct one, one can say that Steiner's system of concepts makes sense on the phenomenological level in that it can adequately describe what one sees, such as the sprouting and blooming annual cycle of vegetation, the sudden appearance and disappearance of bugs, the production of milk and manure, the stages of composting, and so forth. But the question is: Does it provide useful knowledge and does it make scientific sense? The success of biodynamic farms speaks for itself, and the concepts involved even make a lot more sense now in the beginning of the twenty-first century than they did back in 1924.

The concept of transmutation of elements started coming back with the discovery of the unstable trans-uranic elements, which transmute into lead and other elements, while giving off rays and heat. The concept of the finality of solid matter has been shaken since Einstein's theorem E = MC₂ has been tested to show that matter can change into energy and vice versa. The discovery of trace elements, or micronutrients, in plant nutrition gives some credibility to the effectiveness of minute homeopathic dosages (i.e., molybdenum is needed at a rate of only 10 oz. per acre). The severe calcium loss experienced by astronauts in outer space raises questions about the appearance and disappearance of matter. For physics this is no longer a problem with the discovery of antimatter (positrons, anti-protons, anti-neutrons), black holes, and so forth. The collision of a positron and its counterpart, the electron, results in simultaneous disappearance, their masses reduced to zero. This annihilation of matter can be reversed in that gamma rays can turn into electrons and positrons. Fred Hoyle of Cambridge dispenses with the law of conservation of matter altogether, assuming that matter is being constantly created in space out of nothing in response to the influence of other matter. With the discovery of about two hundred subatomic particles, modern physicists can no longer say what matter is. It has been de-materialized; it almost looks like the Hindu's maya.

In a more immediate sense, Steiner's indications are finding confirmation by a number of researches conducted by scientists such as Rudolf Hauschka, Eugen and Lili Kolisko, Ehrenfried Pfeiffer, Louis Kervran, Henri Spindler, Pierre Baranger and others.

Kolisko and Kolisko carried out sixteen years of far-ranging research on the effect of the biodynamic preparations, on cosmic influences on plant growth, and on the effect of the use of homeopathic entities. The results verify Steiner's indications to a large extent.

Rudolf Hauschka, longtime director of the research laboratory of the Clinical Therapeutic Institute in Arlesheim, Switzerland and director of the WALA pharmaceutical company, became know primarily for his book The Nature of Substances. He took up some of Herzeele's findings, tested and verified them in the Arlesheim laboratory. Experimenting with cress seeds, he placed them in measured amounts of distilled water into hermetically sealed ampules. In weighing the ampules carefully three times a day, he found that the weight increased and decreased, fluctuating with the rhythm of lunar phases, with increases during the full moon and decreases during the new moon periods. The results were difficult for Hauschka to repeat. He found, however, that with organically grown seeds the results were somewhat more satisfactory. Perhaps the difficulty in repeating the experiment has to do with the nature of the subject under investigation, where often events occur together, but not causally (Law of Seriality described by Paul Kammerer); or, as Hauschka supposed, there are unknown factors involved.

The biologist Henri Spindler discovered changes in the iodine level in the algae Laminaria saccharina. Within periods of twenty-four to forty-eight hours, he found that the iodine content varied up to 100 percent, even though the algae had been kept in hermitically sealed containers. He also noted an increase of up to 15 percent potassium content in the algae. He concluded that organic matter might not be derived from inorganic matter, rather that the mineral substances have been excreted from organic processes like the bark from a living tree. Spindler's research stimulated Professor Pierre Baranger of the organic chemistry laboratory of the Ecole Polytechnique of Paris to check out Herzeele's work with the aid of modern equipment and procedures. After thousands of carefully run tests, he reports that there is indisputable evidence that plants are capable of the transmutation of elements. After ten years of research with legume seed, Baranger verified that during germination manganese had disappeared while an equal amount of iron had appeared. He concludes that there must be unknown energies in living organisms that can carry out these transmutations.

Louis Kervran, in his book Biological Transmutations, notes the numerous discrepancies found in the chemistry of living organisms. He notes the countless instances where matter seems to be created anew or transmuted from another substance. For example, herbivorous animals whose nourishment contains small amounts of nitrogenous substances excrete more N that they take in; the opposite happens in carnivores. He notes the modification of the chemical composition of the soil due to earthworms; the increase in S, P, Mg, and Ca in dried fruit. His experiments show decrease in phosphorous in germinating lentils, increases in Ca in sprouting plants when calcium is lacking in the growing medium, and that hatched chicks have four times the calcium originally found in the egg. Hens kept on a calcium-free diet are capable of transmuting the potassium from mica flakes into the Ca needed for their shells. He notes that organic silica (as found in horsetail, for example) aids broken fingernails and helps mend broken bones by transmuting into calcium. He concludes that organic life cannot be explained in terms of inorganic chemistry; that the law of entropy does not work for living organisms; that experiments performed on dead tissue or in nonrepresentative, sterile laboratory situations are not conclusive for living substances; he cautions against generalizations: the transmutations are operations requiring a specific production of enzymes and a medium allowing the physiological development of cells, or microorganisms. One kind of plant will thus make a transmutation that another cannot make.

The findings of these scientists help us understand how, at the agricultural research station in Rothamstead, England, an experimental plot could be cropped for over one hundred years and still come up with a steady, although low, harvest of wheat without fertilizer. Rain and wind-blown nutriments could not cover the loss of elements incurred with each harvest. Also at Rothamstead, a clover field was cropped two to three times a year for seventeen years without fertilizer added:

This piece of land gave cuttings so abundant that it was estimated that if one had to add what had been removed... (during the 17-year period)... it would not have been necessary to dump on the field over 5,700 pounds of lime, 2,700 pounds of magnesia, 4,700 pounds of potash, 2,700 pounds of phosphoric acid, and 5,600 pounds of nitrogen or more than ten tons of the products combined. Where had all of these minerals come from?

This research also explains some of the phenomena observed by E. Pfeiffer, who noted that there is accumulation of copper in some legumes and grasses although the soils are devoid of it; that tobacco is rich in potassium when it grows in soil poor in potassium and vice versa; that oaks rich in calcium (60 percent of the bark) grow in sandy, calcium-poor soil; that Spanish moss growing on wires accumulates numerous elements for its life functions, which would be difficult to get out of the air or rainwater. Pfeiffer assumes that plants have a remarkable ability to accumulate these elements and concentrate them. Another assumption one can make is that plants are capable of creating these elements.

Theodor Schwenk carried out a study of the dynamics of fluids, of the sensitivity of water. He shows convincingly that stirring and rhythmic shaking of water creates countless moving interfaces as the molecules move past each other at varying speeds. This magnetizes and sensitizes the water to substances dissolved in it and even to cosmic occurrences, such as eclipses and constellations. His drop method of studying the characteristic forms of different kinds of water by letting it drop into glycerin indicates that the characteristic drops are affected by cosmic phenomena. Similar studies by Giorgio Piccardi, of the Institute of Physical Chemistry of Florence, confirm that water is affected by cosmic phenomena such as the outbreak of solar eruptions, and proposes that these influences working through the water continue to work in living organisms.20

In conclusion, we can see that Steiner's holistic concepts take on ever more credence. Gardening involves the incredibly complicated alchemy of life, involving not just plants and animals, but the entire cosmos and the microcosm. The agriculture of today is not capable of taking all of the facts into account, not even with the most sophisticated computer simulations. Modern agriculture should begin by reexamining its philosophical foundations.

Biodynamic Water

In addition to being a solvent or vehicle for transporting substances, water has another more subtle and perhaps more important function as a carrier of forces and forms. At first sight this may seem rather a far-fetched claim; but anyone who has stood on a bridge watching flowing water should have no reservations about accepting it. The way in which vortices and wave patterns are taken up, played with for a while, and then discarded only to give place to others is surely quite convincing. T. Schwenk, in his book Sensitive Chaos, has illustrated in many beautiful ways this form-creating power of water, and has demonstrated how these appearing and disappearing forms correspond with those of human and animal organs, suggesting that water must play a large part in bringing them into being during the embryonic growth period.

It is this form-creating property which seems to be utilised in the preparation of homoeopathic remedies. After making the 24th decimal potency there is theoretically not a single atom or molecule of the original substance left, yet in some way as yet not fully understood, much higher dilutions can have marked effects on living systems. The current explanation is that the water molecules arrange themselves in corresponding patterns; an infinite number of patterns is then theoretically possible, and this gets over the difficulty that a huge number of different patterns would be necessary to cover all the possible potencies which can be made. But this does not explain how the patterns can have an effect in practice. The point to bear in mind here is that they are inoperative in the purely mineral world: only when they are applied to living systems can effects be observed. When we come to discuss the forces operative in the plant kingdom, perhaps a clearer picture will emerge. In the meantime be it noted that the bio-dynamic method uses this power of water to spread the effects of certain preparations for treating soil and plants.

In days gone by gardeners used to make a point of collecting rain which fell during thunderstorms. That this water should have special living properties is not surprising in view of what Ernst Lehrs has to say about thunderstorms in his book Man or Matter, in which he postulates that thunder rain has been newly condensed out of the cosmos. It is also possible to obtain specially active water by causing rainwater to flow in an open channel from one container to another for a few minutes just before and after the exact time of the full moon. It has been shown that seed germinates quicker if watered with water that has been exposed to the full moon for a night. Again, some extravagant claims have been made for the vital activity of water which has been charged through an unusual type of electric condenser using beeswax as the dielectric. Conversely, farmers who use irrigation water from large dams claim that it has a deadening effect on crops immediately below the dam and that it needs to flow freely for at least a mile before it regains its life. That this claim may have some substance is borne out by experimental work with flow forms based at Emerson College.

Finally, in order to deepen our understanding of water's manifold being, let us dwell for a moment on two other remarkable features. The first is the sensitive way in which it reflects Nature's moods and co-operates with them. As examples we may take a slow-moving stream or river in midsummer, the surface of a lake on a clear still night, or the fury of the sea during a storm. The second is the enormous power which water can amass when it collects or is collected in bulk. Under control behind a dam it can give us electricity, but the surging joy with which it escapes from the turbines is an indication of the frustration which it felt at being pent up against its natural tendency to flow, a frustration which it vents in terrifying fashion if the dam should chance to break. Or again the devastating might of a tsunami or tidal wave as it approaches the shore must be one of the most frightening experiences a man can have on earth.

Biodynamic Principles and Practices

A Biodynamic Farm Is a Living Organism

Each biodynamic farm or garden is an integrated, whole, living organism. This organism is made up of many interdependent elements: fields, forests, plants, animals, soils, compost, people, and the spirit of the place. Biodynamic farmers and gardeners work to nurture and harmonize these elements, managing them in a holistic and dynamic way to support the health and vitality of the whole. Biodynamic practitioners also endeavor to listen to the land, to sense what may want to emerge through it, and to develop and evolve their farm as a unique individuality.

Biodynamics Cultivates Biodiversity

Biodynamic farms and gardens are inspired by the biodiversity of natural ecosystems and the uniqueness of each landscape. Annual and perennial vegetables, herbs, flowers, berries, fruits, nuts, grains, pasture, forage, native plants, and pollinator hedgerows can all contribute to plant diversity, amplifying the health and resilience of the farm organism. Diversity in domestic animals is also beneficial, as each animal species brings a different relationship to the land and unique quality of manure. The diversity of plant and animal life can be developed over time, starting with a few primary crops and one or two species of animals (even as small as earthworms or honeybees), and adding more species as the farm organism matures.

Biodynamics Brings Plants and Animals Together

Natural ecosystems include both plants and animals, which work together to fill complementary roles in the web of life. Many conventional and organic farms only grow crops or only raise livestock, which may be more efficient by some measures, but creates imbalances such as nutrient deficiency (if only growing plants) or pollution from excess manure (if only raising animals). Biodynamic farms and gardens work to bring plants, animals, and soil together through living, conscious relationships, so that they each support and balance the whole

Biodynamics Generates On-Farm Fertility

Biodynamic plants are grown in the ground in living soil, which provides a quality of health and nutrition not possible with chemical fertilizers or hydroponic growing. Biodynamic farms aspire to generate their own fertility through composting, integrating animals, cover cropping, and crop rotation. Composting brings animal manures, plant material, and soil into healthy relationship and transforms them into a potent source of strength and fertility for the farm organism. Integrating a diversity of animals helps cycle nutrients and provides manures that nurture the soil. Cover crops also contribute to on-farm fertility, adding plant diversity and bringing life and sensitivity to the soil through oxygen and nitrogen. Crop rotation helps balance the needs of each crop and enables a diversity of creative expression in the soil. Together, these practices reduce or eliminate the need for imported fertilizers and enable the farm to move toward equilibrium and resilience.

Compost Is Enlivened with Biodynamic Preparations

Biodynamic compost is enhanced and enlivened through the use of six preparations made from yarrow, chamomile, stinging nettle, oak bark, dandelion, and valerian. Each of these medicinal herbs is transformed through a unique process that brings it into relationship with the animal kingdom, the earth, and the cycle of the year. Bringing these elements together magnifies their healing qualities, fosters the growth of beneficial bacteria and fungi, and creates powerfully concentrated substances to guide the development of the compost. A small quantity of each preparation is added to the compost pile just after it is built, and again after it is turned. Biodynamic preparations strengthen the quality of the compost by stabilizing nitrogen3 and other nutrients, multiplying microbial diversity,4 and bringing more sensitivity to the composting process. Biodynamic compost helps attune the soil to the whole farm organism and wider influences while increasing soil life5 and stable organic matter.4,6 Biodynamic compost also brings more carbon into the living realm, helping to restore balance to the climate.

Biodynamic Farmers Cultivate Awareness

Biodynamic agriculture invites us to develop a conscious and creative conversation with nature. By observing, sensing, and listening to the land, we develop intimate relationships with our unique farm organisms and expand our capacities for perception, reflection, and imagination. Biodynamics is not a fixed recipe or prescription. Cultivating awareness strengthens our ability to work creatively with the dynamics of the land and wider bioregion to bring the vibrancy of the farm organism to full expression.

Biodynamics Supports Integrity and Diversity in Seeds and Breeds

Biodynamic farmers and gardeners favor open-pollinated, heirloom, and non-GMO seeds and heritage breeds of animals. Biodynamic farms work toward generating seed and animal stocks from within the farm, incorporating selection and breeding into farm activities when possible in order to develop unique, locally-adapted, and sensitized plants and animals with excellent nutrition and flavor, and resistance to pests and diseases. As in other aspects of biodynamics, earthly and cosmic influences are considered in developing plants and animals that can thrive in current conditions and contribute to the health of the farm and community.

Biodynamic Sprays Enhance Soil and Plant Health

In addition to the compost preparations, several biodynamic preparations are applied as potentized liquid sprays to bring healing, vitality, and sensitivity to the farm and garden. Horn manure enhances the life of the soil and the relationship between soil and plants and is made from cow manure buried inside a cow horn during the winter months. Horn silica increases plant immunity, strengthens photosynthesis, enhances ripening, and is prepared from ground quartz crystals buried in a cow horn over the summer months. Horsetail tea helps prevent fungal diseases and balances the watery element in plants and soil. Together, the biodynamic spray and compost preparations bring plants into a dynamic relationship with soil, water, air, warmth, and cosmos to help them develop in a healthy and balanced way, access the full spectrum of nutrients they need, and become more resilient to pests, diseases, and extreme climate conditions.

Biodynamics Treats Animals with Respect

Biodynamic farmers care for domestic animals in ways that support their inherent health and the full expression of their nature. Animals are given feed that is appropriate for their digestive systems and are never fed animal by-products. Calves, lambs, and kids are raised on the milk of the herd, not milk replacer. Chickens keep their beaks and cows keep their horns, as each part of the animal serves an important natural function. All animals have access to the outdoors and free range forage, along with plenty of space to move around freely.

Biodynamics Works in Rhythm with Earth and Cosmos

Biodynamic farmers and gardeners observe the rhythms and cycles of the earth, sun, moon, stars, and planets and seek to understand the subtle ways that the environment and wider cosmos influence the growth and development of plants and animals. Biodynamic calendars support this awareness and understanding by providing detailed astronomical information and indications of optimal times for sowing, transplanting, cultivating, harvesting, and using the biodynamic preparations.

Biodynamic Certification Upholds Agricultural Integrity

The Demeter Biodynamic® Standard for certification was established in 1928 and is managed worldwide by Demeter International. Over 5,000 farms encompassing more than 400,000 acres are certified in 60 countries around the globe. Biodynamic certification in the United States is managed by Demeter USA (www.demeter-usa.org) and uses the USDA organic standard as a foundation with additional requirements. Beyond organic certification, the Demeter Biodynamic Farm Standard requires that the whole farm, and not just a specific crop, is certified; crops and livestock are integrated and animals are treated humanely; imported fertility is kept to a minimum; the biodynamic preparations are regularly applied; at least 50% of livestock feed is grown on farm; at least 10% of the total farm acreage is set aside for biodiversity; and the farm upholds standards of social responsibility.

Biodynamics Approaches Pests and Diseases Holistically

Biodynamics focuses on creating the conditions for optimal soil, plant, and animal health, providing balanced nutrition and supporting healthy immunity. When farms and gardens incorporate a robust diversity of plants and animals and create habitat for natural predators, pests and diseases have few places to thrive. When a disease or pest presents itself, it is often pointing to an imbalance in the farm organism, and can be seen as nature's way of trying to correct the imbalance. In the case of an outbreak, biological controls can be used, but a biodynamic farmer also tries to discern the underlying imbalance and find ways to adjust management practices to bring the farm organism to greater health.

Biodynamics Offers Regenerative Solutions for the Future

Biodynamics is a conscious, participatory, and responsible way of farming and being in the world, which brings healing to soil, plants, animals, people, and planet. Each unique and self-sustaining farm organism contributes generously to the ecological, economic, social, and spiritual vitality of its surrounding community, and the whole living Earth. Through biodynamics, we can access new capacities in human creativity to sense and respond to the needs of the Earth, and unfold new solutions in a living and dynamic way.

Biodynamics Contributes to Social and Economic Health

Biodynamic farmers are motivated by a desire to meet the real needs of people and the Earth, which often extends beyond growing food. Most biodynamic initiatives seek to embody triple bottom line approaches (ecological, social, and economic sustainability), taking inspiration from Steiner's insights into social, economic, and spiritual life, as well as agriculture. Community supported agriculture (CSA), was pioneered by biodynamic farmers, and many biodynamic practitioners work in creative partnerships with other farms and with schools, medical and wellness facilities, restaurants, hotels, homes for social therapy, and other organizations. Biodynamics is both a radical concept of regenerative agriculture and a potent movement for new thinking and practices in all aspects of life connected to food and land.

The Farm Individuality

In biodynamic agriculture, each farm or garden is viewed as an integrated whole, as a living organism in its own right. Like a human being, a farm is made up of many different organs and systems. When these are managed and brought together in a dynamic way, they interact positively with one another to support the health and well-being of the whole. And like a human being, each farm is unique, with its own personality and identity. The holistic expression of a farm's unique potential is referred to as the farm individuality.

The farm individuality encompasses soil types and characteristics—such as mineral content, organic matter, and the mix of sand, silt, and clay—as well as forests and meadows, wetlands and cultivated ground, flowering trees and shrubs, domestic and wild animals, buildings and equipment, and human beings living and working on the land. It also includes the history, character, and purpose of the farm as well as more subtle, energetic aspects of the region and landscape.

Biodynamic farmers strive to develop an intimate understanding of each element of the farm, and the creative potential of the farm as a whole. From this understanding they work to bring the elements of the farm into right relationship. This process allows the farm individuality to express itself continuously over time and share its gifts of health and vitality with the local community.

Biodynamic farmers and gardeners work toward balancing the soil and creating a farm individuality that is a self-sustaining whole, where fertility and feed come from within the farm rather than from outside. A closed-loop system has environmental and economic benefits, but there are also more subtle ways in which this approach enlivens the health of farms and gardens.

Now, a farm comes closest to its own essence when it can be conceived of as a kind of independent individuality, a self-contained entity. In reality, every farm ought to aspire to this state of being a self-contained individuality. This state cannot be achieved completely, but it needs to be approached. This means that within our farms, we should attempt to have everything we need for agricultural production, including, of course, the appropriate amount of livestock. From the perspective of an ideal farm, any fertilizers and so forth that are brought in from outside would indeed have to be regarded as remedies for a sickened farm. A healthy farm would be one that could produce everything it needs from within itself.

Rudolf Steiner in the Agriculture Course, June 1924

When manure is used from our own livestock to fertilize our crops, we are keeping nutrients within our farm, as well as creating a feedback loop of subtle communication. The animals and plants on a particular farm share the same environment, the same ecosphere, and the same influences—cosmic, earthly, and human. As an animal eats, she senses and takes in substance from the plants on the farm where she lives, and sends this substance through the complex, living system of her body. In the process, she adds enzymes, bacteria, and other living organisms. She then releases a digested form of the plant with a dose of her own essence, as well as a message about what is needed to bring that field into greater balance and vitality.

We can then take this manure—this already digested plant material that has now been infused with animal life and an animal's sensitivity—and further develop it through composting. By creating compost and adding the biodynamic preparations, the whole process is taken to the next level of life, stimulating the vitality. As the composted manure is returned to the fields, the soil receives both nutrients and valuable information, which brings enhanced vitality to the food grown on the farm.

When seeing a farm as a whole organism, the view of weeds, pests, and diseases changes. Each of these becomes a valuable messenger, revealing an imbalance in the farm and inviting us to correct that underlying imbalance. A weed might tell us that our soil has become too compacted; a fly infestation in our cow herd might tell us that we need more wild birds on the farm. Although short-term solutions to manage these problems may be necessary, the biodynamic approach emphasizes learning from these problems and changing management practices to increase the health of the garden or farm as a whole.

I believe that building the farm organism and incorporating compost are essential foundations in which the biodynamic preparations can reach their full potential in weaving together the material (earthly) and cosmic (planetary) influences. The farmer or gardener's spiritual development consists in working within these realms as participant, observer, and orchestrator. I feel I'm co-evolving with the farm as I develop the sensitivity to understand what is needed and what to do, abandoning the failures and creating new solutions to adapt to an ever-changing environment.

Janet Gamble, Turtle Creek Gardens

To create a healthy farm individuality, it is also crucial to work with the plants and animals towards adaptation and localization of a given place. The aim is to save as much seed as possible, so the expression of the place is embodied by the plants. Another goal is to close a herd of animals so that the genetic base is improving in relation to the place where the herd lives. When animals eat crops from their own farm, out of a soil and mineral complex that has received enlivened fertility through compost and manure from the farm, a subtle but real connection and communication among all the parts of the whole can be noticed. In essence, the natural landscape has been guided towards the creation of an organism that has to some extent the ability to be self-regulating.

As the human population has grown and technology has increased our ability to extract resources from the Earth, many of us have deep questions about how humanity can continue living on our Earth in a healthy way. The art of working with the abundance and limitations that exist within a closed farm organism is a microcosm of how we might live within the abundance and limitations of our planet.

I have a feeling that I, as an aspiring human being, will get a better and better sense of who I am as an individual the more I can really be connected to the rest of the world. The same could be said about a farm: the more completely and deeply it is tied into its environment (cosmic and terrestrial), the closer it will get to becoming a farm individuality. Many of the biodynamic practices support that—especially the preparations, livestock, and compost.

Steffen Schneider, Hawthorne Valley Farm

While a biodynamic farm strives to be self-sustaining and in some ways self-contained, it is not closed to the world. Tremendous energy streams into the farm daily from the sun and stars, and rain and wind bring water and minerals. A similar generosity and abundance is expressed from the farm individuality toward the wider world when the farm is healthy. Embedded in the farm individuality is life-giving potential, not merely to avoid exploitation, but to offer rejuvenation.

When we saw an infestation of thistle in our pastures, we asked: Why is this plant here? What is this plant trying to communicate about the soil, about the way we graze our cattle, and about the way we are using the biodynamic preparations, horn silica in particular? We also asked: What is this plant indicating about the way we are interacting with this land and with each other?

We studied the plant itself, physically, artistically, meditatively. We studied the soil, the field history, the folklore around the plant. And we also studied ourselves. A year later we have changed our land management techniques and, upon reflection, we have also changed our selves.

Laura Riccardi Lyvers, Foxhollow Farm

Terrestrial Factors

The first mother is the holy Mother of God,
The second, the moist mother Earth,
The third, the mother who gives birth in pain.

Cosmic Influences

Nothing exists nor happens in the visible sky that is not sensed in some hidden moment by the faculties of Earth and Nature.

Johannes Kepler (1571–1630) De Stella Nova

To assume that what comes to pass in the wide expanses that surround planet Earth has little or no effect on the life of the earth is the legacy of the worldview that described planets solely as dead physical matter held in orbit by purely mechanical forces and held that the stars, as infinitely distant suns, could not possibly transmit anything across the vacuum of space. This legacy is still a cornerstone in the thought of such laboratory scientists as the majority of biologists who work on biological clocks. They claim that these clocks only appear to be affected by cosmic rhythms but try to show in laboratory test cases that they are endogenous, adaptive mechanisms intrinsic to the biochemistry of some species. The chemical base or the mechanism of the clock itself has, as yet, not been isolated. Apart from mechanical, photoenergetic influences derived from the sun and moon, our planet appears to be a hermetically sealed space capsule run by intrinsic machinery.

In contrast to this kind of thinking, the sages of all the peasant and gardening societies have never doubted the influences of forces stemming from the cosmos, which control the seasons and influence plant, animal, and man alike. These influences were not seen as mere mechanical forces, but experienced as powerful, personified beings that could be appealed to and dealt with in various ways. All these peoples employed calendar makers and specialists, who were able to interpret seasons and celestial events. In this way, the ecologically appropriate action could be taken when the signs were right. The Tukano of Brazil, for example, know that when the Pleiades dip below the horizon in the evening after sunset, it is time to plant the crops just in time for the seasonal rains. When Sirius started to appear on the horizon just before sunrise, it was time for the fertile midsummer flood of the Nile Valley marking the start of ancient Egypt's agricultural year. The European peasant rules for sowing, planting, harvesting, animal husbandry, and herb gathering, many going back to ancient Babylonian, Chaldean, and Egyptian sources, are of the same order. The Romans Pliny the Elder (23 AD) and Virgil (70–19 BC) record agricultural rules relating to astronomical phenomena. The countless sky, moon, and sun deities of tribes and nations throughout the ages, each demanding certain taboos, rituals, feasts, and proscriptions, are considered by current anthropologists not so much superstitions, but as functional ways of adapting to specific environments.

In the West, with the change of calendar and the influence of the Enlightenment, the planetary gods were shorn of their powers and dethroned. Only the most backward peasants clung stubbornly to a tradition, which degenerated into superstition and eventually lost its empirical base. What was at one time a functional belief system came in time to be relegated to the velvety parlors of official occultists, esoteric mystics, and astrologers. It was safely relegated to those with a leaning toward mystery and the obscure, whose nerve had failed them in the brave new world. As the crisis of modern culture deepens, more people are drawn to these topics, while at the same time, there lingers in the mind of some farmers and gardeners the feeling that there must be more to the plant and animal world than is taught in agricultural extension courses. Our current situation finds a revitalized interest in the beliefs of astrology and moon-sign planting. One need not merely believe in astrology or intuitively follow archaic tradition to benefit, because clear evidence is accumulating quickly that the earth is not a sealed mechanism, a spaceship as Buckminster Fuller called it, running its course, but an organism that is open and responsive to the influences streaming in from the cosmos.

Atmospheric Factors

Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating; there is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather.

John Ruskin

Moderating, transferring, and mediating between the great polarity of the terrestrial factors and the cosmic factors are the forces of wind and water, the climate, weather, sunshine, and rain that make up the atmospheric factors. Included are the following:

Moisture, involving humidity, rain, hail, sleet, snow blankets, dew, and fog
Wind, involving strength, direction, seasonal variation, and local breezes
Air pressure, involving barometric changes
Light climate, involving cloud covers, angle of sunlight, length of days, and shadows cast by buildings, trees, and hills
Temperature, involving temperature averages, extremes of day and night, extremes of seasons, and frosts and chills

All of these factors are intimately involved with how the garden grows. The gardener must be very aware of these factors, for they will determine to a large extent when to plant and harvest, when to water or cultivate, when there is danger of aphid or mildew infection, and what the quantity and quality of the produce will be like. Entries should be made into the garden diary for each of these factors, providing a valuable record after a number of years that gives predictability for the local situation. Simple instruments can be used to aid in the observations, such as a thermometer for temperature measurements in sunny and shady locations; a weather vane for showing the wind direction; a hygrometer to measure humidity; a simple anemometer, which is a whirligig that indicates the speed of the wind; a barometer to give information on the air pressure, the highs and lows; and a rain gauge, which shows the amount of precipitation. The position of the sun in the zodiac, the place on the horizon where it rises and sets each day, a measure of the angles of the sun's rays, and a charting of the procession of shadows across the garden and other observations belong in the diary next to entries concerning composting, cultivating, planting, fertilizing, and rotations.

Nature observations, hints by old-timers, and local folk sayings provide a rich storehouse of information. Farmers tell that animals in the barn are nervous and cows hold back on their milk when there are impending changes of weather, and that aches and pains in the joints and old wounds mean the same thing. All animals, because of their more immediate contact with nature, give indications regarding atmospheric conditions, if one can read them. Especially insects, which are still very closely tied into the macrocosmic processes, reflect the weather and even predict it. When gnats and mosquitoes dance high in the air, the weather will stay fair, but when they fly low and bite, the weather will change. Bees are nervous when the weather changes; they are more likely to sting when it is humid and windy; they strip the pollen off their legs to fly home faster when there is a storm on the horizon. Yearly forecasts can be made by observing bee larvae; when the brood is large there will be a sunny year, good for fruits and flowers; when there are few larvae, the year will be rainy and cool. Ants are interesting to watch in similar respects. Wooly bear caterpillars, which are often seen crossing roads in the fall, indicate the kind of winter that will follow. If the brown band around the caterpillar is broad, the winter will be mild; if it is narrow, the winter will be harsh. Crickets are regular thermometers; they chirp faster when it is warmer and proportionately slower the cooler it gets. Some observant old-timers can actually tell the degrees Fahrenheit by counting the chirps in a certain way. Similarly, spiders, besides being useful bug catchers, are good weather forecasters. When the little spiders hatch in the spring, it is a sure sign that warm weather is coming; when spiders weave fine nets, there will be a spell of good weather; when they build nests, it is a sign of coming cold; and when they weave thick strands, it will be cloudy or rainy.

Mindful observation of the plant world gives good hints to the gardener regarding seasons and weather. Each step of the season is marked by its particular phenomenon in the flowering world. In southern Oregon, it is a sure sign of spring when the hazelnut blooms, the miner's lettuce, slender toothwort, plums, and others start flowering. Shooting stars, ragged starflowers, camas, grass widows, and others follow this early flowering. Successive flowering continues until midsummer is graced by the sun-like St. John's wort to be followed in the fall by asters, chicories, and others. Watching the natural flowering patterns is a surer way of knowing at which point the season stands than relying on abstract numerical dates. For predictions of the coming year, the greening oak and ash are compared in early spring. If the oak greens before the ash, the summer will be wet; if the ash greens before the oak, the summer will be dry.

Other natural phenomena can be helpful, too. In the Grants Pass area of Oregon, for example, the weather starts to get milder in February, making it possible to put out peas and spinach, but the last frost can be as late as the beginning of June. Newcomers to the area are usually fooled into putting their summer gardens out way too soon, only to find that a succession of unexpected frosts kills them off. The seasoned gardeners know that only when the mountaintops are free of snow is it safe to put out corn and tomatoes. A planting rule going back to the Iroquois in the Midwest that says not to plant corn until the leaves of the white oak are about the size of a squirrel's ears. Such lore holds only conditionally true for other regions. For each local area, the gardener should observe cloud formations, the intensity of colors at sunrise and sunset, wind directions, rising and descending fog, and other natural phenomena—at best over a span of a number of years.

Composts and Liquid Manures

Behold this compost! Behold it well!

Walt Whitman, This Compost

Composting (L. compositum = something put together) is the deliberate putting together of any number of organic substances for the sake of rotting them in such a way that a high-quality natural fertilizing agent, a medium of microorganismic life, can develop. We must distinguish between 1) the ingredients and 2) the processes of composting itself; both must be carefully attended to if the end product is to be good, stable, permanent humus.

In nature's Wheel of Life, composting occurs on the bottom of a cycle, where death processes are turned back into life processes. The cycle starts in the spring, when seeds lying dormant in the soil are awakened to life by moisture and increasing warmth. Quickened vegetative growth characterizes the vegetable kingdom from spring until midsummer, when the rapid buildup of carbonaceous substance (biomass) comes to a halt and increasingly the impulse toward flowering and subsequent seed formation is given. Older leaves start yellowing and dying off; they are chewed and shredded by insect populations, as the overall annual breakdown cycle picks up speed. Finally, in late autumn, fallen leaves and stems litter the ground as mulch, and the breakdown cycle continues as bacteria and fungi metabolize the carbohydrate substances. By spring this mulch and detritus is broken down and metamorphosed into humus as the buildup cycle of vegetation commences anew.

We get a grand picture of the rhythm of life and the interconnectedness of soil and plants when we contemplate how the plant during half of the cycle grows as lush vegetation, and during the other half of the cycle separates into a tiny viable germ (the seed or bud) on one hand and litter and debris on the other hand, to be finally reunited in the spring when the seed grows once again out of the humus. Animal substances, manures, urine, secretions, and corpses work into this cycle of life and death, bringing nitrogen and enzymes into it.

In biologically sound organic farming and gardening, soil building by composting is the key. In nature we observe composting processes at work all the time as decaying leaves, litter, dead animals, tree stumps, and other remnants of life whose etheric forces have left them or been weakened, and are being putrefied, rotted, decayed, or fermented. Some gardeners feel that it is important to imitate these processes on their garden beds. Mulching continually or letting the mulch rot on the ground as time goes by is the way they try to do this. This kind of composting is very much like nature does it. There is nothing to be said against this practice, however, building a compost pile and conducting a guided decomposition process is lending nature a helping hand. Composting is biodynamics par excellence, for here, one is neither letting nature take its course, nor is one violating nature's principles, but one is aiding nature, speeding her up a bit, and guiding the changes in such a way that it is beneficial for the garden organism.

The art of composting is very ancient. Pliny the Elder (Plinius), the renowned Roman naturalist, wrote about it; the eleventh-century Arab scholar Ibn al Awam discussed it; alchemists practiced it to find the secrets of transmutation; and peasants and yeomen have practiced some form of composting for quite some time. In the West this tended to be the dung heap, where manure, carcasses, scraps, and stall bedding was thrown and left to rot. These were reeking piles that lost much nitrogen to the atmosphere due to denitrifying bacteria and anaerobic putrefaction. In East Asia, more careful management of compost had been practiced for centuries, making it possible for large families to survive on two to five acres. Here, everything organic, weeds, human excrement, animal manures, pond dredgings, and sod were composted in special composting sheds that formed part of the cluster of buildings that made up the farmstead. Roofed over manure piles were also found on Swiss farmsteads.

Compost science and care was neglected in the decades following the advent of chemical farming and the displacement of animals from the farms: of horses by tractors; of cows, chickens, and hogs into feedlots. This development has a serious ecological impact and puts the permanent fertility of the land into jeopardy. The organic agriculture movement has reemphasized the importance of composting (for example, Sir Howard's Indore method) and biodynamics in particular has added valuable scientific data to the art of compost making by analyzing ingredients, composting stages, and kinds of special compost for specific crop needs, and by providing preparations made from herbs to guide the decomposition in the most favorable way. (See section Teas, Preparations, and Biotic Substances.)

Companion Planting, Crop Rotation, and Weeds

Weeds are people's idea, not nature's.

Author unknown

But while his men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed tares (weeds) among the wheat, and went away.

New American Standard Bible, 1955

It is a basic understanding of organic and biodynamic gardening that nature functions as an interacting whole. Every part has an effect on every other part. Why should plants growing next to each other in the garden bed not follow this principle? Many gardeners have observed such mutual influences. Scientists have been slow to study these effects because the current scientific methodology has great difficulty isolating and locating the exact interactions and the semiochemicals (pheromones, allo-mones, kairomones, repellents, and attractants) involved. As we have seen, a similar problem exists in the study of lunar and planetary influences on plants; it is nearly impossible to separate the significant from the insignificant variables and to repeat the exact conditions in experimental settings.

Nonetheless, few scientists deny such interrelationships among plants, and a fledgling field of synecology, plant sociology, and allelochemics (the study of the effects of plant excretions on one another) exists. Pfeiffer has mentioned research done in the 1930s. Helen Philbrick and Richard B. Gregg undertook a pioneer effort on the subject in a book called Companion Plants and How to Use Them. It is admittedly a primer and not a scientific treatise, but it is useful for gardeners since it lists all the entries in alphabetical order. Louise Riotte wrote a similar book called Carrots Love Tomatoes: Secrets of Companion Planting for Successful Gardening.

What are the reasons for companion plant effects? Different species are accumulators of different substances that are vital within the whole ecology. We all know how legumes function as accumulators of nitrogen, creating beneficial effects for plants growing beside them or following them in rotation. Other plants have other functions within the organic totality. For example, daisies, broom, buckwheat, dandelion, and chamomile accumulate calcium, even if growing in calcium-poor soil. Henbane, thorn apple, and valerian specialize in phosphoric acid. Foxglove collects Fe, Ca, Si, and Mg. German chamomile collects K and Ca; horsetail is an avid collector of Si; yarrow collects K, Ca, and Si. The list goes on indefinitely. Measurements are hard to specify because some plants increase the percentage of elements with age as the plant grows, other decrease the percentage. Hauschka indicates rhythmical variation during the year and during the lunar cycles. Conditions of the soil substrate influence the chemistry of plants, so that, for example, tobacco is rich in K when it is grown in soil poor in K and vice versa. Furthermore, the study is complicated by suggestions of elemental transmutations as researched by Kervran, Hauschka, and Spindler.

Plants are not passively at the mercy of their environment, but actively engaged in selecting and rejecting nutrients, sending root hairs throughout the soil and then dying back, altering the soil in the process and providing specific conditions for the myriad of microorganisms, which in turn alter the chemistry of the soil. These biological processes make use of mechanical laws such as diffusion, osmosis, and so forth, but much of it occurs contrary to purely mechanistic laws, just as plant growth itself counters the law of gravity. As the great Dutch botanist Hugo de Vries pointed out in 1905, the chemical combination of the plant does not conform to that of the soil or water in which it grows, and sometimes the variation in two adjacent plants is very great.

Not just the elements are accumulated and given off by specific plants, but also the complex compounds such as amino acids, hormones, enzymes, auxins, growth inhibitors, and others, not all of which have as yet been discovered. These biotic substances are given off into the surroundings of the plant as the perfume or pollen of the flowers, as essential oils by the leaves, by excretions of the roots, by the discarding of dying plant tissue, and they are carried in insect droppings or by insect go-betweens, as is the pollen by the bees. Sometimes the quantities given off are minute, occurring in homeopathic dosage or at the rate of trace minerals. A few years ago, such incredibly small quantities would have been scorned as ineffective, but now it is known that some elements, even when removed to a distance, have an effect on the living organism of a plant. Plants, especially herbs, as they give off minute substances that alter soil flora and other plants, work within the ecology of the soil much like the endocrine glands within the microcosm of the animal organism, by regulating metabolism, reproduction, and other life functions by minute chemical programmers. Since we are dealing with a macrocosmic process, the effects are not as compact as they would be in a more specialized organism. The companion effect can be created by purposeful planting of certain species next to each other, or sometimes by the administration of herb teas and ferments to the soil. Companion plant effects are probably more widespread than we realize. One need only look at fields, meadows, and forests to realize that some species prefer to grow with specific others, fitting together like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. Up until the dawn of ecological studies, our biological science labored under the assumption that the first law in nature is the struggle for survival and the survival of the fittest. We have seen that this dog-eat-dog idea is more a projection of the conditions created by industrialization and class struggle than a true understanding of biology. Why should plants not have evolved for mutual benefit? As the conservationist Joseph Cocannouer shows so effectively, even weeds, having evolved right along with horticultural practices, often have beneficial companion effects; they are not just mean competitors for nutrients.

Flowers make good companion plants, also, besides adding beauty to the vegetable garden. The suggestion has been made that flower saps keep predators alive when pests are in low supply. The predators of sugar-sap-secreting aphids are kept around the garden by having flower nectars available. Borders of aromatic herbs keep hungry insects away from crop plants, possibly because the fragrance masks the odor of the other plants. Other companion plants distract the insects from the crops.

As Alan Chadwick points out, concerning the effects and influences of plants upon one another, here, too, it is the craft of the gardener to create relationships and dis-relationships by planting some plants together and avoiding others.

Many native horticulturists have been aware of companion planting and have incorporated it into their agricultural lore. King reports examples of multiple crops in the Far East, such as wheat, Windsor beans, and cotton, or alternating rows of beans and millet. Other examples are cited in ethnographic accounts, but much more research could be done in this area. Famous are the combinations of the American Indian companion cropping of corn, beans, squash, often with amaranth and a number of weeds that served as soup greens. The anthropologist Clifford Geertz tells of the almost uncanny imitation of the natural ecosystem of many slash-and-burn horticulturalists: The swidden plot is not a field at all in the proper sense, but a miniaturized tropical forest composed mainly of food producing and other cultivates. Anthropologist Roy Rappaport writes about the Tsem-baga of New Guinea. He reports that the use of companion and successive planting results in maximum utilization of the sun's energy by the leaves, protection of soil against washing out even on hillsides, discouragement of insects, and the availability of alternative food supply if one crop does not yield. The jungle-like atmosphere is recreated when he writes: A mat of sweet potato leaves covers the soil at ground level. The taro leaves project over this mat; the hibiscus, sugarcane and pitpit stand higher still, and the fronds of the banana spread out above the rest.

As a final example of interplanted gardens, we read the description of a typical Guatemalan garden as seen by a botanist:

The garden I charted was a small affair about the size of a small city lot in the United States. It was covered with a riotous growth so luxuriant and so apparently planless that any ordinary American or European visitor accustomed to the puritanical primness of north European gardens, would have supposed (if he even chanced to realize that it was indeed a garden) that it must be a deserted one. Yet when I went through it carefully I could find no plants, which were not useful to the owner in one way or another. There were no noxious weeds; the return per man-hour of effort was apparently high.[...]

He goes on to describe the great variety of plants complete with fruit trees, shrubs, flowers, vegetables, and beehives, stating that though it was on a slope, there was no problem of erosion because of the intertangled root systems; pests and diseases were checked because individuals of the same plant species were separated by other plants; and there was high efficiency in terms of production per pound of vegetables and fruits per man-hour per square foot. In terms of American or European equivalents the garden was a vegetable garden, a medical garden, a dump heap, a compost heap, and a bee yard.

The biodynamic, French intensive method of gardening as taught by Alan Chadwick has reintroduced such high energy gardening into the temperate latitudes.

Since other books have been written on the subject, only a partial listing of companions is made here. These were gathered by observant gardeners and gleaned from tradition.

Seeds

Good huswives in summer will save their owne seeds
Against the next year, or occasion needs:
One see for another, to make an exchange,
With fellowly neighbourhood, seemeth not strange.

Thomas Tusser, Five Hundreth Points of Good Husbandry, 1573

Now sets do ask watering, with pot or with dish,
New sown do not so, if ye do as I wish:
Through cunning with dibble, rake mattock and spade,
By line, and by level, trim garden is made.

Thomas Tusser, 1573

In many instances, it is worth one's while to raise one's own seeds. At the cost of seed in inflationary times, it saves money; but it also brings one closer to an appreciation of the mystery of life as the plant moves into and out of manifestation in continuous rhythms. It is still a miracle how the tiny seed, this little round microcosm, can become the focal point of the forces that build up the stately plant. Some seeds are easy to save, while others are tricky, requiring much skill and patience. Like keeping bees, it is something for which one must almost have a special predilection.

Plants

In order to appreciate fully the reasons for various bio-dynamic practices we have to build up a rather more vivid concept of plants than is customary in conventional thought. They are usually regarded as mechanisms subject only to the same laws as hold good in a physics or chemistry laboratory or in the working of a machine. People seem to be so dazzled by the brilliance of the research into such things as the genetic code and single cell metabolism and by the ideas put forward to explain them, that certain vital more holistic aspects have been overlooked. Each new discovery, though it may appear to provide an answer to a question, more often than not poses further questions. The frontier of the unknown may be pushed back a little, but it remains as impenetrable as ever. Although the processes of growth, reproduction and decay are all deemed to be controlled by various communication networks which switch genes on and off, one is still left with the old Latin conundrum, Quis custodiet ipsos custodies? (Who is there to control the controllers?). Who or what is there to read the genetic code and operate the switchboard?

Let us begin by comparing a rock or a crystal with a plant, and for the sake of simplicity we will take an annual plant—it is not too difficult to apply the same concepts to perennials or even to trees. To make the imagination more realistic we might choose at random a definite mineral, say quartz, and a definite plant, say a broad bean. On the one hand the quartz crystal gives us the strong impression that its shape, its beautiful form, has been imposed on it by influences coming from outside; it is a piece of finished work, and can only be changed by some external physical force. The form of the bean plant on the other hand, though just as beautiful in its own way, has quite a different quality; it is never precisely the same from one moment to another, and this continuous change arises from out of itself. What we see at any given time is like one frame of a long ciné film comprising a rhythmic pattern of development, fruition and decay. Even this pattern does not quite represent the whole broad bean which has connections with all past generations and also with the generations still to come. Instead of a static entity like the crystal, we have in the bean plant a centre or focus of highly organised activities. Together with a few of today's leading biologists, we are almost irresistibly led to postulate the supersensible presence of a body of organising formative forces: Rudolf Steiner called this the etheric body. Just as any separate piece of matter has a centre of gravity derived from the whole gravity field of the earth, so every living creature acquires an etheric body derived from the earth's etheric field; this has been described by H. Poppelbaum as a morphogenetic field and can be seen as the link between material manifestation and the higher spiritual worlds beyond. This whole complex of activity, this weaving, vibrant, pulsating essence as Rudolf Steiner put it, is the sphere in which homoeopathic remedies and substances in very high dilutions are effective.

The etheric body of an individual plant could perhaps be seen as the switchboard operator which earlier we failed to find. It interprets the general pattern of the particular plant and modifies or adapts it to fit into the individual niches in which single specimens are growing. It heals any wounds which may occur, and reacts in the most favourable way to any changes, physical or supersensible, earthly or cosmic, which may take place in the environment. The patterns themselves, the ciné films, have their home in the next spiritual plane above the etheric, usually known as the astral.

Continuing our imagination of the bean plant, let us now look at a plant as it stands with its roots reaching down into the earth, its leaves spread to receive the incoming cosmic stream, its flowers opening up to the heavens and to the insect world. Just as the roots merge almost imperceptibly into the soil, into the element earth and water, so leaves and blossoms with their continual interchange of substances can be thought of as merging with the elements air and fire (warmth). The former feel the pulse of the earth's rhythms, the latter connect with the influences of the starry world, with the circling paths of the planets. Selflessly each individual plant passes through time, performing its own special part as a member of the plant kingdom in the cosmic task of giving. Through photosynthesis plants remove carbon dioxide from the air and give out oxygen in its place for the benefit of the earth as a whole and for man and animal in particular. They give their substance in various forms for the nourishment of man and animal including the insects. Some give themselves as healers, some, as we shall shortly see, are there merely to help other plants growing near them. A few, like some rare human beings, create an atmosphere of wellbeing by their mere presence. But whatever people with electrical gadgets and boiling prawns may say, plants have no direct feelings of pleasure and pain like animals or men; they have no organs for such experiences. This does not imply that such experiments have been rigged, but just that they have been misinterpreted. In fact if one takes the concept of an etheric field as valid, it would be surprising if the instruments had not reacted under the circumstances described.

If different plants, say a wheat plant, a cabbage, a carrot and a bean, are grown close together so that the roots of each have access to the same soil conditions, if they are subsequently burnt and their ashes analysed chemically, it is quite remarkable how the proportions of the chemical elements in the various ashes are entirely different. Though the amounts will vary slightly according to the soil, the patterns are just as characteristic for each species as are the leaf and floral forms. A plant can select what it needs from the soil in which it is growing, always provided that its needs are there in the first place. There are, however, exceptions. On the one hand, if the soil solution has been affected by the application of soluble fertilisers, the plants may be forced to take up more of certain elements than they require, and their whole metabolism may then be so disrupted that they become sitting targets for pathogenic organisms. On the other hand, some species of plants have as their special function in Nature's household the collection of some one or other of the chemical elements out of the atmosphere. This phenomenon can be seen as a kind of depotentisation—the opposite of potentising—for it seems (contrary to current dogma) that we are surrounded by matter in what E. Lehrs calls its imponderable state, or in statu nascendi (in a state of becoming). That this is no idle fancy is demonstrated by the Spanish moss (Tillandsia usneoides) which grows on telegraph wires in South America out of all contact with the soil. It is vigorous and can be shown to have a full complement of all the major chemical elements together with a wide range of the trace elements. The quantities involved are so large that they could hardly have been absorbed from the sporadic rain which in any case has only the smallest trace of phosphate in it. The only explanation is that substance has been condensed out of the air. It is interesting to record that the opposite process has recently been proved experimentally: pine and pea seedlings have been shown to disperse into the air soil contaminants such as cadmium and zinc.

Experiments on somewhat similar lines were conducted in the former Soviet Union. They grew maize and a type of bean together in mixed stands. On some plots they persuaded the bean to fix a radioactive isotope of nitrogen, and by means of a Geiger counter they very soon found some of this nitrogen in the maize plants. On other plots they sprayed the maize foliage with radioactive phosphate and before long it had found its way into the beans. So it seems that plants not only draw nutrients out of the soil solution, but that they are also able to contribute to this solution for the benefit of plants of other species. Thus a pool of nutrients is created in the soil by the plants growing on it: if their species are diverse and well mixed, the pool will be rich; but in a monoculture or with incompatible species the pool will be nonexistent. These facts shed an interesting light on companion planting, and may also give us cause to revise our ideas about weeds: perhaps they are not so universally bad as is usually supposed.

From our picture of a plant standing between heaven and earth it is not surprising that sunlight, either direct or obscured by cloud, has a very strong influence on the way in which a plant develops its inherent qualities. Everybody knows how root crops stored in a dark cellar produce elongated, rather shapeless shoots and tiny leaves quite devoid of colour. This is of course an extreme case, but it does indicate how closely plant nature and light nature are interwoven. Some plant species, particularly those belonging to the lower orders such as ferns and mosses, are attuned to cool, shady conditions; but others requiring full sunlight will languish when shaded by taller companions. These facts will influence the planning of a garden and care needs to be taken that taller vegetables do not unduly restrict shorter neighbours; orientating the rows north and south will help to solve this difficulty.

Even more important for the growth of many annuals and perennials is the seasonal effect of longer and shorter days. Some plants need a long day before they can form flower buds, others must have short days. For instance, beetroot bolts if sown too early. Apart from the length of day there are other more subtle differences in the quality of the sun's light according to the constellation of the zodiac in which it is standing at any given time. It is at present difficult to specify these effects for practical planning, but they should always be borne in mind when trying to assess the reasons for unexpected phenomena. Perhaps it is something of this nature which renders groundsel and some other common weeds very susceptible to rust diseases after the middle of August. All this points to the desirability of sowing annual crops so that they mature in their proper season. We have so many plants at our disposal covering the whole year that it is rather unnecessary to try to grow any of them out of season; it is senseless to complain of lack of success, of pest and disease attacks, if one does attempt to do this.

Trees fall into a category rather different from annual and herbaceous plants. One feature, as Grohmann so clearly points out, is that the side shoots of an annual are arranged in a pattern determined by its phyllotaxis; the branches of a tree spring from the trunk in patterns quite unrelated to the succession of its leaves on the twigs. The forms created by the branches are characteristic of each individual species, a fact which can be noted with great interest in winter when the deciduous trees have shed their leaves. The whole development of trees takes place in their own special milieu of formative forces.

From an imaginative point of view it is possible to regard the trunks of trees with their main branches as raised mounds of soil, each leaf-bearing shoot and twig being a separate plantlet growing out of this enhanced kind of earth. This is not the place to go more deeply into the idea.

In any general account of plant life as seen from the bio-dynamic standpoint it is perhaps fitting to conclude with a description of Goethe's far-reaching observation, conducted over many years and brought to fruition in his Metamorphosis of Plants. He was inspired to this study when he asked himself the questions, How do we know that an object in front of our gaze is a plant? What are its essential characteristics? He felt that there must be some universal underlying pattern behind the form and development of every plant species. Contrary to the common practice of starting with the lowest type of plants from which the higher orders are supposed to have evolved, he took his stand at the outset on the higher flowering plants, and saw the lower orders as less successful strivings towards the higher goal. He eventually found the secret in the green leaf with a node at its base. He saw how in many plants the leaves develop from the shapeless cotyledons of the seed, gradually exhibiting their particular form and then withdrawing it as flowering approaches: buttercups and delphiniums are especially good for studying this phenomenon. In other plants the leaf shape is more or less constant from the start. After this display, or sometimes concurrent with it, the leaf forms contract and gather together to make the calyx for the flower. There is an expansion as the blooms open out followed by a contraction into the floral organs, anthers and ovaries; but the latter are in fact metamorphosed leaves. One example which led Goethe to this latter conclusion was the comparatively common sight of a small leaf appearing instead of an anther in the flower of a wild rose. After fertilisation another expansion occurs as the fruit and seeds begin to swell; but the carpels enclosing the seeds are again metamorphosed leaves, a fact which is often obvious when picking peas—the leaves look like pods.

Thus Goethe's archetypal plant arose in his mind's eye—expansion into leaf, contraction into flower bud, expansion into flower, contraction into floral organs, expansion into seed and fruit and a final contraction into the ripened seed. This Ur-plant is not to be seen as a physical primaeval ancestor from which the whole plant kingdom has descended, but is a fundamental pattern in the world beyond the senses, and into it there can flow an infinite number of forms and rhythms to produce different species in the physical world. In the lower plant orders parts of the pattern are omitted or coalesce. Rudolf Steiner developed this theme further to include the root, and glimpses of his adaptations are to be found throughout Agriculture. This theme has been extensively elaborated by G. Grohmann who has shown in what ways the lower plant orders—gymnosperms, ferns, mosses and so on—can be seen as less successful strivings towards a more perfect goal.

1 part dried blood
2 parts kieselguhr (diatomite, a form of organic silica)
3 parts clay
4 parts cowdung

Soft Fruit

Sufficient soft fruit for a small family, including jam and bottling, can be obtained from an area of 5 m by 7 m (15 ft by 20 ft). This would take a row of raspberries, three blackcurrants, three gooseberries and two or three red or white currants. Although an area of such a size is about the minimum for giving a complete range, it does allow for planting different varieties of each type to provide a succession for harvesting over a longer period. It should even be possible to fit in a blackberry and a loganberry or tayberry, which is more vigorous, on a framework along the side. Space permitting, any of these items can of course be increased to suit individual needs.

Land for planting soft fruit is prepared in the same way as for top fruit except that growing bushes in a green sward is not recommended. It will get the bushes off to a good start if a bulky green manure crop can be grown during the summer and then worked in during September before planting out in November. Holes are taken out in the same way as described for top fruit, but the operation may have to be delayed until after a green manure crop has had time to decompose. Raspberries will require a trench rather than holes. Do not put a lot of decomposing green material into the bottom of a hole or trench; it cannot develop into the right kind of humus at such a depth. Half a bucket of compost per hole is desirable, but it need not be fully rotted down; a double handful of bonemeal mixed with hoof and horn per hole is beneficial, and any available wood ash can be spread over the whole plot. It is perhaps worth mentioning here that some growers recommend planting bush fruit on raised beds or ridges: I have only slight experience of this practice, but on very heavy land it would be well worth trying. In this case a gently sloping ridge 120–150 cm (4–5 ft) wide will have to be constructed, giving a 23–30 cm (9–12 in) drop between crest and trough.

Mulching is undoubtedly the best after-treatment for all soft fruit throughout their lives: it solves the weed problem provided that all perennial weeds have been scrupulously removed during land preparation, and it provides a regular supply of worm food. Straw, if obtainable, is very good for this purpose, and can be supplemented with autumn leaves or half-rotted leaf mould from the previous year. It is best applied in the autumn so as to retain some of the summer warmth. Before putting on any mulch the remains of the last one are scratched into the top few centimetres of the soil and any compacted patches are loosened with a fork, always remembering that the fine feeding roots of all soft fruit are very close to the surface. Then spread a little compost, together with all the wood ashes and bonfire ash that can be collected. Finally, again before the mulch, spray with 500; if no bio-dynamic compost has been put on, pinches of the compost preparations should be added to the 500 before stirring. Another possibility is to mulch with deep litter from a poultry house. This must be applied in the late autumn when the roots are dormant, otherwise some raw nitrogenous substances may be taken up which will lead to overlush growth susceptible to diseases. If material for mulching is quite unobtainable, the plants will require more compost than would be used under a mulch; when put on in the spring it should be well ripened, but an autumn application should be less mature.

All soft fruits need plenty of potash. If the compost has been made with a good proportion of poultry or pig manure, the potash supply should be adequate; but cow manure or the average type of compost will have be supplemented. Wood ashes provide the best answer, but they must be kept dry: if left out in the rain after a fire, much of their potash will be lost by leaching. In a larger garden a patch of Russian comfrey can be grown and its potash-rich leaves can be used as a mulch. Even so it is unlikely that there will be enough to treat the whole plot every year and a system of rotational applications will have to be worked out. A foliar spray of comfrey jauche soon after fruitset can also help.

501 is sprayed ideally three times—when the flower buds are just beginning to appear, soon after the fruit has set and after harvest when the leaves are nourishing next year's buds. The second of these is the most important.

Raspberries

The normal life of a raspberry cane is three years. In the first year a small shoot is formed at the base of an earlier cane or from a point on a larger root, but it does not appear above the soil. In the second year the shoots develop into fully grown canes but do not flower. In the third year flower-bearing shoots grow out from the buds formed at the bases of the previous year's leaves. After bearing their crop these canes die and are replaced by the next generation. There are, however, varieties that fruit in the autumn on current season canes brought into growth by cutting back all except very young shoots in March; much of such fruit often fails to ripen properly. It is best to start a raspberry bed with bought-in plants which are certified as virus-free. Even if they have been maltreated with chemicals they will soon lose any hankering after them and will respond to bio-dynamic treatments. The bought plants will consist of a cane up to 60 cm (2 ft) long and should have at least one shoot 5–7.5 cm (2–3 in) long at the base where the roots come out. They are planted 38 cm (15 in) apart, so a dozen plants will occupy 5 m (15 ft) of row. If planting a double row do not be led astray by the usual text book advice to space the rows 150 cm (5 ft) apart; give them an extra 30 cm—it will make picking and other operations much more convenient. Planting is best done in the autumn but may be deferred until early spring. Take out a trench 45 cm (18 in) wide and 30 cm (12 in) deep and as usual keeping the top and subsoil separate. On a heavy soil fork over the bottom of the trench to break it up a little and help drainage. About six buckets of nearly rotted compost or well rotted manure will be needed for the 5 m (15 ft) trench, but it must not be put in below 15 cm (6 in). One kilo (2 lb) each of bonemeal and hoof and horn are also advisable. The trench is filled as for top fruit holes. The young plants must not be set too deep down in the trench; a good guide is to put them in so that not much more than 25 mm (1 in) of soil will cover the small young shoots.

The usual practice is then to fix training wires for the canes to prevent wind damage and to support the crop. Old telephone wire, if obtainable, is very good for this purpose. A stout post with its last 60 cm (2 ft) well creosoted is planted firmly at each end of the row and wires are stretched between them at 90, 120 and 150 cm (3,4 and 5 ft) above ground level. An intermediate less stout post will prove to be a good addition as 5 m (15 ft) is rather on the long side for keeping the wires reasonably taut. An alternative method is to dispense with wires altogether after the first two years. In this way a kind of hedge is developed, allowing more canes to grow out from each stool than is possible under a strict training programme. There will be a certain amount of mutual support without excessive overcrowding, but the outer canes will tend to droop when carrying a heavy crop.

After planting, the canes on the new plants are cut back to four buds: the leaves from these will help to nourish the sprouting shoots in their early stages, but any feeble attempts by these older buds to flower and fruit must be frustrated. In the second and future years the old canes are cut out as soon as harvesting is complete. At the same time young weaklings and any canes surplus to future requirements are removed, leaving four per stool. The temptation to leave more than four must be resisted because overcrowding on the wires is one of the main causes of mouldy fruit in damp weather. At this stage the new canes are loosely slid between the wires. When the buds begin to swell in the spring (February/March) tip back all the canes to a strong bud and fix them with two ties to the appropriate wires, leaving no growth much above the 150 cm (5 ft) wire. Buds at the tips, if not pruned back, do not bear the best fruit, so it is better to concentrate the plant sap into stronger growths. This job should not be done before bud swelling as there is a danger of frost damage and die-back.

There are several troubles to prevent or watch for. As mentioned above, raspberries may get infected by virus, the commonest being indicated by a bronzing and mottling of the leaves with a consequent deterioration in the size and quality of the fruit. These symptoms are unlikely to appear in a well established bio-dynamic garden, but the virus could be present or dormant in old stools on a recently acquired property. Early diagnosis is made difficult by the fact that the very young leaves of some varieties tend to have a bronze tinge. There is no proved cure for this trouble, either conventional or bio-dynamic. An infected row will have to be eradicated and another one started on a new site well away from the old one.

The raspberry beetle Byturus tomentosus can become a nuisance. It is a small pale brown creature which lays its eggs in the flowers, and the emerging larvae (maggots) eat their way into the fruit. The standard remedy is to spray the flowering shoots with derris two or three times during the season, but this can be very dangerous for bees unless the treatment is done in the evening when they have ceased working. This rather drastic remedy should never be used unless there has been serious damage in the previous year and unless the beetles have actually been seen. In any case, collect and burn any damaged fruit. The larvae pupate in the soil round the stools where they pass the winter, so it may be a good plan to work over the soil very gently two or three times during autumn and winter in the hope that robins will find the pupae.

In damp, dull weather the fruit may go mouldy due to attack by botrytis. If such conditions prevail when the fruit is setting, a preventative spray of equisetum (508) repeated at seven to ten day intervals will be a help, though it may not be 100 per cent effective. Other preventative measures will include the normal spray of 501, the avoidance of a spring application of any raw manure, and perhaps the waterglass treatment described below for gooseberries.

Gooseberries

Gooseberries are most conveniently grown on a leg—that is, with about 15 cm (6 in) of clear stem before any branches are allowed to grow. If purchased from a nursery two-year-old plants are to be preferred because the basic framework will have been formed by the nurseryman, and they will be easier than three-year-olds to establish under bio-dynamic conditions. It is not difficult, however, to strike cuttings from one's own bushes or from a friend's: the main point here is to cut out cleanly all buds below those which will eventually form the framework: any bits of buds on the part of the cutting below ground level will shoot all too easily and create a multi-stemmed bush very quickly.

Planting is done in the usual way during autumn in holes spaced 150 cm (5 ft) apart. A slightly raised bed may help to ward off mildew. After planting shorten the leading branches by about one third to an upward and outward facing bud. Subsequent pruning will consist of shortening the leaders and reducing side growths to two buds to form fruit spurs, the latter operation being done in July. After some years the leaders and spurs on the main branches may start to lose vigour: they can be cut out to a strong new shoot which will probably have been formed near the centre of the bush. Long-established bushes with a mass of shoots arising from the base should be drastically thinned, cutting out the oldest and weakest and leaving only a few strong growths. When pruning gooseberries the main point is to make picking as easy and painless as possible, so try to imagine what the bush will look like when carrying a heavy crop.

There are two common troubles. First is the sawfly (Nematus ribesii) whose larvae can defoliate a bush very quickly if given full rein. They are green and spotty, almost translucent, and their presence is soon betrayed by the little black specks of their excrement on the leaves below. They usually start on the young shoots on the lower centre part of the bush from mid-April onwards. Derris dust will deal with them, or they can be hand picked if caught at the earliest stage of their activity: if this batch is not tackled at once, a second more numerous generation will emerge three weeks later. The second trouble is mildew which starts as white spots on the developing fruit and soon covers them with a sort of grey felt which later spreads to the young shoots. This is a case where prevention is better than cure, for even regular spraying with 508 is not very effective once the mildew has become established. The first precaution is to ensure that the soil around the bushes is not compacted and that no raw or half rotted manure is used. Lime sulphur at the recommended dose sprayed when growth is starting and again a month later is said to give good protection, but some varieties are sulphur shy and the young leaves will be killed. Waterglass (sodium silicate) at a strength of 25 g (1 oz) per 4.5 litres (1 gal) seems to help but has not been proved over a long period: it is sprayed as for 508. At the same time a little of the solution at double strength is poured into small holes half a trowel deep and spaced 90 cm (3 ft) apart under the extremities of the outer branches. Slightly attacked fruit can be washed and cooked. Strangely enough mildew can be even more devastating in very dry weather than when it is wet.

Blackcurrants

Blackcurrants are planted in the same way as gooseberries. The planting distance may be as little as 120 cm (4 ft), but unless space saving is of prime importance 150 cm (5 ft) allows for greater ease of picking, weeding and cultivation. They are propagated by 20–25 cm (8–10 in) cuttings taken in autumn from young growth which has just shed its leaves, making sure that any rounded buds are taken off and burned. The lower buds are not removed as for gooseberries because plenty of growth from the base is desirable: they will have to remain in the bed for two years before planting out, and it will then be another year before a small crop can be expected. Bought-in plants will probably have three or four shoots on them: these are cut back to about four buds which will produce the fruiting stems for the following year. Most of the crop is borne on the young pale-coloured growths of the previous year. Any older black-coloured branches and stems will make some shoots during the growing season, but these are usually short and thin, and will not carry the best fruit. The object of management and pruning is to stimulate long, strong shoots at or near the base of the bush. This is achieved by pruning out all branches which have borne a crop right back to the base or to a strong shoot not less than 45 cm (18 in) long. Pruning is done as soon as the last currant has been picked, thus concentrating all the plant's energy into next year's crop. Mature bushes which have been allowed to retain a lot of old wood are best treated over two years, cutting half the old branches right back to leave only 7.5–10 cm (3–4 in) of stump from which strong shoots will spring in the following year.

Blackcurrants.

The demand on the plant for vigorous growth every year means that it will need more nitrogen than other soft fruit. This is given by compost or manure at up to two buckets per bush, applied in the autumn. First loosen any compacted patches with a fork and spray with preparation 500. Then, after spreading the manure, cover with a straw mulch. If the work has to be deferred till the spring, only fully ripened compost should be used. An alternative to the autumn compost/straw combination is deep litter from a poultry house, when available: it is spread 5 cm (2 in) deep around the bushes.

Apart from greenfly, the chief trouble with blackcurrants is likely to come from big bud. It is caused by tiny mites which enter the buds while they are still growing and cause them to develop into a larger spherical form instead of the normal smaller and more tapering shape. As soon as the buds begin to swell in the spring, the mites feed on the embryo flower stalks within and then migrate to other buds. The standard remedy is lime sulphur applied when the leaves are just opening and again later, but as with gooseberries some varieties do not like this treatment. With only a few bushes hand picking is quite possible at any time during late autumn or winter, but it is essential to go over the bushes two or three times because it is almost impossible to spot all the infected buds at the first picking. Burn the buds in an open tin over a hot wood fire, mix the white ash with fine sand and scatter it round the bushes, or else treat the ash like 501. This will not provide an immediate cure, but will help if repeated over three or four years.

The big bud mite is liable to carry the virus which causes a condition known as reversion: in other words the bushes revert to a wild state, bearing undersized fruit and small leaves with only three points instead of the usual five or more. There is no known remedy: infected bushes must be uprooted and burned and a fresh start made in a different part of the garden. When moving into an old garden it is advisable to inspect any old blackcurrant bushes very carefully for signs of this disease before deciding whether to keep them.

Red and White Currants

The treatment of both types is the same, so they are taken together: in fact it almost seems that originally one of them sprang from the other. Here again 150 cm (5 ft) spacing is to be preferred to 120 cm (4 ft). The fruit is borne on both old and young wood, so training and pruning are quite different from blackcurrants, in fact much the same as for gooseberries. Both are best grown on a leg with four well-spaced main branches from which strong outward-growing laterals are allowed to develop so as to fill out the bush without overcrowding it. Smaller and inward-growing laterals are cut back to three buds soon after harvest in order to promote the formation of fruit buds for the following year. If multi-stemmed plants are bought or inherited, they should be treated as if the leg had been buried and was forking at ground level. Only four or at most five main stems are needed, and all young shoots springing from the base are cut right back during autumn pruning when leaders and main laterals are shortened by a third. These currants are liable to get rather straggly with age, but this habit can be corrected by cutting the main branches back to a strong growth near the centre. Soil treatment and the use of 500 and 501 follow the same lines as for gooseberries.

The only fairly common trouble is due to aphis attack quite early in the season. The growing leaves develop small red patches which enlarge with the leaf, turning a dark crimson and distorting the normal shape. By the time the bulbous-looking blotches become obvious it is too late to do anything about them, but the damage is not very serious. It is not difficult to spot the trouble in its early stages, and a spray or dusting with derris, pyrethrum or nettle jauche should clear things up.

These currants, and gooseberries also, can be planted against a wall or fence and trained either as cordons at 30 cm (1 ft) apart or as fans at 75 cm (2 ft 6 in). This method is very convenient for netting and makes picking easier. An annual mulch of compost, manure or deep litter is given in the autumn with 500: this helps to retain moisture, but in a dry summer some irrigation may be necessary.

Blackberries, Loganberries and Tayberries

It is well worth growing at least one plant of each if the necessary space can be found. Each will require a 300 cm (10 ft) run of three or four training wires stretched between supporting posts. Propagation is simple. In September the tip of a young cane is pegged down to the soil and covered with a piece of slate or tile. By the end of November it will have developed a mass of roots and a small young shoot. The cane is cut at 60 cm (2 ft) from the young plant which is lifted and transferred to a well composted nursery bed for a year before being moved to its permanent position. At this stage the old piece of cane will have died, and there should be a strong shoot about 90 cm (3 ft) long with an embryo shoot at its base, just like a raspberry. This is what one gets if purchasing from a nursery. Planting is done in the usual way and the leading cane is taken back to about half a dozen buds. The new cane should attain several feet and will bear fruit in the following year. Cultural treatment in subsequent years is similar to that for other soft fruit.

Again like raspberries, the canes die after bearing a crop and must be cut back to the ground soon after harvest is over; but on some very vigorous blackberries only the ends and the side fruit-bearing branchlets die off and it is possible to keep the main cane for cropping in the second year. After three years or so quite large stools will have developed and they will produce a lot of young canes every season. With loganberries and tayberries, a way has to be found to prevent them interfering with the ripening crop. There are four possibilities.

Leave them alone and put up with the inconvenience: at least the young growth will give some protection from birds.
Train all bearing canes to one side of the stool and the young ones to the other, reversing in the following year, but this method does not make full use of the available space.
Bundle the young canes round a tall central pole as they grow—not at all easy.
Gently bend each young cane over to the left or right as appropriate when it has reached a length of about 120 cm (4 ft) and tie in bundles very loosely to the lowest training wire.

Methods 1 and 4 are the most practical.

After cutting out the old canes the young ones are spread loosely over the training wires where they will continue to grow. The final training is left until the leaves have dropped off in February or March. One, or at the most two, of the strongest canes are twined round each of the top three wires, giving a maximum of twelve canes per stool. Damaged and weak canes surplus to requirements are cut out at ground level, only one bud is left on any side shoots which may have arisen, and the ends of the trained canes are taken back to a strong bud near the supporting posts.

Blackberries are easier to deal with as they do not produce so many young canes from the base, and it is not so necessary to sort these out from those bearing the crop: four strong canes per stool will give a good crop because each flowering side branch carries much more fruit than on a loganberry or tayberry. Pruning and training are similar to loganberries and tayberries. Although varieties are mentioned in Appendix B, it is perhaps appropriate here to give a word of warning about Himalayan Giant. Its large fruit are of reasonable quality, but its thorns are particularly vicious and it produces canes of six metres (20 ft) or more which are very difficult to manage.

These fruits are susceptible to the raspberry beetle, and the same methods of dealing with it are applicable. In a wet year logans may suffer from botrytis mould which will be more damaging in crowded conditions—an argument against method 1 above. Again treat as for raspberries. Logans may also develop smutty nose, a trouble not mentioned in any text book. As the name implies, the pips at the ends of the fruit do not swell and generally become dark in colour. It is probably a physiological trouble brought on partly by the greed of the grower in leaving too many canes to fruit, and partly by a shortage of potash. The remedy is obvious.

Tayberries are the result of a cross similar to loganberries but are more vigorous and tolerant. The flavour is excellent. When very ripe, almost purple, they can be eaten as dessert but are particularly good for stewing, bottling or freezing. It is worth planting a few along a stretch of posts and wires if you can afford the space. Propagation is by pegging the tip of a young cane into the ground or a pot.

Strawberries

Strawberries fall into a category of their own, quite different from bush fruit. Their maximum useful life is only three years, or four under exceptionally good conditions. It is not advisable to replant in the same place after uprooting the worn-out plants, so some form of rotation is called for. Strawberries cannot conveniently be fitted into the vegetable rotation unless large quantities are needed and there is plenty of space: in such a case an extra plot would have to be incorporated and they would occupy one plot for four years, following root crops and followed by brassicas. A better arrangement is to devote part of the garden to strawberries and to divide it into three plots. One plot would carry them for two years, the other two being used for fertility building and odd vegetables such as sweet corn which do not fit easily into the main plan: salad crops could also be grown here. In the first year take runners (as described below) from any existing strong plants, or buy them in, certified virus-free, from a reliable source. Plant them out as soon as possible in late July or early August. Leave these to fruit a second year, and take runners from them then for the next planting. The plot which is to take them will have been sown the previous autumn with winter tares and rye to give a good bulk for digging in during the latter half of May. The green manure will be well decomposed for the runners in July, and could stand an intercrop of lettuce. It would be quite possible under this system to leave the original bed for a third year and postpone the planting of the next one, but the largest and finest berries are borne on maidens and two-year-old plants.

Although new strawberries may be planted at any time during late summer, autumn or even in the spring (in which case they must be disbudded), by far the best results are obtained from runners established in late July or early August. In order to get them ready in time the first ones from the strongest bearing plants are either pegged into the soil where they will not interfere with picking, or are pegged into 7.5 cm (3 in). pots filled with a rich compost mixture and sunk into the bed. In either case any growth beyond the pegged runner is regularly removed. In very dry weather the pots may need a little water from time to time. The object is to produce as early as possible vigorous runners which will continue to develop strongly well into the autumn after being planted out. Runners planted out in September or October (as is often done) do not get a chance to make a root system capable of nourishing more than a couple of bearing trusses in the following season. When planting out great care must be taken to spread the roots well and not too deeply, and to ensure that that the crown is firmly in position level with the soil surface.

Strawberries prefer a slightly acid soil, and for this reason pine needles are often recommended as a mulch to be applied in April or May before the first blossoms open. Pine needles are less attractive to slugs than the usual straw mulch, and their aroma improves the quality of the fruit. For plants which are to be retained a generous dressing of compost with a sprinkling of bonemeal or very well rotted manure is lightly worked into the soil with the remains of the mulch soon after harvest, but first remove all surplus runners and give a spray of 500. In this way the plants are enabled to build up good crowns for the following year: but on light soils liable to winter leaching the dressing is best deferred until the spring.

Apart from birds the main troubles are greenfly and botrytis mould. The greenfly start right in the hearts among the youngest leaves and are not always obvious to casual inspection: rather than hope for predators to arrive, it is better to deal with them at once with nettle jauche or derris squirted well into the crowns. Botrytis attack can be severe in dull, damp seasons. The normal 501 sprays at bud formation and first ripening will afford some protection, but it is best to supplement these with regular equisetum treatment at weekly intervals from fruit set if conditions appear to be adverse. In gardens where the trouble has appeared in the past irrespective of the weather, it is worth trying the waterglass treatment. In any event do not tempt the botrytis by leaving dead leaves and old fruit stalks on older plants: remove them in March, or April at the latest.

Strawberries should be planted and cultivated preferably on fruit days. In damp climates especially, and to discourage fungal attack, it is a good idea to plant them on slightly raised beds—two rows to a bed. It raises them a little above the fungi level of the soil and they are also easier to pick.

Birds

For soft fruit the question whether to net or not is a difficult one. On a commercial scale netting is not only impossible but is also quite unnecessary; in a small garden the percentage of fruit taken is likely to be very much larger. The one or two redcurrant bushes which are quite sufficient for the needs of a family must be netted, otherwise thrushes will strip the lot before they are fully ripe. Blackcurrants are not so tempting and a good crop can usually be obtained from unprotected bushes. Raspberries and logans are borderline; sometimes it seems that birds regard nets as a challenge to their ingenuity. If there are bullfinches around it may be necessary to protect gooseberries from their ravages between Christmas and Easter; it does not take a pair of them very long to take all the buds off a bush, leaving only those at the ends of the twigs. Apart from almost total loss of crop the bare twigs are useless for further bearing, and the bush will have to be pruned down to a skeleton. A small patch of strawberries is extremely vulnerable and must be netted unless the plants are under cloches.

One solution to the problem is to have a fruit cage. The old-fashioned type, small mesh wire netting stapled to a stout timber framework, is now prohibitively expensive to erect and maintain; but synthetic fibre netting on a frame of interlocking aluminium rods is well worth consideration. It must, however, be remembered that it is essential to remove at least the top net during the offseason, both to allow access to birds looking for insects and to avoid heavy accumulations of snow which may bend the frame, rupture the net and break the fruit bushes.

The Garden Calendar

The gardener who imagines that his work can be reduced to a set of rules and formulae, followed and applied according to special days marked on the calendar, is but preparing himself for a double disappointment. Few things are so certain to be uncertain as the seasons and the weather; and these, rather than a set of dates, even for a single locality, form the signs, which the real gardener follows. That is the great trouble with much book and magazine gardening.

Frederick Frye Rockwell, Around the Year in the Garden, 1917

The seasons express themselves differently in the diverse locations and altitudes of the country. Most garden books and almanacs have general information that is fairly safe to follow. The monthly indications given in the Organic Farming magazine, the Calendar of Organic Gardening, and the voluminous Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening (all put out by the staff of Rodale Books) divide the United States into general climatic zones, giving hints for month by month gardening activity.

The gardening calendar discussed here is based on data collected locally in the Rogue River Valley Area. Other parts of the country will have similar, but not exactly the same seasonal distributions. The frost free date in spring, the first frost in the fall, the thaw out after a winter freeze, the length of the growing season, the average yearly temperatures, the relative amount of cloud cover and rainy days compared to sunny days, each of these factors will be different from location to location. It is best to ask the old-timers in areas where one is a newcomer.

In Southern Oregon the year divides into a dry, sunny, warm season that lasts from the end of May into October and a cool, rainy, cloudy season that starts with the protective fogs in November and lasts on and off until May. The sunny season is ushered in by frog concerts and a parade of the most beautiful spring flowers. As the summer proceeds, it gets progressively drier. As madrone (Arbutus) and manzanita shed their bark and previous year's leaves, the woods are alive with the metallic rustle of locusts and desiccated foliage. Thunderstorms are rare and do not bring the relieving moisture as in the Midwest, for example. The cold, rainy season, coinciding with the half of the year when the moon makes a higher arch in the heavens than the sun, brings an abundance of lunar vegetation, including many mushrooms that are a gourmet's delight (boletus, milky caps, russula, coral mushroom, puff balls, as well as hallucinogenic psilocybin mushrooms) and lichens and algae that coat the oaks in their winter garments. There is an echo of early spring when the rains start, with grasses, chickweed, miner's lettuce, and dandelions turning green and lush until frost nips them.

There is never the long, hard freeze and continuous blanket of snow that makes it impossible to dig in the ground in the winter as in other parts of the country. In February, as the days noticeably lengthen, it is already possible to put in the first crops (peas, snow peas, broad beans, arugula or garden rocket, spinach, onions). Yet the frost-free date is still a long way off. As long as the white shimmer of snow stays on the mountains, it is not safe to put out summer crops. Many a newcomer has been fooled by the mild weather interspersed with rain lasting from February to April and May, putting summer crops in, only to see the tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, beans, and squash limp and black after a frost has passed in the early morning. Frosts lasting to the end of May and into June make gardening tricky in this region, and the dry conditions of July, August, and September make it ever more difficult. It is no wonder that the native tribes, such as the Takelma or Klamath, preferred hunting and gathering to horticulture, for they could not make use of such techniques as irrigation, sprinkling, or setting up protective plastic tents. Native Americans in the more hospitable Midwest, East, and Southeast were, on the contrary, master horticulturists.

In the spring, raised beds help to warm and drain the soil more quickly. The winter cover crops (legume-grain combination) will have gotten high enough by February and March that they can be turned in and still have plenty of time to rot and feed the earthworms before the summer crops go in. After midsummer solstice, it is important to concentrate on watering and mulching to cut down water evaporation. Usually the fall weather is mild and lasts a long time, so that it is easy for the winter garden to get a good start.

The following is a month-by-month description of how the gardening year might proceed in the Rogue Valley area:

January

January: Prune fruit trees and berries in late January. Feed your bird friends with wild birdseed mixes and include suet for the hairy woodpeckers and chickadees. Build bird shelters.1 It is a good time to visualize the garden in one's minds eye, to plan the year's garden crops and rotations, to read garden books and catalogues, and to order whatever seeds one might need.

February

February: On drier days in February one can prepare the double-dug beds for sowing the first crops. Toward the end of the month, fava (or broad) beans, snow peas, pod peas, corn salad (or lamb's salad), onions, shallots, garden cress, and radishes should be already sown. Local gardeners pick George Washington's birthday (February 22) as the day to sow peas. Pea beds can be interplanted with early lettuce, spinach, and radishes, with the tall peas on the north or west side of the bed and the short peas on the south side of the bed for better light utilization. The peas and fava beans should be inoculated with nitrogen-fixing bacteria spores.

These new plantings can be protected from frost by stretching clear plastic tents over them. A frame of PVC pipe can support these tents, which is the cheapest material to use. Care must be taken to air the tents out regularly in order to prevent mildew, to uncover them when the sun is shining to prevent cooking the seedlings, and to cover them over on cold, clear nights. If it gets really cold, an extra layer of plastic, blankets, or even straw can be placed over the tent. Milk jugs filled with hot water can be put under the tent; water gives off its warmth slowly enough to prevent freezing.

The winter cover crops can be turned over and left to rot. Root crops that are still in the ground from the previous season (carrots, oyster plant, beets, Hamburg parsley, parsnips, celeriac) are imperceptibly getting ready for new sap flow in their biennial cycle, and can be removed to a cool root cellar to delay their growing and getting stringy and tough too soon.

March

March: In early and mid-March the following plants can be sown into carefully prepared soil of the cold frame: summer cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, collards, and other members of the cabbage family; lettuce, Swiss chard, onions, leeks, celery, celeriac, and endive. The cold frame, composed of a sifted mixture of good soil (one part peat, one part sand, one part ripe Stage III compost, and two parts good garden loam) is framed with boards and has a lid made from storm windows or stretched plastic. Most gardening books give directions how to build such a frame.3 Into this cold frame the seeds are sown into little patches of one or two square feet; later, when the seedlings are big enough they are transplanted. The seedlings need good care after they germinate. They must be watered, weeded, and thinned so that they do not crowd each other. A light shower with horsetail-chamomile tea once a week is recommended to keep the seedlings from dampening off. The cover should be closed at night and lifted slightly during the day, in order to let the air circulate and keep the leaves dry. Like all the umbelliferae, celery and celeriac take a long time to germinate (three weeks), so patient weeding and gentle watering of the soil are necessary. Celeriac seeds are so small that mixing the seed with fine sand is recommended before sowing so that the seeds will be spaced more evenly.

From mid-March toward the end of March, oyster plant, dandelion, garden orache, beets, carrots, kohlrabi, mustard, parsley, Hamburg parsley, parsnips, turnips, and rutabagas can be sown out directly into the garden. Slow-germinating carrots can have a few lettuce or radish seeds mixed in to mark the rows. The row distances vary; most seed packets and garden books give recommendations and directions. The rows should be spaced wide enough to be able to cultivate with a thrust-hoe or a draw-hoe (pendulum hoe). It is recommended that the bed is worked two weeks before sowing, so that weed seeds will have had ample time to sprout and can consequently be destroyed by hoeing and raking. After sowing the rows, the beds must be hoed between the rows to prevent the soil from crusting, to facilitate carbon-dioxide/oxygen exchange, to stop the capillary movement of water molecules upward to the soil surface where evaporation takes place, and to keep weeds from overtaking the crop plants. This is done regularly, but especially after rain or watering.

In March one can still put out more peas, corn salad, onions, and spinach and also sow asparagus for later transplanting. March is also the time during which potatoes can be put into the ground. St. Patrick's Day, in honor of the patron saint of the Irish whose fate is so tied up with this tuber, is a good time to plant the potato, providing the moon is in a good position. The potato, a very lunar plant, is best planted near apogee and in the earth sign of Taurus. Scorpio and Cancer do not make for good potatoes. Like legumes, they can be planted in the new moon.

Like most staples, such as rice and corn, the potato is surrounded by magic and ritual.4 It seems that almost every gardener has his own procedure as to how best to grow potatoes. Some swear by mulch, some by hills, some by planting them in tires, but in any case, an old saying goes that the dumbest farmer has the largest spuds, meaning that gut feeling is just as important as intellectual acuity. The method, which works for me, involves the following steps:

The soil is fertilized with well-rotted manure or old compost (Stage III) and a light dressing of wood ashes; ideally one could also add a spraying the biodynamic preparation 500, the horn dung preparation.
The seed potatoes are laid in a box onto the windowsill for a week to green out.
On the day of planting, they are cut into sections containing an eye each (each eye forms a new plant). These sections are dipped in pure hardwood ashes to cauterize the fresh cut and to provide them with the potassium they like.
The cuttings are then laid in rows two feet apart, at a distance of a foot and half within each row.
The soil is raked over the rows, forming a ridge. As soon as the first leaves appear, more soil is raked over the ridges, leaving just the top leaves exposed.
In the summer, the potatoes are heavily mulched.
As soon as the potato plants flower the first tubers can be dug up for eating (late June).
When the foliage finally dies back in September, the field can be cleared and the potatoes stored in the cellar.

At the end of March, toward the beginning of April, if there is no greenhouse available, a hot bed can be put in for growing the seedlings of tomatoes, tomatillos, peppers, eggplant, okra, New Zealand spinach, Malabar spinach, cucumbers, and squash. The hot bed is made by digging a bed three or four feet wide, to a depth of three feet. Two feet of fresh horse manure is packed in and soaked with liquid manure, animal urine, slurry, or sludge. A five-inch layer of peat moss covers the manure to absorb ammonia and methane, which might otherwise escape and injure the young seedlings. A foot of good garden loam, a mixture similar to that which is used for the cold frame, is put on top. Into this good soil the seeds for the warmth-loving summer crops are sown. The sides are boarded up and glass or a stretched plastic cover is put over the seedbed at an angle toward the south exposure to catch and collect the sun's warmth. In this way the seedbed will be heated from above and below. The horse manure mixture heats steadily and gently for about six weeks, a fact made use of by alchemists who cooked their concoctions in horse manure.5 All the rules relating to the cold frame must be observed here, too: gentle watering with slightly warmed water, careful weeding, thinning to space the seedlings, airing the bed, and covering during cold nights. A system like this demands constant, daily attention, but it will be much cheaper than buying pony packs at a store or nursery, and it will give good, hardy seedlings, which can be set out after the frost free date has passed. The squash, zucchini, and cucumbers, if they are grown in the hot bed, should be placed into peat pots. Later each peat pot, with the young plant in it, is planted directly into the soil; this makes the transplanting less traumatic for these sensitive plants.

Also during the month of March, certain perennials such as asparagus, horseradish, pokeweed, rhubarb, Jerusalem artichoke, and comfrey can be planted in permanent beds along with hardy herbs such as nettle, chives, lavender, sage, hyssop, and others. Chamomile can be sown at this time in slightly alkaline soil, preferably into the garden paths. Chamomile, like its relative the pineapple weed, does not mind being trampled on.

April

April: In April much of the work started in March continues. More sowings of hardy plants can be made. The cold frame and hot bed need special care, as do the composts. Easter season, determined by the full moon after equinox, is known to be the most fertile time of the year, when the land is greening with astonishing vitality. Some old-timers put in special Good Friday gardens.

May

May: Very hardy plants such as cabbages, broccoli, cauliflower, endives, lettuce, Swiss chard, and leeks can be planted out a couple of weeks before the frost-free date. Toward the end of May, one should be eating some snow peas, pod peas, perhaps some fava beans, plus spinach, nettle, lettuce, green onions, cress, and radishes. After the frost-free date, the warm weather plants can be put in their beds.

June

June: By now, as midsummer, or St. John's tide, approaches, forces of light and warmth streaming in from the cosmos make it possible to put out more of the warmth-loving plants. Transplanted from the hot bed into the regular garden beds are tomatoes, okra, New Zealand spinach, Malabar spinach, eggplants, peppers, ground cherries, tomatillos, cucumbers, and squash. At first it might be a good idea not to mulch so that the ground can warm up some more, but later, mulching is essential. At this time the celeriac needs to be planted out; any earlier would not endanger its survival, but would adversely affect its tuber-forming ability. Tender herbs such as basil, savory, marjoram, rosemary, and nasturtium are sown out at this time.6 Beans, corn, and summer lettuce can be sown directly into the ground. The early pea and spinach beds can be cleaned out now, making more room for the summer plantings. Strawberries should be thinned and mulched now, and the runners transplanted to a new bed. It is also high time to stop cutting rhubarb and asparagus so that they will have a chance to acquire strength for the next year.

July

July: Mulching and correct watering is the main concern now. Tomatoes should be trained up stakes so that the fruits will not rot on the ground. The suckers should be snapped off so that most of the energy of the tomato plant goes into the main shoot and the fruits. Similarly, cucumbers should be trained up chicken wire fences so that they do not sprawl all over the ground and can be picked without moving the vines when they get ripe; usually it is because the vines have been moved that the cucumbers become bitter.

The cold frame is needed again by the end of this month to sow out fall cabbage, cauliflower, kale, Brussels sprouts, broccoli, sugar hat, lettuce, and endives. These seedbeds must be kept moist and shaded by lattice, burlap, or cheesecloth.

For more winter vegetables, carrots, turnips, kohlrabi, rutabagas, Chinese cabbage, Hamburg parsley, and beets can be sown in any beds that are still unoccupied. A more shaded location, good humus, sufficient moisture, and special care might alleviate some of the problems of seed germination at this time of year. Often it is necessary to re-sow these rows because of poor germination.

Melons must be thinned to keep them from crowding each other. Zucchini and cucumbers must be harvested continuously in order for them to keep producing. Now is also the time to sow out Florence fennel, so that it will grow the big, bulbous leaf bases that make delicious fall and early winter eating.

Auguts

August: The July work continues in August. By mid-August the seedlings in the cold frame can be planted out into the fields. These plants must receive a scoop of good compost and be watered and mulched immediately. This is the time to cut and dry many of the herbs, just before they bloom. (Except the ones from which the flowers are used, such as chamomile, mugwort, or calendula, for example.) The best plants can be marked for saving for seed. By now, an abundance of fresh food will bless the gardener.

September

September: There is still time to plant sugarloaf (witloof) salad, endives, corn salad, and spinach for fall and winter. Cover crops can be sown out wherever there is room. Putting them in at this time of year insures good, lush growth before the days get too cold and the birds, still having plenty of other food to eat, will not be so tempted to scratch up the seeds. Garlic cloves can be put in. Most of the other work consists of harvesting the summer crops, this being the time most traditional harvest festivals were celebrated.

October

October, November: With the passing of fall equinox, or Michaelmas, the jungle-like profusion that characterized the summer garden is gone. Jack Frost and other such elemental beings might be appearing soon, so it is wise to get one's plastic tents ready to put up in case of a cold night. Sprays from valerian flowers or from the roots of the Japanese knotweed can be used on tomatoes and bell peppers to extend their frost hardiness. Jerusalem artichokes, having finished blooming, are now ready to harvest, but can be harvested throughout the winter right from the ground, unless the winter is exceptionally cold and there is a risk they will freeze. Toward the end of November, it is advisable to put leaf and straw mulch over the winter crops that stay in the garden soil to protect them from later frosts and light freezing. Strawberries, asparagus, and rhubarb rows are now mulched with old, rotted manure. As the beds are cleared and leaves raked up, composts are built that last through the winter. These composts are fed during the winter with kitchen wastes and various manures. They should be sufficiently humified for use by the time spring comes around.

December

December: This is a good time to relax, eat pumpkin pie, and count one's blessings. The compost should be watched so that the rains do not leach them out. The twelve days of Christmas, from Christmas to Epiphany, used to be taken as oracles for the coming year; each day represents the consecutive months of the year. How the weather and the moods are on each day is an oracle of what is to come.

This cursory description of the gardening year is by no means complete. Each landscape, each farm-garden organism, as well as each year has its own particular character. Some years this or that crop will do very well, and another year rather poorly. Each year has a distinct weather pattern and the kinds of bugs, birds, or weeds will be slightly altered. There can be no exact how-to-do-it manual, as in mechanical sciences.

In the winter months when the garden rests within the mind of the gardener, as well as within the form-giving forces of the cosmos, we can awaken the intuitive sense and pictures of imagination that are as important in gardening as the tools and the practical manuals are. We can let the coming year pass before the mind's eye and, while looking back on the store of experience of past years, plan the manifestation of the garden in its next season.

Teas, Preparations, and Biotic Substances*

Gardening Tools

While the technology of intensive gardening is simple, the techniques are sophisticated. The opposite can be said of an agriculture, which is dependent upon complicated and expensive machinery and chemicals, but simplifies the technique to the point of creating boring, alienating work routines and at the same time harmfully simplifies the ecology (monocultures, destruction of a wide range of fauna and flora).

The tools of gardening are ancient, not having changed substantially since the early Neolithic, when the first crops were deliberately planted and sowed. Even then the digging stick used as an all purpose tool for furrowing the ground for seeding, poking the ground for planting, weeding, and eventually harvesting tubers had a precursor in the ancient dibble stick with a fire-hardened tip, as used by Mesolithic hunters and gatherers as an extension of their fingers. The digging fork, spade, trowel, and eventually the plow derived from this ancient simple tool. The hoe, too, is an ancient tool found in nearly all horticultural societies, used for weeding, cultivating, aerating, and dry mulching the soil. Shells, bones, flat stones, and deer scapulae preceded the use of metal in the making of hoes. Rakes for smoothening the beds (and later harrows derived from the same principle) and blades (sickles, scythes, and knives) for harvesting and pruning are nearly as ancient and universal for gardeners and still make up the core technology of intensive horticulture.