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What is Biodynamics?
 Biodynamics is the oldest form of organic
practice. As well as good organic methods
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Biodynamic gardens aim to become self-sufficient in compost
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and
to use local, organic/biodynamic manure
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The
land is improved using a manure-based preparation
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Crop
quality is improved using natural silica based preparations.
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Compost is treated with special herb-based preparations.
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All
external inputs are kept to a minimum.
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Ecological diversity is a goal of landscape management.
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An
astronomical calendar is used to determine appropriate, planting, cultivating
and harvesting times.
In the last hundred years, there have been
several major developments on the land that seem to go hand in hand …
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the increasing mechanisation of agriculture
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the sense that nature is becoming degraded and losing its vitality
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the pollution of the environment
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the signs of illness in trees and
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violent changes in the weather
How it began ...
It was concern about the worrying
trends developing in agriculture that led farmers to ask
Rudolf Steiner to give
his ‘Agriculture’ lectures in 1924, on which the biodynamic agricultural
movement is founded. It seems nothing is new. Biodynamics has a holistic
world-view that sees the influence of planetary rhythms on the growth of plants
and animals as of equal importance to a purely chemical analysis. This resulted
in the series of eight lectures Steiner gave at the house of his friend Count
Keiserling. Steiner’s lectures began a movement which …
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recognises a spiritual dimension to gardening which affects the
growth and health of the plants
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enlarges the basis of science to include what is beyond the
normally sense-perceptible.
The following quote from
Laverstoke Park is a simple way of talking about what biodynamics does in
farming ...
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In essence: Healthy soil = healthy
grass = healthy animals = healthy meat and milk = healthy people
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and conversely: Unhealthy soil =
unhealthy grass = unhealthy animals = unhealthy meat and milk = unhealthy
people.
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