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  • From: "Allan.Balliett" <allan.balliett AT gmail.com>
  • To: Market Farming <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [Market-farming] Biodynamic Planting Calendars
  • Date: Thu, 28 Jan 2010 20:56:46 -0500

Thanks for the interest in the biodynamic planting calendar. Once you know what STELLA NATURA looks like, you'll start noticing it hanging on walls of sheds or greenhouses of experienced farmers. Lots of people have learned its value, even if they are not biodynamic. (I should insert here though that celestial influences are far more evident in soils that are biologically active.)

Here are just a few ideas about the calendar. Ask me any questions you have. I'm just throwing this out in the time I have.


The most popular North American Biodynamic Planting Calendar is the Stella Natura.

Stella Natura has its own web page now at http://www.stellanatura.com

A lot of the ideas behind the calendar are presented there.

Here's a nice quote from those pages:

Steiner (found of biodynamic farming) pointed to the cosmic influences from the sun, moon, planets and stars as important factors to work with in agriculture. Then he challenged his listeners to develop a new science of timing for seed sowing to replace the old proverbs. Considerable research has been done, notably by German biodynamic farmer Maria Thun since the early 1950s, and the Stella Natura charts largely reflect her observations and conclusions.



The biodynamic planting calendars are not simple lunar calendars. They are celestial calendars, quantifying the celestial influences on the plants at a given moment in time.

For those of you who do not think there are 'celestial influences on plants,' consider the sun and the influence it has on plant growth.

Consider how tonight, right now, here in WV, on the full moon, you can read a newspaper by the moonlight. On some nights, you can almost do that with the star light.

It's easy to forget that star light 'falls' on the earth all day long.

So, if we agree that the sun can have such influence on plant growth from 93,000,000 miles away, how can we assume that star light, which is direct light or reflected sunlight from the moon or the planets will not also have an affect, possibly negative, on plant processes?

And if you agree with me on this, is it not possible that there are waves other than light that are emitted by or reflected to Earth by, heavenly bodies? And is it not possible that these wave also have positive or, possibly, negative affects on plant processes?

It may be none of these things, but, in my experience, things go better when I use the planting calendar.

You can get free access to some of the information in the major North American Planting Calendar at

http://www.astrologie-info.com/mocal.cgi?language=eng&sidtrop=sid

This is a pretty coarse collection of info. Especially if you are just beginning to use a biodynamic planting calendar, you may want something more developed than this web page is.

The published calendars are a lot easier to use.

I prefer to use the North American version of Maria Thuns "2010 North American Biodynamic Sowing and Planting Calendar"
. It's called STELLA NATURA. You can buy it and Maria Thun's calendar at ACRES USA www.acresusa.com

Maria Thun's annual calendar is harder to use than the Stella Natura (which is laid out like a regular wall calendar) but it always carries examples of Maria Thuns experiments with plantings. In it you will be able to see things like photos of arrays of root vegetables with the same genetics but planted on different days and how differently they grew. Thun has been doing these experiments for decades now and has a very strong case for the importance of knowing what's going on in the heavens before you work with the Earth.

I use both the Stella and Thun's calendar because Thun's calendar explains in detail what's simply indicated by symbols in the stella natura.

I know that many reading this list assume that biodynamic farmers are rigidly bound by the calendar. The Stella pages do a good job of explaining how the calendar is just one tool an aware farmer uses in making a judgement on when to plant, cultivate, harvest, etc.

As a famous biodynamic farmer said to me at the begining of a conference back when I was just learning biodynamics "Sure, Allan, we ue the calendar on our farm WHEN WE HAVE THE TIME." And everyone laughed. Nowadays, I only know too well why they laughed. ;-)





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