Homestead mailing list

[Bill Jones <billj AT harborside.com>]

Someone wrote:

> The guy I used to buy my popcorn from has told me that is his 
> definition of biodynamic. Nothing imported. He raises cattle and many 
> different crops, and has an essentially closed loop except for the sun 
> and rain coming in and the popcorn and beef going out.

I've been involved with BD people for many years.  It's really more a 
religion than a science.  The first hint is that you have to believe in 
the preparations for them to work for you.  When you suggest a 
scientific explanation, you're treated with amusement and distrust, and 
reminded that it's really the astrological forces and the 
transdimensional beings who create the phosphorus for your garden.

But many do in fact use a variety of rock powders, lime at the very 
least, and they were indeed my original inspiration to seek out 
colemanite (insoluble calcium borate).  I notice that within a decade of 
my first online mention of colemanite (ironically named), it's now 
become the latest new thing in the world of organics, but it's cheaper 
at the pottery supply.  BD people also use granite dust, and my friends 
here in town use phosphate rock.  By far the best way to use these 
(except lime, which needs no help to become available) is to sprinkle an 
admixture on each layer of a compost pile, so that bacterial activity 
can liberate the minerals.  My own favorite for potting mix is powdered 
hi-potash feldspar (also available from a pottery supply store).

The BD people have latched onto certain myths based loosely on science, 
much as some movie writer once found the words "force field" in a 
graduate physics text and used them to create a fictional construct.  
For instance, it's well known that earthworms process phosphate rock 
into more soluble forms of P in their intestines; BD teaches that living 
organisms actually transform silicon into phosphorus.  But no one has 
yet exhibited a closed earthworm terrarium that ended up with more P 
than it started with, so the basic principle of science --that no 
element changes into another except through radioactivity or inside 
stars-- remains unchallenged.

But in reality the BD farms' soil in most places will have plenty of 
reserves of P and K, which only need to liberated by buckwheat and 
earthworms and other soil life, so the illusion that you can continue to 
remove large quantities of elements (other than the 4 free ones, CHON) 
indefinitely could be maintained for decades, with apparent success, and 
still be quite wrong.

It's interesting to think about some of the neat processes which might 
bring nutrients back to your soil.  Lovelace showed that large amounts 
of iodine are reintroduced to the land through bacterial release of 
methyl iodide in the oceans, which rains back down upon the land, where 
thankfully, other bacteria which had no real use for the iodine on their 
own nevertheless hoard the iodine, and it eventually becomes available 
to animals.  Nature can only do this so fast, but now we just haul it 
out of the oceans by the ton, in seaweed.

An organic farm is such a nice place, compared to a city or a sprayed 
farm, or a place where kids are constantly shooting birds and killing 
bees, that butterflies and all sorts of life are drawn to it.  Maybe 
this is another way that nutrients come back to the farm.

Fortunately those who are only looking to grow food for their families 
need not wonder about these things, since our nutrients will all be 
destined to be recycled, when the day comes when we must (of neccesity) 
become a closed system.  Another good way to ensure that nutrients 
aren't leached away is to plant pasture or cover crops and shrubs for 
coppicing, downwill from the garden, so that the runoff can be absorbed 
and kept in the system.  I'm lucky that my land is sloped just right for 
that.

If you're looking for a practical way to fertilize, there are still 
better and worse fertilizers.  It's better if they don't contain large 
quantities of sulfates or chlorides.  It's cheaper to fertilize with 
alfalfa pellets that have been soaked in water than to buy chemical 
fertilizers.  I also use potash-enriched peat moss which is just peat 
moss soaked and allowed to stand in a solution of potassium carbonate 
(wine pH-neutralizer available from brewery supply; wood ash tea is the 
same thing).  And I use a mixture of all those rock powders, including 
some others.  It's a good idea to dig these things into the soil some.  
So far I've been really happy with this approach, but I still make as 
much compost as I can as well.  It gives the same basic advantages as 
having the luxury to garden with pure compost affords.  You only need to 
apply fertilizer once in the beginning, the nutrients are released 
slowly, there are no missing trace minerals, and the soil seems improved 
afterward.

Bill
S. Oregon coast