Subtle Energies in a Montana Greenhouse by Woody Wodraska Tree of Life Rejuvenation Center (1) In some 20 years as a gardener I have worked in greenhouses in Pennsylvania, Florida, Oregon, Illinois, Minnesota--but never have I seen plants flourish in a Spring greenhouse as they did in the B Bar Ranch greenhouse in Montana this year. At 6,800 feet elevation and 45 degrees North latitude, Winter temperatures linger. The gardener can scarcely step a digging fork into the soil until late April. The greenhouse becomes a place of refuge and the embodiment of his/her burgeoning dreams of growth. This greenhouse--a leaky, cobbled-together, 75 by 18 foot double-layer polyfilm hoop house with a propane heater--was my warm place of retreat after a long, brutal Montana Winter. The term "Subtle Energies" in the title of this piece refers to three major things: * The Biodynamic preparations, herbal compounds traditionally used by Biodynamic farmers and gardeners on soil, compost, and plants as I did also in the B Bar greenhouse, and again as seed soaks--not quite a customary application, but one that deserves much more attention; * The Flowforms (2)--sculptural waterforms whose vortices potentized all of the preparations applied in the greenhouse; their overall contribution to the ambiance of the place was wonderful; * Agnihotra (3). Here you may have to stretch yourself a little bit. Agnihotra is an ancient Ayurvedic sunrise and sunset ritual, a healing, purifying ceremony, both for those who perform it and for the local and Planetary atmosphere. Why No Controlled Study? I have what I hope is a healthy skepticism about the scientific method and the way it is conducted in the real world. I was trained as a scientist--in psychology, not agriculture--and early on saw that such an experimental mindset wasn't my forte. If someone else wishes to validate these greenhouse energies in a proper scientific manner, I'd welcome his or her efforts. But the methods of science seem to me to be an exceedingly coarse net to catch the elusive fish of truth. More important, though, is this point. If I, as a Bio- Dynamic practitioner with a market to serve, a job to do, believe in my best judgment that a particular practice will result in better yield, or healthier crops, or enhanced soil life--if my intuition, experience, and judgment tells me something is worth a try...why wouldn't I go for it? Shall I hold all other variables steady and change just this one thing, or shall I go the whole hog? If I have a problem in garden or greenhouse, or if I want the best quality, the most healthful produce, why wouldn't I throw everything I've got at it, everything I think or know will help? These three strategies--the Biodynamic seed soaks, the Flowforms, Agnihotra--all became available to me as greenhouse enhancements during the past Winter and early Spring and there wasn't any question I was going to use them all. As a Biodynamic gardener I practice what is to me more of an art than a science. The Biodynamic Seed Soaks I am grateful every time I delve into the bright yellow binder that holds all my back issues of Applied Biodynamics, from the Josephine Porter Institute (4). Hugh Courtney not only writes wonderfully well, but he also has a fine sense for publishing just what the practitioner needs to know to stay on the cutting edge of Biodynamic practice. In the Spring, 1994 issue of Applied Biodynamics, Issue No.7, Hugh has a brief piece on "Seed Soaks with the Biodynamic Preparations," with a table suggesting #507 for maize, #505 for lettuce, and so on. Germination rate, fruit set, and root development are said to be enhanced by the practice. In his laconic way, Hugh suggests at the end, "Much more experimentation seems desirable in this area of seed soaks," and leaves it to the rest of us, as he often does, to pick up on the significance of all this. This Spring I decided to take Hugh up on his challenge, and virtually every seed we sowed in that Montana greenhouse was soaked in the appropriate preparation before it went in a bed or flat. Germination rate and seedling vigor were both remarkable, far beyond anything in my experience. Photos taken at 13 days after sowing prove the point. Fruit set and plant longevity? I am writing in mid- September. Yesterday I called Mark Waite, the apprentice I left behind in Montana, and asked him how the 65 tomato plants we tended there in the greenhouse were doing. He told me he was picking 20 pounds of tomatoes a day for the kitchen. The last two weeks of July they'd started to come on ripe. The first two weeks of August he was harvesting 10-15 pounds a day, and a solid 15 pounds a day during the last two weeks. In September, no question about it, 20 pounds a day. I know from experience that as the light begins to fail after Michaelmas (the Autumnal Equinox), there will be a drop-off in yield, say an average of 10 pounds a day for the month of October. Around Halloween it's all over with the B Bar greenhouse. Guests are gone and heating the place would become prohibitively expensive. But July-October tomato poundage for 65 plants: is in the neighborhood of 1,300 pounds--20 pounds per plant. And these are heirloom varieties, not chosen for high yield, but rather for taste, color, and seed saving. There were similar results with many other vegetable varieties at the B Bar this Summer: Bushel after bushel of pole beans from a dozen plants; An elephant-head amaranth with a seedhead as big as a football; Cucumber plants that continued bearing fruit for three full months; Flowforms My article on Flowforms in the greenhouse appeared in Biodynamics #206, July-August, 1996. In Biodynamics #207 Anne Mendenhall responded with a piece, "Flowforms Revisited," accompanied by a study conducted by Freya Schikorr, comparing hand stirring, machine stirring, and Flowform potentizing of the preparations. While Anne seems somewhat wary of the Flowforms, regarding their vortex as "no more than a whisper of itself," I am more enthusiastic about their use and the Schikorr study would seem to support this. Yield from plants treated with Flowform- potentized preparations were significantly greater than control yields or machine-stirred yields. Only hand stirring surpassed the Flowform results, and only just barely. A whisper communicates quite as well as a shout, it seems, and the vortical form itself may be the crucial factor, not its depth and vigor. Yield, of course is easily measured and talked about. What is not so easily defined and communicated is the remarkable enhancement the Flowforms afford in the greenhouse environment- -the sound of flowing water, the visual attractiveness of the sculptural forms themselves, the lovely sight of the swirling, pulsating flow, the negative ions generated wherever water is in action. Here too, there are subtle energetics involved. In the last week of March I sowed a few Kwintus pole beans on the centerline of the greenhouse, one going just next to the Flowform cascade. The plant that arose from that seed was for the remainder of the season remarkably healthier and fuller than the others, with greater fruit set and and overall yield. I have photos of two Soro red cabbage seedlings, one potted and residing next to the Flowforms, one placed perhaps 30 feet away The seedlings kept pace with each other metamorphically--i.e., the number of leaves on each was the same at 4, 7, and 10 weeks, but the Flowform plant always had about one-third more leaf area. When I wanted to hurry plants along in their development, for special purposes--potted miniature sunflowers for guest cabin porches, potted basil for the kitchen windowsill--I crowded them around the Flowforms for speedy and healthy growth. This strategy worked every time. Agnihotra (3) We cannot fathom what ancient cultures may have known. Certainly it is not too much of a "stretch" to believe that much important knowledge may have been lost over the millennia, particularly perhaps in the past couple of hundred years as materialism became the reigning paradigm. How did the Egyptians and the Maya work with stone with such precision? Did Methuselah really live for 969 years--how? Were Native Americans and other indigenous people able to commune with plants (and the Devas?) in order to learn their uses for healing? Agnihotra comes to us from the Vedas, the ancientmost body of knowledge known to mankind. It's not difficult for me to believe that the ancients--closer to the land, the seasons, and the sources; undistracted by technology's blandishments, may have had holistic understandings about Nature that are denied to contemporary scientific method. Agnihotra involves preparing a small fire of dry cow dung and ghee in a small, inverted copper pyramid. At the exact moment of sunrise and sunset, a simple mantra is chanted and a few grains of rice are placed into the fire. The practitioner sits quietly until the fire dies out, meditating, witnessing, and honoring the coming and going of the sun. I had been aware of this practice since reading Secrets of the Soil (5) some years ago, but had never seen it practiced until early this year. I immediately began daily practice of Agnihotra in the greenhouse at the ranch in April, coincident with the onrush of seed sowing, and there is no doubt in my mind that some of the spectacular growth of plants there can be attributed to Agnihotra. One quite specific instance of this comes to mind. Toward the middle of May I had about three dozen broccoli seedlings in 4-inch pots, ready to go into beds, but the only space available for them was in the unheated "back" portion of the greenhouse. (It's a measure of the harshness of the Montana Spring that I wasn't even considering transplanting Cole crops outdoors in May.) I crossed my fingers and put the plants in the ground. That night we had a hard frost with temperature about 20 degrees Fahrenheit. Those broccoli plants were prostrated by that frost, laid out flat on the ground when I inspected them in the morning; they hadn't recovered even a little in the warmth of the noonday sun. Recalling that Agnihotra ash is said to have healing qualities, during the afternoon I placed a couple of pinches of ash around each plant's stem and gently worked it into the soil. Within a week the results of this treatment were clear: 80 to 90 percent of those plants were building new leaves and by harvest time each of these was producing usable heads. Now I have seen many times before in my gardening career Cole crops affected by late frosts in the Spring, sometime completely destroyed. But never have I seen plants this badly damaged recover so nearly completely. Since then I have used the ash from the dung-and-ghee fire to good--if not quite so spectacular--effect in greenhouse, garden, and landscape plantings. The Agnihotra effect is said in the literature to be one of counteracting atmospheric pollution- -and where on the planet is any farmer or gardener working in a pollution-free place? Conclusion It would be easy, even reasonable, for Biodynamic traditionalists reading this to dismiss some of my observations as the fuzzy fantasies of an unreconstructed Hippie, forgetting perhaps that Rudolf Steiner's indications for agriculture 72 years ago must have seemed equally off-the-wall...stag bladders and skulls, skinning field mice when Venus is in Scorpio--humph! I don't do the ain't-it-awful scene. I won't tell you what dire straits we are in--war, corruption, pollution, topsoil loss, the family farm virtually vanished. What I will suggest is that agriculture is going to have to be a whole lot more sustainable and interesting if we are going to attract the next generation of young people into the field--the generation that is going to turn ain't-it-awful into isn't-it-marvelous! I have five internship slots open at Tree of Life Rejuvenation Center for the coming year.(6) We have a year-round gardening season and the opportunity to feed people --60 to 80 guests and staff by 1998--with life-giving, spirit-enhancing Biodynamic food. I plan to run that program in the most interesting and inspiring way I can, for the good of the people, the land, and the Planet. Notes (1) P O Box 32, 771 Harshaw Road, Patagonia, AZ 85624 (520) 394-2319 e-mail: woodyw@juno.com (2) Waterforms, Inc. Route 177, P O Box 930, Blue Hill, ME 04614 (207) 374-2384 The Flowforms pictured are the Bristlecone cascade. Woody Wodraska, Flowforms in the Greenhouse--A Preliminary Report, Biodynamics Number 206, July/August 1996, Bio-Dynamic Farming and Gardening Association, Inc. (3) Literature from The Copper Works, Rt. 8 Box 365, Madison, VA 22727 (540) 5463; Vasant V. Paranjpe, Homa Therapy, Fivefold Path, Inc., RFD #1, Box 121-C Madison, VA 22727 (4) The Josephine Porter Institute for Applied Bio-Dynamics, Inc. P O Box 133, Wool- wine, VA 24185 (540) 930-2463 (5) Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird, Secrets of the Soil: New Age Solutions for Restoring our Planet, Harper & Row, New York, 1989. (6) Bio-Dynamic Gardening in a Permaculture Context: Information on Internships, available from (1) above.