Tag Archives: Abbie Jury

Biodynamics – the homeopathy of the gardening world

A mutinous threat from Zephyr and Spike

A mutinous threat from Zephyr and Spike

Being a SNAW (that is a Sensitive New Age Woman, but of course you knew that), I am all for religious tolerance. That is, as long as nobody comes knocking on my door thinking I may need to be converted of a Saturday morning. I could perhaps do with being renovated, but not converted.

Similarly, when the personal faiths of others start to intrude on me, especially by claiming to occupy the higher moral ground, I get a little twitchy and few are worse at this than homeopaths, lunar planters and biodynamics converts.

Adding to my twitchiness, Spike and Zephyr, our surviving pets, are seeking legal advice. They are threatening to take out an injunction to prevent us exhuming their former colleagues for preparation 505. That is the one where a skull of a domesticated animal is stuffed with oak chips and immersed in fresh water for three months. Spike and Zephs are appalled at the thought that we may be wanting to stuff skulls with oak chips. Not only do they want to protect their former colleagues, but they are not offering to make the ultimate sacrifice, proffering up their own skulls to test the efficacy of this soil conditioner. They have been known to harumph and suggest that in this country, we should surely be stuffing bird skulls with totara chips seeing as we lack both native mammals and oak trees. And don’t be thinking any old oak tree will do. It has to be Quercus robur which is of course native to Rudolf Steiner’s homeland of Austria.

Preparation 502 is giving me much anxiety. That is the one where you stuff the bladder of a red deer with achillea flowers and bury it for months on end. There is a definite shortage of fresh deer bladders (or even frozen ones) here and local supermarkets don’t seem to stock them. I notice there is a stag where I buy my free range eggs and I pondered asking the owner how she would feel about donating its internal organ to improve our soils. But I am not sure that it is a red deer (it appears to make a difference to compound 502) and as she was hand feeding the stag when I called in one day, I feared she may not react well to my request. I think we may do better with preparation 503 (that is chamomile blossoms stuffed into the small intestines of cattle and overwintered in the ground – must remember to mark where I bury it). And preparation 506 looks manageable – dandelions stuffed in the peritoneum (sounds nasty) of cattle and similarly overwintered.

Prep 501 has powdered quartz stored in the horn of a cow (minus the cow) and buried over summer (note: summer burial, not winter, for this one). In autumn you dig it up and mix it with water at a dilution rate of one tablespoon of quartz powder to 250 litres of water (starting to sound dangerously homeopathic…). But before you spray it, you have to stir the solution for an hour and the method and direction of stirring is prescribed. You can not stint on the stirring because some see the vortex created by methodical stirring as acting like a funnel to imbue the solution with cosmic energy, making it more efficacious. Quartz is largely insoluble in water and spraying a chemically inert substance in microscopic traces over a wide area is of no discernible value whatever but let not these facts get in the way of passionate belief.

The best known prep 500 (a cow horn stuffed with the excrement of a lactating cow and buried over winter in the ground) receives similar treatment to 501 and is diluted to the same extent. Preps 502 to 508 are added to the compost heap at a rate, give or take, of around a teaspoon per cubic metre. Faith goes a long way. Apparently.

Rudolf Steiner was a philosopher and it is most unlikely that he ever got his hands in the soil. Put succinctly, Steiner came from a strong background of esoteric theosophy and when he split from the European theosophical mainstream at the turn of last century, he evolved his own world view which he styled anthroposophy. And that might be described simplistically as an attempt to synthesize mysticism and science. Lost? Don’t worry. I don’t think it matters. I would guess that Steiner, a man who spent his life thinking and in philosophical discourse, likely saw his theories on agriculture and care for the soils as merely part of a much larger universal whole. He might be slightly stunned were he around today to see how this particular side shoot to his core philosophies has taken on a life of its own as biodynamics.

Biodynamics seems to have taken a greatly simplified interpretation of Steiner’s elaborate world view and repackaged it as pseudo science to give it a credibility which it lacks. You really are back in the realms of mysticism without the science once you are into focusing cosmic rays to harness the spiritual energy of the universe. Cows’ horns and deer antlers are apparently particularly good receptors acting as a cross between a satellite dish and a storage battery for cosmic energy and cosmic wisdom. Yet, if you set aside the biodynamic preparations, the other underpinning principles of modern biodynamics are sound organics. You can not fault practices such as:
* Stocking with several different animal species to vary grazing patterns and reduce pasture borne parasites.
* Widening the range of pasture species.
* Planting trees for multiple purposes.
* Crop rotation designs to enhance soil fertility and control weeds and plant pests which include the use of green manures.
* Recycling of organic wastes, where possible, by large scale composting.
* Changing from chemical pest control to prevention strategies based on good plant and animal nutrition and careful cultivar selection.

There is nothing flaky in any of that. There is nothing spiritual either. It is just good, sustainable practice applicable to all aspects of gardening and agriculture.

I respect the right of bioydynamic converts to believe in cosmic energies and a holistic interpretation of their position in the universe. But I do wish they wouldn’t try and package it as science and, like lunar planting and homeopathy, such practices have gained a level of mainstream acceptance which is not founded on any scientific credibility at all. It can make it hard to disentangle what is sound environmental practice from what is religion.

Plant Collector: Narcissus x Odorus

The heady fragrance of Narcissus x odorus

The heady fragrance of Narcissus x odorus

I wish you could smell this lovely daffodil. It has the most divine scent which is commonly found in the fragrant jonquils (or N. jonquilla as they are known botanically). That is because this one is a natural hybrid which was found in the wild in Southern Europe, a cross between a jonquil and N. pseudonarcissus). It is pure bright daffodil yellow (otherwise known as acid yellow) with a very short trumpet surrounded by a skirt of wavy petals in the same colour. While the flower isn’t large, it is held up on relatively tall, wiry stems. The number of blooms to each stem can vary from one to three. They appear to be totally sterile which prolongs the life of the flowers. As the foliage is fine, this is a narcissus that passes over quite gracefully.

If you search out as many different types of daffodils as you can find, you can extend the season from mid winter through to early or mid spring rather than having them all come in a flash over a week or two.

First published in the Waikato Times and reprinted here with their permission.

Tikorangi Notes: Thursday 23 August, 2012

We hesitate to proclaim our garden as being full of birdsong. Heaven help me if I ever read yet another garden description where the owners claim their place as “a tranquil haven filled with birdsong”. It is such a cliche and frequently said birds are but blackbirds, thrushes and sparrows. But we do have a garden filled with birds and this week I was lucky enough to chance upon this kereru (native wood pigeon) feeding on plum blossom. They are rarely so obliging at posing for a photo shoot. For a 58 second video of this event, check out Kereru at Tikorangi, the Jury Garden.

If you are keen on magnolias, or even just pretty flower pictures, I am updating the magnolias regularly on our Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/thejurygarden and also on Twitter (@Tikorangi). I alternate between describing the magnolias as floral skypaper or magnolia porn. It is such a glorious time of year here and there are few, if any plants, to rival the magnolia for an over the top statement when in full bloom.

Be bold with colour. White is not always right.

My first ever video upload (two minutes of a mass of tui in a campanulata cherry tree) and notes on the magnolias in flower have just been posted on www.jury.co.nz (our garden website).

Winter colour on the mandarin tree - and food for tui

Winter colour on the mandarin tree – and food for tui

It was most refreshing this week to receive an email from a reader seeking recommendations on a suitable sasanqua camellia for a hedge. “Anything but white,” was her request. I liked her instantly. White flowered camellia hedges can indeed look pretty and fresh but have become such a cliché in this country (especially as nine out of ten white sasanqua hedges are Setsugekka). It is most unusual for someone to specify colour.

We have a curious obsession with white flowers in this country. Why is Iceberg still the biggest selling rose here? Probably followed by the white Margaret Merrill or Rose Flower Carpet White. They are good plants but are they much better than other coloured options? No, they are just white. According to the Rose Flower Carpet agents, the coloured ones are much more popular overseas and it is mostly NZ that prizes the white. My informant put this down to our mild climate here and the fact that we are never snowbound. “If you spend months of the year looking at a white landscape,” he said, “the last thing you want is a garden of white flowers.”

I think it is conservatism. For the same reason, the trend is to have a near absence of colour on interior walls of the house (usually off white because pure white can be too stark and clinical to live with). Too often we play it safe in the garden. The garden backdrop of green is, for some curious reason, perceived as colour neutral and into that we drop another neutral in the form of white flowers. Call it serene, restful, stylish and sophisticated if you wish. In the right hands and at its best, it is. In lesser hands, it can be bland and dull. But safe. You can always be confident that your garden will be perceived by some as being in good taste if you keep to white, maybe with just the occasional colour thrown in as a feature (but just one colour, mind).

Fewer try the monochromatic scheme in other colours – though it is of course bichromatic (is there such a word?) because they are all plus green. Sissinghurst has its purple border, Hidcote its red border and both are beautiful in full summer bloom, but in NZ we tend to keep to white.

You can never have too much blue in the garden - especially if it is meconopsis

You can never have too much blue in the garden – especially if it is meconopsis

My first ever colour managed garden was to be all pinks, blues and whites. It looked pretty, but flat. Mark stood looking and said, “You need a touch of yellow.” He was so right. These days that garden remains predominantly pink, blue and white but it is the lemon and cerise (the latter, a surprisingly common colour in flowers) that give it some zing. Hence my choice of the Gertrude Jekyll quote below. Pastel gardens tend to be very feminine but they can be a little too “pastelle”, bordering on bland unless you get it absolutely right.

If you are unsure, go back to the colour wheel. It is touches of the opposite colour that will provide contrast. So yellow will be highlighted by purple, red by green and blue by orange. It does work. That said, I think blue flowers and foliage fit in with everything and you can never have too much blue in a garden. There is no theory to back that one up so it is entirely my personal opinion.

Colour to brighten a gloomy day - Magnolia Vulcan

Colour to brighten a gloomy day – Magnolia Vulcan

On a wintery day, however, I don’t want pastels or unrelieved green. Give me colour. The mandarin trees are a bright spot on a gloomy day, especially when populated by tui sucking the juice from damaged fruit. Most of our early flowering magnolias are in strong colours and can lift the spirits wonderfully with their over the top displays. The early flowering campanulata cherries lean to bright candy pink and cerise colours which are certainly a startling colour combination with the bright gold narcissi in bloom. There is no subtlety in any of those but I am not going to trade them for refined white flowers instead.

There is nothing subtle about the bright yellow of early narcissus

There is nothing subtle about the bright yellow of early narcissus

First published in the Waikato Times and reproduced here with their permission.

Garden lore

It is a curious thing that people will sometimes spoil some garden project for the sake of a word. For instance, a blue garden, for beauty’s sake, may be hungering for a group of white lilies, or for something of palest yellow, but it is not allowed to have it because it is called the blue garden and there must be no flowers in it but blue flowers…. My own idea is that it should be beautiful first, and then just be as blue as may be consistent with its best possible beauty.

Gertrude Jekyll Colour in the Flower Garden (1908)

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Dealing to moss

The easiest way I know to kill moss growing in the wrong places is to lightly sprinkle soda ash. This is in fact powdered washing soda (sodium carbonate or Na2CO3 for the scientifically inclined) and you can buy it from bulk bins. Cold Water Surf is often recommended and does work. I am guessing Cold Water Surf contains a relatively high proportion of soda ash as a water softener because it works much better than the budget washing powder I tried. Having found what the active ingredient is, I now prefer to use straight soda ash without the unnecessary extras. It is non toxic and occurs naturally so, as far as I know, is not going to harm the environment. It kills moss overnight though you then have to wire brush the dead moss off hard surfaces or rake it out of lawns. Experiment lightly – it doesn’t take a lot to be effective.

Published in the Waikato Times and reprinted here with their permission.