Biodynamic tree paste
a cookbook recipe of something that might be ideal.
In terms of inputs, missing or deficient elements must be considered, especially in the early stages.
There is science and numbers to this. Just keep in mind the fertiliser rule of thumb is if a little is good a little less more often is better. After all, one must be careful about adding salt or spice to the soup - with chemical agriculture adding too much is common.
Biodynamics works with the organisational patterns of activity that give rise to the farm organism’s growth into order and complexity out of the chaos of the surrounding universe.
By using Biodynamic Preparations, biodynamic growers plant the seeds for order to arise, and the more these preparations are used in balanced and effective ways, the more rapidly and successfully the vineyard or dairy develops - attracting whatever it needs, whether that is sunshine, wind, rain, or carbon and essential minerals.
There are many ways of applying biodynamic preparations. Identifying which preparations are best to apply at what times and in what ways is the art of successful biodynamic agriculture. This is a meditative process, and to build life into a vineyard or dairy or any other sort of operation one must listen to what nature tells us with deficiencies, pests, weeds and diseases.
Using poisons and other kill tactics to get rid of something that wasn’t understood in the first place ignores the message and shoots the messenger.
Yes, mineral inputs can be important, although establishing and using herbs such as stinging nettles, yarrow, dandelions, horsetails, casuarinas, etcetera is of equal importance.
Because of the dynamics involved, engaging what is already there by managing animals and digesting/recycling their wastes (composting) takes the place of the NPK mentality.
Understanding life processes, such as the Biochemical Sequence, is key to establishing balanced plant, animal and microbial populations and nurturing them with whatever Biodynamic Preparations are needed at any given time and place.
In the US back in the 50s and 60s most highways were twolane rural affairs, and on our family’s summer vacations it was common to see orchards where one or another sort of lime wash was painted on the tree trunks up at least to the first limbs. I asked mom and dad about it, and they said it was to thicken the bark and keep the trees healthy.
When I started farming one of the first problems I became aware of was beetle larvae boring beneath the bark at the base of my young apple trees.
This came to light when I met Peter Escher, who became my farming mentor. My first question was what was killing my young apple trees?
Peter, Ehrenfried Pfeiffer’s partner in setting up Threefold Farm and the Pfeiffer Laboratories, was the perfect person to ask, as he was the biodynamic apple guru who introduced biodynamic tree paste.
We were at my neighbour, Shabari’s house, and Peter said he didn’t know - let’s go see the trees. Right away he discovered the beetles, but the beetle larvae were not the cause, he said. The cause was too much raw manure, which weakened the trees and set up unhealthy conditions.
Then he pointed out signs of fire blight, an apple disease that plugs up the tree’s circulatory system and kills branches, limbs and sometimes whole trees.
Though the apple industry generally doesn’t recognize nitrate as the cause of fire blight, Peter was firm in this opinion. Sadly, he reckoned if a tree had trouble early on it was best to start over with a new tree, and I needed to get the soil right before planting new trees. At the time he didn’t even mention tree paste. I wasn’t ready. That came later. Peter Escher
Getting the soil right wasn’t something that happened overnight. It required a change in mindset.
Peter sent me a pamphlet by H. H. Koepf entitled Organism He also referred me to Rudolf Steiner’s Agriculture Course.
In Steiner’s view we should consider the trunk of the tree as though it was ‘mounded up soil’, though soil ‘in a more living condition than the soil in which our herbaceous plants and grains are growing’.
The [tree] plants are ‘rooted in the twigs and branches of the tree just as other plants are rooted in the earth’.
Though it was a struggle in my first few years of farming, I gradually began to understand that giving a lime wash to the trunks of fruit trees was akin to making a lime application to the soil. Elsewhere in his Agriculture Course (p 68) Steiner talks about the desirable effect quicklime has with stabilizing nitrogen in the soil and in composting.
Biodynamic Tree Paste
After Peter’s death in 1984 Harvey Lisle took his place in mentoring me, and it was with Harvey in his apple orchard in Norwalk, Ohio, that I had my first encounter with biodynamic tree paste.
Though nearly eighty at the time, Harvey was always learning, experimenting and thinking outside the ordinary boundaries. Thankfully my previous background had prepared me for understanding Harvey’s approach to tree paste, which was at all times fresh and creative.
We took some of Harvey’s soil, a clay-rich mud, and stirred it vigorously, first in one direction and then in the reverse direction, alternating back and forth for 15 minutes in a bucket with a couple gallons of horsetail extract that we made from boiling a double handful of dried meadow horsetail herb.
Undoubtedly here in Australia we would have used the dried foliage of a casuarina tree. We poured the mud soup through a sieve, and after that through a fine filter and it came out with a consistency almost like latex paint. This was our base, to which we added some biodynamic horn manure (500), some biodynamic cowpat pit (CPP) and some biodynamic horn silica (501).
From Harvey’s viewpoint we needed to impart ALL of the forces of the biodynamic preparations to the tree or we wouldn’t have a balanced
and complete set of life processes. We also added a small quantity of fresh cow manure and equal amounts of builder’s lime (aka slaked lime or quicklime) for calcium and basalt powder for silica.
This was because Harvey reasoned we wanted to bolster the bark of his particular trees in these materials and, though we tend to forget, bark is surprisingly high in silica.
Harvey was deeply into dowsing as a means of accessing our intuition, so we dowsed for the quantities of each of the material as we added.
Perhaps in different circumstances the mix would be somewhat different, so like a fine chef in a kitchen, we gauged the circumstances and the quality of our ingredients didn’t follow an exact formula.
Then we added a small quantity of raw linseed oil as a binder to help the paint-like mixture stick to the tree bark.
Finally we ‘potentized’ the entire lot for 15 minutes in the typical biodynamic fashion of creating a vortex in one direction and then reversing it, creating a counter vortex, and alternating back and forth to get a thorough penetration of the forces into the water.
When we were done, we applied the finished mixture using a wall paper brush.
BD Tree Spray
Perhaps calling it ‘tree paste’ was a bit misleading because the word ‘paste’ tends to imply a stiff mixture, and in terms of practical application Peter Escher’s tree paste was more easily applied like latex paint.
It needs to form a good coating as the idea is one of building, strengthening and enriching the bark and trunk of the tree - which can be thought of as the ‘soil’ out of which the tree’s vegetative growth springs. Biodynamic tree paste or spray is a logical improvement on the lime wash old-time fruit growers might have used.
In applying it Harvey and I used thick brushes to soak it into all the cracks and crevasses of the bark up into the lower limbs. As we did this we cleaned away all vegetation around the base and removed any lichens we found growing on the bark, leaving the tree with what amounted to a fresh overcoat - energetic, organic and mineral - on all its lower portions.
Although Harvey only had a small orchard, with large-scale modern operations the tree paste could be screened through a paint filter and sprayed on with a paint gun as part of annual pruning. One of the things it will do is promote healing of the pruning wounds.
These days I would be inclined to use one part in a thousand of fulvic acid and a similar amount of concentrated sea minerals - the pot liquor left over after evaporation of sea water and removal of sodium chloride for table salt. If I had any homeopathic preparations made from ashing pest specimens - perhaps the troublesome boring beetles - I would also add these.
The recipe may vary a bit from place to place with the needs of the soil, landscape and circumstances as well as the type of orchard or vineyard being treated. If I knew I had a specific mineral deficiency, such as manganese or molybdenum, I might add a highly dilute dose (a few parts per million) of these as well. If I had access to a superior clay, such as Azomite, micro-min or zeolite, I would probably mix that in with my local clay as well - and I’d dowse to check my reasoning regarding amounts against my intuition.
Though the mix should vary to suit the circumstance, a basic recipe might go like this: 1. First obtain a quantity of fine clay extracted from healthy, cleansmelling soil. This can be produced by dissolving, stirring and filtering soil - first through a sieve and then through a paint filter, letting the filtered clay settle out over a couple weeks’ time and pouring the water off as if refining potter’s clay. Add 10 per cent Azomite, zeolite or other specialized clay if available.
A General Recipe
2. To 15 litres of she oak (casuarina) decoction - a lightly simmered extract sometimes referred to as BD 508 - in a 20 litre bucket, add enough of the above clay to arrive at the consistency of paint. For calculating amounts for coverage of orchards, mix up this size batch, see how far it goes and multiply the recipe accordingly. Much may depend on the method of application, how big the trees are and how thoroughly the trees or vines are covered. Let experience be your guide. 3. To the above add half an acre’s unit of horn manure, horn silica, cowpat pit and horn clay (available from Biodynamic Agriculture Australia. Any insect or pest peppers may also be added at rates appropriate for the acreage. 4. Add 5 ounces liquid fulvic concentrate and the same amount of liquid sea minerals. Earthworm leachate may be substituted for the fulvic acid. Add a pinch or two of trace minerals (i.e copper, zinc, manganese, etc.) if indicated by soil testing. 5. Add a pound or so each of quicklime, siliceous rock powder and fresh (wet) cow manure. Also add a quarter to half a pound of gypsum or rock phosphate if sulphur or phosphorous are deficient in the soil test. 6. A pint or so of raw linseed oil or other similar oil can be added so the coating sticks to the bark and doesn’t wash off with heavy rains. 7. Stir or potentize for 15 minutes by the vortex/reverse vortex method before application. After cleaning around the tree’s base and removing any lichens, the tree paste [tree paint] can be applied with a large paint brush. Screen through a paint filter if applying with a spray gun.