John Soper - Bio-Dynamic Gardening

We would like to thank the following for their help in preparing the revised edition of this book:

Jean Cormack for her advice on varieties of fruits and vegetables suitable for bio-dynamic techniques;

Tabitha Parsons for her drawings of the preparation plants;

James Anderson for contributing photographs to illustrate bio-dynamic gardening in practice.

In an address to those attending his course of lectures on agriculture Rudolf Steiner explained that he was giving them a kind of alphabet, and that it would be up to each of them to make the letters into words which would apply to their own particular conditions of soil, climate, etc. He emphasised that he was speaking from his personal experience on small peasant farms, and he did not mention gardens at all. Moreover when he spoke of seasons he referred specifically to those which prevail in a continental climate. Dr E. Pfeiffer, Erica Riese, Maria Thun and others have made many useful words out of the new alphabet, words applicable to gardens, but again under continental conditions. But the insular climate and many of the soil types of Great Britain are not quite the same as those on the continents of Europe and North America, nor have we been fortunate enough to have had anything approaching a research station with workers devoted to the making of British words. Nevertheless a certain amount of scattered experience has been gathered by a number of gardeners over the years since the Agriculture Course was first brought over to Britain in the early 1930s, and many people feel that these threads need to be brought together. This I have now tried to do.

In writing the book I have had in mind especially those who may be coming to gardening for the first time and also those more experienced gardeners who are coming to bio-dynamics for the first time. The chapters dealing with individual crops do not purport to be a complete guide in every detail; I have concentrated more on aspects which, from personal experience, may be at variance with the advice given in some standard text books. I have also described many of the commoner troubles which may arise in even the most harmonious gardens from time to time, and have made suggestions for preventing them or for dealing with them if they do occur. A great deal more remains to be learned, so in the final chapter I have collected several instances where some preliminary observations seem to be worth following up; other possible lines of work will no doubt occur to readers. In the present circumstances of the Bio-Dynamic Agricultural Association in Britain advances in understanding basic principles and in devising techniques for applying them can only be made by co-operative effort. Readers are therefore invited to send particulars of any significant observations and trials to the Secretary of the Association or to the Editor of StarandFurrow.

This book could not have been written without the assistance of the late George Corrin, the Associations Consultant. Several important passages in the text are slightly paraphrased extracts from articles which he wrote, and he put his wide experience unstintingly at my disposal throughout. To him we all owe a deep debt of thanks.

JohnSoper
Clent
June1982