26/08/06
Hi Allan,
I'm not sure if I understand your question. So let me start with the basics and maybe that will answer your question and those of others who are following this thread.
Ashing or burning the reproductive organs of a plant is, according to Steiner's lectures, an effective way to remove that particular plant from your property. Now, keeping in mind, and I'm jumping ahead a little here, that each and every plant has a role to play in the environment, and that the removal of any one species will effect the ecology of the entire area. In other words, if you remove a plant that is supposed to contribute nitrogen, Nature will, next year, bring in another species to do the same thing. If you don't know and understand the role of the plant you want to remove, and replace it yourself with a species that is more acceptable to you or your animals, then Nature will make the selection. This is usually, IME, a more noxious plant most of the time.
Background: All biologists know that any environment in nature is always progressing toward homeostasis, a steady state as it is known. All climax forests, for example, exhibit a "steady state". That is the state where the land, plants and animals in any given area are in such balance and harmony that they become self-sufficient, self-maintaining. At this state, only a massive change in the environment will alter the life cycle and self-sufficiency of that area. They are stable in virtually any and all conditions.
If you study Dr. Steiner's lectures on this subject, you see that he had a complete understanding of this concept and natural law when he advised that a farm should become an "organism", self-sufficient. So you see?
So, by altering the mix of plants that you grow on your property, you may, or may not, be moving your area forward toward homeostasis or a more steady state. Since the basis for this is soil conditions first, Dr. Steiner understood the importance of compost to speed this process along.
Thus we have, in the ideal, a condition where the soil eventually becomes as it would in its pristine state due to the improvement of the soil through compost and the wise and knowledgeable selection of vegetation and animal/insect populations, not to mention the careful management of the farmer/grower/gardener/landholder.
What this leads us to conclude is that the decision to ash, or burn the reproductive organs of a plant (per Steiner) is, or should be, a carefully thought out option, not some willy-nilly "I'll get rid of that dam weed no matter what it takes" solution.
If you do ash something, you should ALWAYS take care to replace it with a species that is more acceptable.
Now, I have found that burning seeds or stolons on a seed day on my calendar is preferable to Dr. Steiner's instructions since it is a far more flexible method and works just as well or better.
Step-by-step, here is what you do. Collect the seeds or stolons, the reproductive organs of such plants as Bermuda grass (they would be burned on a "root" day – and forget using Stella Natura or Thun's worthless calendars for this), when they are as fully formed as you can get them. The more mature, the better.
Build a fire using wood, preferably, something non toxic at least, and then take a tin can, set it in the coals to remove all the paper and interior lining. When it is clean and free of residue inside the can especially, carefully take it out of the fire, let it cool and put your seeds or roots into the can, then place it back in the coals again. Burning the seeds this way allows you to collect their ash more conveniently and they don't mix with the charcoal or ash in your "cooker". Personally, I use a Weber grill. You can build a fire pit. Doesn't matter.
At first, you will see the seeds smoking, then some fire inside the can, then eventually, in about 10 minutes, you'll see ash forming. No doubt you will have to stir the contents of the can so that it burns thoroughly, which is vital for a successful burn. Now, I normally collect the equivalent of 100 to 200 ml. of ash, which means that the volume is around 8 to 10 ounces. I do this because, AFTER you collect the ash, you should take a mortar and pestle and grind it to a finer flour like consistency, the end result being in volume, the equivalent of 100 ml.
Then what I do, is take a 1 quart (or 1 liter) clear glass bottle with a plastic lid, pour all 100 ml. of the dried ash into it, then, in my case, add Mountain Valley Spring Water to it until it is full to within about 3/4" from the top. You need some air in it to make it work right.
I don't use just any bottle either. Cosmo round bottles, in my experience, work best. If you use the vertical method of succussing taught by Peerless Peter Bacchus, you will note that on the upstroke, a vortex forms in the water. On the down stroke, when it hits bottom, the vortex is broken up. Thus, you are duplicating exactly what Dr. Steiner said to do with stirring preps in a bucket or barrel. Create a vortex (order), break it up(chaos). "Dr." Bacchus taught me to do it this way for 2 and a half minutes each dilution.
When you have finished the first dilution, immediately pour out 100 ml. into a measured beaker (this will be the "mother tincture") and pour it into the next empty bottle. You do this immediately since you want as much of the particulate matter (the ash) in the next level of potency as possible. You do it this exact way each step up the ladder. The add fresh water in the same way you did it the first time.
DO NOT use chlorinated water or processed water of any kind to do this. That includes distilled water and reprocessed city water often sold as bottled water. Use ONLY natural spring water, or, if you wish, clean, filtered rain water. Since you are using water to make these dilutions, the cleaner the source, the less likely you will grow algae in your bottles when you store them. I have some ash bottles that have been sitting under my workbench for 3 years now and still no algae in them. Algae won't hurt anything, but it is annoyance. NEVER, NEVER, NEVER use alcohol to make ANY kind of homeopathic remedy that you spray on plants. They work against each other.
Recently, I had a discussion about this with a gentleman in Australia who was using alcohol remedies in his field broadcaster. I pointed out that this would create burned edges on the leaves of his crop, which he confirmed was actually happening. PLANTS DON'T DRINK ALCOHOL, PEOPLE DO!
OK. Let's say you want to use D9. The D9 potency takes a plant to its normal "conclusion" of it's life cycle in the field. In other words, at that level, the plant is tricked into believing that it is no longer required to live in that field, and simply dies out, in a sense. At D10, you are beginning a new, embryonic so to speak, life cycle for that plant species in that location. If you apply both potencies, you will get better results, but D9 should be sufficient in most cases. You can anticipate that the species you've selected will no long grow there within 3 years.
The shelf life of your homeopathic dilution is a minimum of 5 years, assuming they haven't been exposed to high electrical current or x-ray radiation.
Now, as for mixing. Apply 3.4 ounces (100 ml.) per acre. This is not a hard and fast rule. You can go as low as 50 ml. or as high as 150 ml. per acre with equal success. BTW, it's always best to apply the Steiner prep field sprays first. If you are using my products, which you should be using since they are significantly better than the raw preps, spray what we call the "Sonoma Sequence". If you are not using my products, apply stirred 500, 501 and Horn Clay - IN THAT ORDER, as close to each application as humanly possible, not waiting for a year or two to do it as some ignoramuses recommend, but minutes or hours, THEN apply the weed pepper homeopathic spray.
No matter what Thun says, if you do it this way, you only need to apply it once in the Spring, and once in the fall. To me, three applications is a waste of time. But, if that's what you want to do, by all means do it.
WHAT YOU THINK, YOU GROW.
How much water you put in your sprayer is dictated by your sprayers application rate per acre. With hand-held trigger sprayers, applying a squirt of the CONCENTRATE every 10 or15 feet in a square pattern works fine. If you use a backpack sprayer with continuou sspraying, it's been my experience that you will need 3 to 5 gallons per acre, depending on the size and number of tips you use Solo has a boom attachment that 2 or 4 tips available to them. In that case, you need to walk an acre or a measured part of an acre to determine what your output is. If you are using a mechanical spray, such as one mounted on an ATV, behind and ATV or on or behind a tractor, again you must take the time to measure how much clean, unchlorinated water it puts out per acre.
Then, after you have mostly filled the tank, add your D9 weed pepper spray to it in the amount required to spray the acreage (or gardenage) you equipment will cover at the speed and pressure you selected.
Be sure to spray at the new moon or the full moon to take advantage of those forces.
Save whatever remedy material you have left, i.e the bottles, in a cardboard box, away from direct sunlight. when you want some more D9, just shake up a new batch. I have base material I still use that is 6 years old and still has all the potency it did when it was created, but that's another story. When you make a fresh batch, it will be just as potent as the last batch.
I get my 1 qt. bottles and caps from Napa Fermentation, in Napa, CA(
http://www.napafermentation.com/). A case of 12 costs about $40 delivered. Talk to Colleen. She knows the drill. Specify "Cosmo Round" bottles and plastic caps with teflon liners. Don't worry about the teflon. It has no effect on the sprays and is far safer for the preps than metal caps which will make them weaker. You can use standard plastic lined caps if that is your preference, but unless the liner is "food grade", it will off-gas chlorine into your water.
DO NOT STORE ever, ever, ever your preps in a building with a metal roof. It will weaken the preps in the same way that storing them in metal containers will. Placing the potentized remedies in closed, cardboard boxes, IMO, achieves the same result as storing the raw preps in in peat moss. You could store your remedies in peat moss but it's messy and if you use them frequently like I do, it's a hassle not worth the trouble for an insignificant benefit.
The purpose of potentizing the ash or pepper is to make much more of this material from a very small amount, which is far more efficient than what Dr. Steiner said, which was to shake the weed "pepper" around your property. It is also possible to get complete coverage this way. Each step up in the potency process makes 10 times more spray. So you can see, as Peerless Peter once said to me, it's "like printing money". You can make trillions of ounces out of one ounce of the base material.
A very small amount of spray is required to accomplish success. Or, you can use a lot. You could spray one pint per acre, or 100 gallons per acre of the spray as long as the CONCENTRATE (the potency you select) in the spray is applied at 100 +/- ml. per acre. You could use 1,000 gallons of the carrier water (water mix) per acre and get the same result as 3.4 ounces of the concentrate per acre.
Believe me, I and my customers do this all the time. A hand sprayer is the cheapest, fastest and best way to apply these sprays on less than acre. Use a backpack spray for 2 to 10 acres. Over that, use a mechanical or electric sprayer on an ATV or Tractor for most efficient application.
Again, the entire process of relieving your field should take 1 to 3 years. But remember this. That plant is there to contribute to the fertility of the field. They tell you something about the health of the field and your management. For example, all over California, you'll find very, very pointed and sharp thistles. Everybody bitches about this. In fact, thistles are Nature's barbed wire. They are telling you to "STAY OUT", "KEEP OFF THE PROPERTY". Let Mom Nature do what she does and fix it. What she is saying is that the soil there is not good and should be left alone to come back to its most natural and beneficial state.
Dr. Steiner, with his preps and compost, said, "you can speed up this process and here's the tools to do it". Never forget YOUR role in this process. Getting rid of one "problem" can raise more problems if you don't use your knowledge, experience, wisdom and intuition to fix it. In other words, getting rid of one problem COULD create more serious problems for you if you don't think it through to its obvious conclusion, and take the steps to prevent more problems. If you do think it through before you start, you'll get far better results.
Remember, as Dr. Carver recommended, 20 cubic yards of compost per acre goes a very, very long way toward establishing homeostasis and a self-sufficient farm. (When the greatest horticulturist who ever lived, Luther Burbank, started up his 5 acre experimental farm in Santa Rosa, CA in 1883, he brought in 200 cubic yards of cow manure for this small place! That's 40 cubic yards an acre! The man knew exactly what he was doing.)
Make your compost this way: two piles, one green, one brown. Make them the same size. In the brown pile, accumulate straw or spoiled hay. In the green pile, mix 6 parts fresh cow manure, 2 parts fresh horse manure without wood chips, 1 part bird manure, either chicken or turkey, and one part gleanings and leftovers from the crop you want to fertilize. If you can't get fresh, do the best you can. Dampen the two piles, mix them together, cover with a dusting of dirt, insert the raw compost preps or spray our Compost Invigorator? on the outside of the pile (my sprays are prepared homeopathcally in water with all 6 preps plus Equisetum), cover the pile with 12" of pulled apart straw (not biskets or flakes) and leave it until it turns into humus. You need a minimum volume of one cubic yard to make compost.
This is a universal formula that can and should be used everywhere. By adding one part of the leftovers from your garden, or, in the case of wine-grapes, the grape pumice, you are giving your plants humus they recognize as their normal food. Always remember that plants eventually eat themselves. So by putting some of them in your compost, you are giving them their natural food. If you wish, and I've been doing this for some 25years, you can add TRACE amounts of minerals to your pile. Be very careful with this. Too much volume of minerals can actually create the opposite effect you want. Especially if you are using Steiner's preparations. I recommend no more than a hand full or two per cubic yard.
For those certified organic growers who must comply with the NOP stardards requiring the regular stirring of compost, simply call it raw manure and you can get around that NOP regulation. Static piles take longer, but you get a considerably higher quality product that's far more beneficial for your crop.
You CANNOT weed pepper without concurrently applying compost. It simply will not help you.
Add beneficial compost to the place where you peppered, replace the species you don't want with one you can live with by over-seeding or direct seeding, always use companion planting and cover cropping, pay attention to the lunar cycles and remember - WHAT YOUTHINK, YOU GROW.
I hope this answers your questions sufficiently. If not, please get back to me.
Greg