Biodynamics in the Dry Tropics

Observations on Growing in Baja California Sur, Mexico

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To the ivory statues 1, 2, 3 and…. freeze.

It is curious what comes to my mind when I try to describe the biodynamic activities here in the dry tropics of the peninsula of Baja California Sur in Mexico. In these parts, the practice of the biodynamic approach to agriculture is still young, almost unknown. What immediately comes to my mind is the opportunity that the macrocosmic biodynamic view provides to modulate our perspective when we interpret living Nature, who expresses herself in her varied movements and moments of growth and decomposition in this piece of land. It is from this quality of living interpretation that I intend to write.

The conditions of each piece of land and its interactions with the climate are infinitely varied combinations whose expression gives rise to the vegetation we observe growing in a given place. Plants contain active forces and processes that find material ready to take shape.

Image: diverse garden in dry tropics of Baja California Sur in Mexico

I work near the ocean which provides us with salty conditions in both soil and water, very rich in micronutrients, and especially an abundance of sodium chloride. Steiner tells us about how the ocean is like the deposit of nutrients in a “belly” where everything that has already entered through freshwater springs and rain is deposited at the end of this journey.¹ Within the ocean, these salts find the right concentration and a suitable home as a sort of “intestinal” ecosystem. Up on the agricultural land, these mineral salts need a way to bridge to the plant world because not all species that we cultivate can tolerate carrying so much mineral salt in their veins and still properly express their archetypal form.

Sodium seems to have the task of antagonizing everything related to water. It is as if the reason for sodium’s existence is to “use up” liquids by trapping, drying, leaving behind a solidified ash of the formerly active life process. In addition, sodium’s power of attraction causes the liquids to acquire certain dynamic movements. When pure sodium is added to water, the fire bursts into flames. When a plant has too much sodium, it is as if the etheric impulse is spent by a sodium eruption into vertical growth. In conditions dominated by too much sodium, the etheric quality of the plant seeks to return all too quickly to the world, leaving very little suppleness in the plant.

Image: sodium added to water licensed under CC BY 2.0. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/?ref=openverse.

When we feel into this dynamic, it is possible to see things from a new different perspective.  This region of the world is generally something of a palm oasis where we are presented with a vegetative landscape with the capacity to create an exuberant production of biomass from these sodium-rich conditions. These are plants that continuously use salt water in an ostentatious way, raising it to the sky through palm leaves that commonly reach more than 10 meters (32 feet) long. A palm tree is like a magnificent firework in the plant world, a living sodium explosion. 

Image: Fireworks photo taken by Kabir Bakie at Blue Ash Community Fireworks Show July 4 2005  is licensed under CC BY 2.0. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/?ref=openverse.

Though obviously a different chemical reaction, in the gesture of the firework, we glimpse the kind of thing that happens in the plant world when sodium overcomes the containing influence of potassium. To put it simply, the fire of growth rushes quickly upward, spending little time forming fleshly leaves, and all of the vital force is spent. By contrast, when potassium is able to constrain the effects of sodium, the expansive explosive tendency of sodium is contained within the plant itself and we see rounding-out of fleshy fruits and vegetables. Yet, if phosphorus -- the main limiting factor driving plant growth --  were absent, the etheric firework would fizz out and provide a rather pitiful performance.

A plant that expresses a relationship to lime “allies” such as sodium is the banana tree (Musa acuminata), though this tender plant’s relationship is much more with potassium than with sodium. The inner kinship between the gesture of the banana leaf and the palm leaf, though the watery trunk of the banana tree is a stark contrast.

"BANANA TREE" by Daniel Paixão Fontes is licensed under CC BY 2.0. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/?ref=openverse.

Steiner says of the mineral salt realm, if you use “purely mineral substances as manure, you will never get at the real earthy element; you will penetrate at most to the watery element of the earth.”²

It is in this characteristic expansiveness that one can feel a harmonic relationship between a highly concentrated element (such as sodium) in the soil and the local ecosystem’s dynamic innovations to manage what occurs when there is such an excess.

Steiner says, “the influence of mineral manures will have a kind of growth which betrays the fact that it is supported only by a quickened watery substance, not by a quickened earthy substance.”³ The palm trees exhibit in their very form the habituation through evolution to the superabundance of mineral salts without quickened earthy substance. 

In agricultural literature, we learn that the excess of sodium creates a poor structure for the soil, and because of this, vegetation is scarce. With little ground cover, the clay that has been developed over eons tends to wash away, and we are left with pronounced sandy and silty areas with poor water retention. Water that falls on such sandy soil drains quickly and leaches away into the subsoil. As Steiner says, “sand is pervious and will suck in the water.”⁴ In light soil, techniques to darken it with shade from vegetation, organic matter from compost, and biochar and clay help improve water retention.

In a salt-rich area, the continuous intake of salty water gives obvious signs of burning in many plants. The image of salt-scalded plants reminds me of the perspective in Ayurveda where salt in excess becomes “fire in the organism.” Water retention and salt mitigation are serious concerns in the dry tropics. Ehrenfried Pfeiffer says, “For every soil which has a tendency to dry out – be it garden or farm in a temperate or tropical climate – mulching and shading create conditions under which a healthy fermentation can develop, and losses of humus be avoided.”⁵ We retain more water by providing a multi-layered agroforestry situation so that the ground is more shaded than if left exposed. Alan Chadwick says that young transplants should be watered regularly to accelerate growth until their leaves fully shade the soil around their own roots, at which point watering can be somewhat reduced.

Steiner tells us in the Agriculture Course how sodium belongs to the salts of the calcium pole: 

“[I]n all parts of the earth, although not in such abundance as silicon, we find lime and its allied substances, (limestone, potash and sodium). If these were present in smaller proportions we would have plants whose stems were only narrow and twisted.”⁶

As I consider these lines of Steiner, I observe in the landscape the tendency of oasis plants to grow thin and tall. This, as well as my familiarity with the general conditions of the soils of this region makes me wonder if some excess of one of these elements “allied” to lime produces exaggerated vertical growth that lacks calcium to mitigate. But this is far from true. When reviewing several soil tests of this area, it is clear that having only  250 millimeters (9.84 inches) per year of rain, the soil retains more than enough calcium, magnesium, and potassium. It is only the superabundance of sodium that generates the illusion of deficiencies of its “allied” substances, because the plants consume so much sodium, the effects of the others become muted. Were these lime “allied” elements really absent in our soil here, the evolution of native plants would look more like a narrow vining plant such as bindweed (Convolvulus arvensis). This is not the dominant tendency here. Instead of developing grasping tendrils to support their upward growth by clinging to surrounding plants, the native plants in our oasis show the opposite tendency with trunks that become swollen at the base.

Image: left, morning glory (Ipomoea purpurea) flower; right, morning glory leaf and vining tendril

So the question is, what is the purpose and relationship of this specialized exaggerated verticality?

As Steiner says, “The root is rich in salt, the blossom rich in light.”⁷ Minerals tend to settle downwards, and essential oils tend to rise. But in the case of evolution where the soil contains a lot of salt, the root process expresses itself above the soil as well. 

Perhaps part of this imagination has to do with another passage:

“[P]lants with highly developed roots, the root-forming forces deposit potassium salts and sodium salts, the tendency will be found in them to retain root forces even in the foliage and this means a tendency to beneficial action in cases of hemorrhage as well as gravel of the kidneys.”⁸

Steiner suggests that plants that “retain root forces” above the ground have a tendency to help in cases of gravel (kidney stones), which is to say, the plant embodies a process that helps release excessive minerality towards the root instead of burning the leaves. He specifically mentions shepherd’s purse (​​Capsella bursæ-pastoris) as a remedy, for its tendency for the leaves to cling to the earth “leaf after leaf” growing almost horizontally. There almost seems to be an aspiration within the leaves of shepherd’s purse not for heaven, but for the earth. Within the human organism, Steiner suggests that this helps dissolve kidney stones, though in this image it means directing the salt process to the head. One can call to mind other plants that have an active rooting tendency not only in their leaves but also their stems, such as tomatoes (Solanum lycopersicum), Japanese knotweed (Reynoutria japonica), devil’s backbone (Kalanchoe daigremontian), and the Goethe plant (Kalanchoe pinnata), among many others. 

Image: aerial roots descending from tomato plant (Solanum lycopersicum)

Image: swollen “trunk” of kohlrabi (Brassica oleracea Gongylodes Group)

When opening a trunk of a native palm tree found in the aridest areas around the oasis, you can experience the strength of the tissue that supports its existence with a strong fibrous thickness, the texture of which resembles closely what you find if you cut open a thick root of a medicinal plant. As Steiner mentions, it would seem that these “root-forming forces” project up into the stems of these species. When soft living tissue presses against a crystalline surface and a callus is produced, the flow of sap internally produces fibers almost like “calluses” in response to salt intake. As the sap rises, sodium is deposited as a rigid structure so the etheric quality of the plant has a chance to express itself above. 

Life in its intelligent operation is aware that when growing on sand with little rainfall, water always departs almost as quickly as it arrives. Excessive sodium creates a kind of “high blood pressure” in the plant, driving vertical growth, whereas potassium helps contain the expansive pressure within tender growth. In the palm, we see fibrous rootlike tendrils forming as a kind of subcutaneous aerial root out of the cambium. In other palm trees, this tendency produces actual aerial roots that extend to the ground, though in our local oasis here the native palm stops at a fibrous roots extending along the cambium. The hardening of the circulatory system along the trunk prevents the excessive mineral deposits from burning the leaves above. Aerial roots and rootlike fibers allow for surplus salt to be separated from the upwelling sap and permits the leaves above to be purified enough so they are not burned by excessive salt. One could almost see such rootlike filaments descending while the growth of the plant ascends as a sort of etheric flame rising from a candle while wax drips down the sides.  

Image: candles dripping wax

"Aerial roots, The Palm House - geograph.org.uk - 4546534" by N Chadwick is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/?ref=openverse. 

Unlike palms, oaks and similar trees where calcium forces prevail and offer external protection that makes them almost impenetrable. In the case of palm trees, sodium predominates, and the tree seals itself off from the inside in an almost semi-permeable way. In normal trees, they drink water in from the roots and discharge water from the leaves. In palm trees, they drink from the roots, yes, but they also retain the “root” function of absorbing water and condensing dense rootlike filaments in their trunks. The oak absorbs mineral salts and especially calcium to create a protective bark, whereas the palm tree wrestles with surplus sodium which displaces the “head forces” into the rhythmic midsection. Some species expel excessive salts as aerial roots like specialized “release valves,” sending the surplus minerality back where it belongs, with the earth.

Steiner says, “Were only the etheric body to work, then the plant would unfold endlessly leaf by leaf; this is brought to a conclusion by the astral body. The etheric body is muted by the astral.”⁹ By contrast, we might say that if the work of the mineral-salt body were to predominate in a plant, we would witness the growth of fibrous root after root. It is as if the tender etheric quality here wrestles with the sharp salty quality and, when the former “loses,” woody fibers are formed or, in some cases, true aerial roots are released downward. But where the tender etheric quality triumphs over the hardening effects of excessive salts thanks to the beneficial effects of potassium, expansive succulent green growth is witnessed. We must remember that the cambium relates to roots already, even where it is tender and green. After all, the cambium drinks up water and transports minerals from the earth to the rest of the plant. “Although the cambium does not look like roots, it is the living, growing layer, constantly forming new cells, so that the plant-life of the free grows out of it, just as the life of a herbaceous plant grows up above out of the root below.”¹⁰ When the cambium is too saturated by salts, it manifests as fibrous root-like structures. It is almost as if the tender green cambium dries out and becomes a clear picture of its inner rootlike quality in palm trees.

Steiner, speaking of perennial plants versus tender annual plants, says, “through the cambium, a relative poverty of ether is engendered in the tree, the root in its turn will be influenced. The roots of the tree become mineral — far more so than the roots of herbaceous plants.”¹¹ In the example of the palm tree, this effect does not simply occur within the root itself, but above the ground in the cambium where it grows fibrous rootlike tendrils. The cambium itself becomes mineralized in salt-dominated plants. 

Image: the root-like quality of the fibrous bark of palm trees.

If there is a dominant influence of sodium as there is here in the oasis, we see mineralized cambium and exaggerated vertical growth. By contrast, if potassium prevails over sodium, we tend to see saturated swollen fleshy vegetal tissue as in the case of bananas, potatoes, and kohlrabi. Even though this is a mineral-rich area, if we do not apply ash (for the potassium salts) to corn, it grows stalks that are too dense and spindly. The application of ash helps the corn thicken properly into fleshy stalks. If our celery is to stringy and fibrous, it is likely that the soil is deficient in available potassium. While trace minerals arrive in the air and rain from the cosmos, Steiner says that “The truth is that Mother Nature will abandon us without mercy, if we do not pay proper regard to potash, limestone or phosphoric acid.”¹²

Image: the fleshy water-holding effect of potassium which helps stalks and fruiting bodies increase in size

Image: too much sodium with too little of the other lime “ally” potassium, resulting in excessively narrow fibrous vertical growth

Image: the hardened fibrous habit of enhanced fibrous growth under the prolonged evolutionary influence of abundant sodium

In the palm tree, the tender quality of green leaves expresses the salty water that has become sweet; the aerial roots of the mineralized cambium striving towards the ground express the excessive mineral salts and the attempt to return them to the earth. As salt does not evaporate, the foliage is how the water leaves the plant, the extra rootlike elements how the plant compensates for and separates out too much salt.

Here we have stumbled onto a little secret. Some of the most nourishing ingredients for compost are in the air. The leaves of a plant that are able to overcome saline conditions can impart the same quality to other plants. If we want plants to thrive in the way that palms thrive, we should use robust wild native plants to supply what is missing in our tender garden plants. Ehrenfriend Pfeiffer pointed out that primitive plants like the epiphyte Spanish moss (Tillandsia usneoides) are ideal compost ingredients, as they contain a healthy concentration of trace nutrients plus the ability to live directly from what they inhale from the atmosphere. By looking out at nature, we can select plants that thrive in difficult native conditions and impart their powers to the crops we introduce in our gardens.

If we hold the image of the palm tree absorbing water from its roots in the soil and discharging excessive heaviness as mineralized cambium or through new aerial roots, how is this picture reflected in our interaction with the ecosystem, and how does this inform our production of food within this ecosystem?

How do we embrace this living gesture offered to us by native plants? 

In the case of aerial roots, the life of plants extends not merely into the soil but into the surrounding atmosphere. Steiner says, “The actual life [of the plant] is continued, especially from the roots of the plant, into the surrounding soil.”¹³ But these plants experience as “soil” what other plants could not tolerate: their roots growing in direct sunshine. The specialized indigenous plant tells us something about how to help introduced crops thrive in the same region. Our gardens need salt-loving plants to absorb the excess so our other plants can thrive. Aerial roots are rather like living stalactites, rich mineral deposits dripping downward as an expression of an abundant hunger for the earth element. It is as if these plants must release excessive heaviness and, to do so, allow these mineralized filaments to grow downward. By releasing excessive heaviness, the rest of the plant may come to express buoyant levity in its tender etheric leafy growth. 

"Travertine soda straw stalactites & bulbous stalagmites in dolostone network cave (Crystal Cave, near Spring Valley, Wisconsin, USA) 1" by James St. John is licensed under CC BY 2.0. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/?ref=openverse.

It is worth remembering, as Steiner remarks, that, in many cases, there is “no sharp boundary between the life within the plant and that in its immediate environment.”¹⁴ This means that, while plants appear to be distinct above ground, below ground they are indistinguishable and interconnected. Soil science confirms this: plants trade nutrients below ground, even between different species. Though Steiner says the following about yarrow (Achillea millefolium), it applies to innumerable other plants, “like sympathetic people in human society, who have a favorable influence by their mere presence and not by anything they say, so…. in a district where it is plentiful, [it] works beneficially by its mere presence.”¹⁵ Merely growing salt-loving plants near our less salt-tolerant garden plants has a beneficial influence. 

Image: A sketch of how plants are all interconnected below ground from the Agriculture Course, Lecture VII.

The imagination of the native palms absorbing water in their roots, and excreting excessive minerality out of the cambium leads me to reflect on the ancient inhabitants and their first efforts to tend their own gardens within nature by imitating the spaces with which they coexisted. 

The illusion of separation offers the opportunity to experience an image that moves inside the life of the human soul, and this gives birth to externalized action corresponding to what lives outside. The “external” thing lives in me if it becomes an internal image full of feeling, the form of which becomes the basis of new memory and later reflection. After all, what is not first felt will not even be noticed, much less experienced, and therefore cannot form the basis of reflective thought. As such, thought grows out of what has been vividly felt in the past and is then retrieved through imaginative remembrance.

This is how we try to practice a biodynamic way of agriculture, giving birth to a kind of communication without words, but rather with signs, imitating the verticalities and their spaces, heights, individual leaf gestures, all the edges that define the type and shape of spaces where sunlight, air, and moisture travel.

Image: Agroforestry in an oasis garden imitating the vertical gesture of sodium-tolerant native plants 

Image: agroforestry in the dry tropics

Oh blessed salt 

that allows us to stop for an instant

making rough the dry steps of your attempt

making fiber the path of your waters

you provoke the dance that hypnotizes your impulses

tempering in each cycle your humors

so that the Divine may appear that sends you

sweetened and with all its colors.

What is very humbly intended to be expressed in the above verse is that in order to produce food of a very different kind than what is native to the site, you would first have to allow the forces at work in nature to have a new conduit by which they can become absorbed and expressed as plant growth, so that the natural polarity of green exhalation and dense fibrous filaments expresses itself in a new way.

By planting salt-loving plants, the soil is sweetened. In the specific case of this farm, we plant species that can mimic the gesture of raising “salty” water in summer and refine it into “sweet” water through photosynthesis. With the exception of purely parasitic plants, all plants are light-breathers, whether rooted in the soil or not. Once carbohydrates become part of the vital system of substances below and above ground, a new organization arises that initiates the organic oscillation between the two polarities, allowing for the possibility of planting foods that like sweeter ecosystems.

By imitating the gestures that we find in “the Other,” we are illuminated by the inner motivation that animates the limits and expansions of the plant’s form. In doing so, we are telling it: I understand you, I follow you. We are imitating the steps to learn the dance.

Working with plants as verbs rather than with nouns–as an ongoing living process rather than dead final products–can lead us to explore activities in some cases different from those found in the biodynamic literature. In our particular case, for example, instead of being aware of fungus when there is excess humidity, we practice watering on the days when the Moon passes through a sidereal Water constellation (Pisces, Cancer, Scorpio). Better still, we water if the Moon is waxing, to support this rise of the waters and the swelling of the tissues that support it. Of course, these are not rigid rules but, with observation, we can use such opportunities to enhance the water flowing through the stems of plants.

It is clear that in addition to participating in this type of process, adding the application of biodynamic field preparations, good compost, and understanding how your farm dances can be more advantageous than just letting the oasis reach its balance alone. After all, we are here to express our individual freedom and venture into the experimentation of what we call Nature, to perhaps at some point become more flexible and graceful in our movements, trying to reflect that which moves us from the heart and that which moves not only us but the whole universe we inhabit. As Goethe says, “If we want to approach a living perception (Anschauung) of nature, we must become as mobile and flexible as nature herself.”¹⁶

May the next steps we dance be graceful.

1. “[I]f one really investigates sea-water, one discovers that this salty sea-water stands in but slight connection with the universe. Just as with us, for example, the stomach is but slightly connected with the outer world — in fact, merely through what it receives — so there is very little connection between the interior of the sea and the heavens. Land, on the contrary, has a strong connection with the heavens — land through which the rivers flow, where plants are brought forth through the salty deposits, particularly, however, where there are flowing waters.” - R. Steiner, Cosmic Working in Earth and Man, Lecture I (GA352, Dornach, 9th February, 1924)

2. Rudolf Steiner, The Agriculture Course, Lecture IV, GA327, 12 June, 1924 Koberwitz

3. Rudolf Steiner, The Agriculture Course, Lecture IV, GA327, 12 June, 1924 Koberwitz

4. Rudolf Steiner, The Agriculture Course, Lecture V, GA327, 13 June, 1924 Koberwitz

5. E. Pfeiffer, Soil Fertility: Renewal & Preservation, pg. 101.

6. Steiner, Rudolf, Agriculture Course, GA327, 7 June 1924, Koberwitz

7. Steiner, Rudolf, Agriculture Course, GA327, 12 June, 1924 Koberwitz

8. Steiner, Rudolf, Spiritual Science and Medicine, Lecture XV, GA312 (4 April 1920, Dornach)

9. Steiner, Rudolf, Stuttgart, February 8, 1909, GA98

10. Steiner, Rudolf, Agriculture Course, Lecture VII, GA327, 15 June 1924, Koberwitz

11. Steiner, Rudolf, Agriculture Course, Lecture VII, GA327, 15 June 1924, Koberwitz

12. Steiner, Rudolf, Agriculture Course, Lecture V, GA327, 13 June, 1924 Koberwitz

13. Rudolf Steiner, The Agriculture Course, Lecture IV, GA327, 12 June, 1924 Koberwitz

14. Steiner, Rudolf, Agriculture Course, Lecture IV, GA327, 12 June 1924, Koberwitz

15. Steiner, Rudolf, Agriculture Course, Lecture V, GA327, 13 June, 1924 Koberwitz

16. (Goethe, 1807; translation by CH; in Miller p. 64).