When Should I Spray Biodynamic Preparations?

Resolving some questions about timing

One question I’ve frequently encountered is: when should we spray out the biodynamic preparations?

I do not think it is in the spirit of biodynamics or anthroposophy to give a rigid time because the spiritual day is a rhythmic phenomenon. Daylight hours expand during the summer and shrink during the winter, so a precise time is not equally applicable to both winter and summer for spraying.

Lili Kolisko affirms in her work that the spiritual beginning of the year is in the autumn. Ehrenfried Pfeiffer mirrors this idea when he says that problems in the orchard arise from things the farmer did wrong last year (or even earlier).

The Jewish new year, Rosh Hashanah, begins in the autumn just as their Sabbath begins with the sundown on the previous day. Christian liturgical traditions also maintain part of this idea, considering their own Sabbath to begin with sundown the previous day.

Rudolf Steiner himself claims that the original Easter celebration was in autumn, wherein an effigy of Adonis would be submerged for three days, and then “resurrected” as a promise of new life during a season when it seems like everything is dying externally. The celebration of resurrection was eventually transposed to spring.

Kolisko also noted that the “hours” of each day are not fixed but are dynamic. Take all daylight time and divide by twelve; this gives you your daylight hours. Likewise, take night hours and divide them by twelve to find the length of night hours. These “hours” are flexible, not fixed, and these flexible hours are maintained to this day within Jewish liturgical tradition in which an hour in halacha is calculated by dividing daylight time by twelve. These sha'ah zemaniot expand and contract fluidly with the rhythms of the natural year. Much of the world has forgotten this sensitivity, but in biodynamics, we strive to recover this kind of intimate relationship with these natural rhythms.

Some people have suggested that the etheric “inbreathing” time of day is any time after 3pm. This is partially true in a general sense, but with the expanding and contracting length of days, it’s not difficult to see that 3pm on January 6th is not the same as 3pm on August 6th. The earth is still very much exhaling by 3pm in the summer, while the earth is clearly inhaling by 3pm in the winter.

Stirring Pfeiffer™ Field and Garden Spray one hour before the shadows grow long in the evening.

I suggest these simple guidelines for determining when to do evening biodynamic soil sprays.:

1. Determine when the shadows grow long on your property.

2. Stir your preparation one hour before the time when shadows begin to grow long.

3. Spray out the stirred preparations immediately.

This is applicable for the Pfeiffer™ Field and Garden Spray, the horn manure (500), barrel compound (BC), and even Hugo Erbe’s Three King Spray (3K). The time will vary, but it’s a relevant rule year-round and isn’t rigidly locked to an arbitrarily fixed hour.

Fewer indications are necessary for morning sprays like horn silica (501), which is stirred one hour before dawn, but what is dawn for your particular spot? Dawn for plants is when the first light of the sun strikes them when they are quickened to new photosynthesis. This doesn’t mean first light; it means from the viewpoint of the plants whose entire experience of the world remains geocentric.

If you live on a mountain, light will strike your plants earlier than for someone living in a valley. You may be only minutes away from each other, but you would, therefore, spray horn silica at a dynamic time related to your space and how it relates to the cosmos, not just an abstract rule applied without consideration for the plants.

spraying fruit trees at relative dawn in our orchard

For morning foliar sprays:

1. Determine when direct sunlight first strikes your plants.

2. Stir one hour before the morning light first strikes your plants directly.

3. Spray out the stirred preparation immediately.

Some exceptions prove the rule:

• If you are cultivating soil, anything you spray immediately beforehand will be turned into the earth and will experience being covered by a shadow. I myself stir and spray out almost every time before cultivating soil, knowing that almost all of the forces added will be retained by being buried directly within the soil.

• If dense cloud cover only breaks by midmorning, your plants experience that moment of first direct sunlight as dawn. And if cloud cover rolls in early, your plants experience that moment as evening even if it’s only midafternoon.

These guidelines should help resolve some of the concerns about timing biodynamic sprays. This could be further fine-tuned with calendar considerations, but as a dynamic rule, it is a guide that does not offer a one-size-fits-all recommendation but rather a principle that will look different in every situation!

Calendar indications involve much broader considerations, but these are secondary to an intimate relationship with your particular place.

If it doesn’t look different in each situation, is it really biodynamic?