Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Biodynamic prep at Glendhu Bay

My friend Su Hoskins has recently started doing some work for John McRae out at Gelndhu Bay Station. I'm a big fan of both of these people and really support what they are doing in our town in terms of organic growing. Su asked if I would like to take the Wanaka Young Change Makers down to Johns place to learn about the biodynamic prep she is making and applying to his land. How could we say no?








After what seemed an age we eventually managed to leave a warm and dryish town only to drive down the road into what looked like a pretty thick purple rain cloud. Thankfully the rain bated.

Su did an amazing job of explaining to us about how you use a combination of poo, plants, water, cow horns and human energy to make this liquid inoculent. What really stuck in my head was her description of why weeds appear. She explained that when a plant grows it is the lands way of providing the nutrients it needs. After the plant has died it will compost into the ground adding the nutrients within it back into the soil. What these preps do is speed up this process a little. Soil it seems is not only amazing, but also very clever.

We helped stir the prep, a very important part of the process to develop the right constituency. Once it was right we applied it to the land in two different ways.


Throughout the afternoon Su and Si had been plating potatoes and armed with buckets full of the inoculent we threw it all over the potato patch. Once this was done we refilled the buckets, found a brush and took a walk around the paddock. The process was pretty simple, dip the brush into the liquid then with a flick of the wrist distribute it around the paddock.

We had a ball, thank you so much Su and John for making this happen for us!

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