Lecture by Alan Chadwick in New Market, Virginia, 1979
Lecture 7: Propagation, Part 3
An Introduction to Alan Chadwick's Lectures and a Glossary of Terms
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The need for rapid growth of food plants, acceleration of growth, in order to achieve the best outcome. Receipe for potting soil. Preparation of seed flats. Transplanting into ever richer growing medium. Breakfast, lunch, dinner. Stratifications of fertilizations in potting soils. But in production of seed, the process is otherwise. A reduced version of this method for production of bedding plants. Darwin and Parsifal. Time and space. Energy. The crown of the plant in the area of discontinuity. Luciferic and Ahrimanic. Siezure of soil and how to prevent it. Biodynamic French Intensive System is designed to prevent the siezure of the crown presentiment. Affect of the Elements on seed germination. (13:39)
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New Market, Virginia, September 12, 1979
Lecture 7, Propagation, Part 3
...failure here, because the climate just writes the whole of that off as impossible. Now, in order to obtain this, you’ve got to have rapid growth. And here you’ve got the word "acceleration." Therefore this phrase that I am going to allude to, this little itinerary, concerns the production of the kitchen and around there. Therefore, we sow the seed of the plants for the kitchen in boxes or in beds, preferably in boxes. And we sow those seeds in boxes in what you call ordinary soil, ordinary nursery soil―no fertilization―and shallow, so that they shall get the shock of stoppage. So that with the Moon’s birth of those seeds, by sowing them two nights before the new Moon, when the first inclination magnetism takes place, those seeds are born and they will grow rather steadily in a very steady mixture of "a third, a third, a third," one-third turf loam, one-third sharp, and one-third compost.
As the Moon goes into declination, according to those plants, you now prepare boxes, preferably a little larger, a little deeper. And into those boxes you apply a fertilization of leaves at the bottom, which is what you had in the first place, but now you add a small amount of fertilization. Let’s call it breakfast. So, as the Moon declines, you prick out all those plants from that one box, into probably three, giving them a little more room, not very much, keeping them so that they will touch almost immediately. And instantly the roots―because the Moon is declining―will of course, send out their hunters, their scouts, and they will say, “Oh, I say, something has happened, as you are aware. The change has taken place, and there is something excellent down here.” And so it goes brrrrrr and then it gets into this fertilization and into this leaf mold again. And so the plant has had its first form of acceleration. That growth now increases over what the growth was before. And that that prick-out was done at a period when the root was more than the top. And that as the Moon was declining, the root proceeded and grew voluptuously, and the top rested at night.
Now that plant has formed a good strong plant and will either be pricked-out again or planted out. But if it is planted out, it will now have stratifications of fertilization that will give it "breakfast, lunch, tea, and dinner." So that when it is planted out with the Moon declining again, you have still got a root either equal or more than the top, which is important. And you must play to that as much as is possible. And now you plant out, and as the Moon declines, the root says, “Wow! Oh! Breakfast!” Brrrrr. “Lunch!” Brrrrr. “Tea!” Brrrrr. “Dinner!” Bang! And you cut your lettuce.
So what have you got? You’ve sowed your seed: thump, thump; prick out: thump-thump, thump-thump; plant out: thump-thump-thump, thump-thump-thump [faster and faster]—this acceleration all the time. And therefore you have got the perfection of the production of horticulture, also brought about by the manner in which the plants are sown or planted in the beds, which we will talk about tomorrow. Tomorrow is fertility?
Now when you come to produce seed, you must reduce enormously the attitude for that acceleration. The acceleration is for the whole advantages of the kitchen, that you shall not have to use too much artificial Sun to cook the vegetables any further to what they have been cooked in the garden. For all forms of cooking in the kitchen are only further forms of the Sun’s performance in the garden; there are no other.
And of course, when you come to nurseryfications of plants for the shrubberies, for the herbaceous borders, why you want to use that system, but you want to use it reduced. I’m going to go back to a discussion of seeds in a moment, but I want now to refer to the beds, and why… [ ] … I must go without my notes…
Now Darwin said that a plant somewhere has a mind. And you realize that he went out of religion into science, and then completely out of science back into religion. And you must comprehend him there. And it would be him in his scientific period, who could not but come to the conclusion that a plant must have a mind, because we have a mind, and because he was thinking with his mind, like a lunatic, instead of being …that. So what we refer to there doesn’t matter, but what he is saying really is that that energy embryo that was in the seed, that was born at the moment when those cotyledons flew open when the case was released, is still the same quantity of energy from the other world. For we must perceive that, as Parcival approaches the castle of the Holy Grail, his maestro, seeing him stand there with astonishment, says, “Yes, you see this is where time becomes space.” Therefore you cannot place a quantitative upon that entry of the other world, that brings about what we said is the utmost idée in seed and the least metamorphosis, becomes in the plant the utmost metamorphosis and the same quantity of idée. It is almost impossible for us in our physical mind to comprehend that that idée can envelop the whole of that metamorphosis, [even] if it became the whole world, like a balloon. Do you perceive this? Because this is vital.
Now, in a sense that idée, that embryonic position, becomes the crown presentment. It sits in the area of discontinuity of the plant: Luciferic-Ahrimanic. And likewise it sits between the Luciferic, the atmospheric, in the atmosphere, and the Ahrimanic, the soil. And that that is the whole danger position, both in the soil and in the plant, of what you would call seizure. If the surface of the soil seizes, you will not grow. And if the collar of the plant, which I am calling the crown presentment, seizes, it will be strangled forever. So the root may grow endlessly and the top may grow endlessly, but it will never grow as it should into a beautiful plant. And that therefore that area is the whole area to be utmost protected, and is utterly dangerous with the interference of the four elements. I use a word there, which is not justified, which I must use and you will understand it. That if that collar of that plant at any time seizes, you will not have a healthy beautiful plant. And that is the reason for the whole of the biodynamic attitude and the French intensive system. And it is in fruit orchards likewise, and it is throughout the whole of the horticultural garden likewise. Therefore, you have this control on the plant in the bed, in the soil, in the atmosphere, to prevent at any time that crown presentment seizing. And you protect it. And we will discuss this tomorrow when we discuss fertility.
Now, understand that the elements have the huge inference, of course, in the permission of the birth of seed. There are so many statistics in this talk; this is very difficult. In one case I would explain to you that, for instance, all of the vetches, including many other seeds, that when they produce their seeds, because of their government of planet, produce a hard shell and a soft shell. And that is why you have found in sowing seeds that you get two germinations with certain seeds, to such a degree that there are, for instance, the Lilium giganticum would produce some plants out of their seeds in two days, and the rest of the germination in two years. That is a planetary performance. And that with the Vicias, you find that, in all cases, all of the Vicias, they produce a germination, and then much later, often with a moon or two moons afterwards, another total germination, because they produce a soft seed and a hard seed. What an incredible performance, do you see? Where can it come from? You eventually, in the garden, you cannot escape it. You have to lose your verbosity and you have to become real, because you haven’t got any false boots to stand in. You have to have bare feet.
Also, in the discussion of element control on the seeds, you see one is expressing that certain of the eucalyptae must indeed have fire, as indeed your beautiful little tree, shrub, of America, Ceonothus...