Storing Biodynamic Compost Preparations 502-507 – Dry or Moist: See Biodynamics.

The biodynamic compost preparations 505-507 require careful storage. Each one is given its own separate storage container. Peter Proctor (1997, p.85) advised keeping the preparations ‘cool and moist (not wet) in glazed [or glass] jars with loose-fitting lids in a peat-lined box or just surrounded by peat. Never put them in a refrigerator. They are best in a cool shady place, for example under a house or in a cellar.’ Peat is said to block or at least minimise any antagonistic forces (radiation, electrical currents) that may harm the etheric formative forces which the preparations carry. The preparations tend to dry out in unglazed clay vessels, such as flower pots (Courtney, 2/1992).

Whether the five solid biodynamic compost preparations 502-506 should be stored moist or dried is a matter for debate. Drier preparations were favoured by the main producer of biodynamic preparations in Germany, Christian von Wistinghausen, who died in his seventies in 2008. He told me he preferred “dry preparations and since pharmacies have been drying their herbs for millennia in order to store them, it cannot do much harm. By keeping them in a moist state they are already starting a breakdown and composting process of their own. I want them to do this in my pile of compost, not before. So I keep my preparations dry, and thus alive, like dry seeds, drying them using only air and shade. When it is time for the preparations to begin their work in the newly made compost pile this will happen naturally because as soon as the preparations are inserted into the piles they will gain the moisture they need.” This approach means that as the preparations are then no longer in their living state but have become dormant, they do not turn to earth after a few months like those held in a moist state can do (Jarmann, 110/2009).

However, Alex Podolinsky (2000) is critical of dry biodynamic preparations, calling them lifeless and ‘untransformed’, meaning they had neither been prepared nor stored properly and had thus not undergone the ‘transubstantiation’ process necessary to produce the high quality crops biodynamics should be renowned for. Podolinsky (2000) favours preparations which are moist and humic and which remain so when stored in jars in individual copper containers in peat-lined wooden boxes. See Alex Podolinsky’s Prepared Horn Manure 500 + 502-507 Spray).

For how compost preparations are inserted into compost piles and the amounts required see biodynamic compost preparations 502-507.

Bibliography

Alex Podolinsky., Bio Dynamic – Agriculture of the Future (Bio-Dynamic Agricultural Association of Australia, 2000), p.17

Bernard Jarman., ‘Christian von Wistinghausen 5th April 1933-20th August 2008’, Star & Furrow 110/2009, p.27

Hugh Courtney., ‘Attention Readers’, Applied Biodynamics 2/1992, p.7

Peter Proctor., with Gillian Cole., Grasp the Nettle (Random House New Zealand, 1997), p.85