The Biodynamic System of Gardening

The Biointensive method of gardening is based on harnessing cosmic and terrestrial forces that have positive influences on their crops.

The Bio-Intensive System of Gardening

Jay Martin

I have studied many systems of gardening during my 40+ years of market gardening.  My methods are a synthesis of what I have learned from the masters of the craft.  I read Ruth Stout’s The No Work Garden after my first year of gardening in 1973.  How could you pass up a book with that title?  Her no-till and heavy mulching system works very well with some crops but not all.  I tried her system on onions one year and most of them rotted as they matured.  The mulch kept the soil too moist for the onions which would prefer to be dry toward the end of their growth cycle.  However, mulching the cucurbit family (squashes, cucumbers and melons) is an excellent practice to keep the fruit from direct contact with the soil which could cause them to rot and for weed suppression.  I have found that mulching tomatoes can thwart the Colorado Potato Beetle from finding its way up the stem when they emerge as adults in the spring.  I have followed Eliot Coleman’s recommendations on crop timing and variety selection for continuous out of season production in cold frames and high tunnels with great success.  It truly amazes me what we can accomplish in the winter months with proper timing and selections.  

The system I follow most closely is the Bio-Intensive System developed by Alan Chadwick when he was invited by the University of California to start the Agro-Ecology Center at the Santa Cruz campus in 1967.  Chadwick was an English master horticulturist who had studied under Rudolf Steiner.  Along with his work at Santa Cruz, Chadwick lectured extensively on the Bio-Intensive System. The Bio-Intensive System is a marriage of the Bio-Dynamic Method and the French Intensive System.

The Bio-Dynamic Method was introduced to a group of farmers during a lecture series delivered by Rudolf Steiner in 1924.  The farmers had become concerned about the degradation of their soils and the yield and quality of their crops, suspecting it was the result of their transition from organic sources of fertility (manures) to synthetic sources.  The Bio-Dynamic method considers the farm to be an organism in which all entities; animals, plants, and soils are interrelated and co-dependent.  Practitioners of the method utilize an astronomical calendar that instructs them as to the most advantageous timing for particular activities based on harnessing cosmic and terrestrial forces that have positive influences on their crops.  Herbal and mineral preparations are sprayed or spread on the fields and gardens to enhance the soils.  In 1938 Ehrenfried Pfeiffer published Bio-Dynamic Farming and Gardening, which became the standard work on the method.

The French Intensive System has been practiced on the outskirts of Paris since the 16th century thru the 20th century by gardeners known as the Mariachers.  English gardeners were amazed by the quality and yields achieved by the Mariachers.  In 1899 Peter Kropotkin published the first English language text on their methods titled Fields, Factories and Workshops which described the system in detail.  It relies on the use of fermenting horse manure in deep trenches to warm the soil in their raised beds and close spacing of crops to increase yields.  Their year round production techniques gave them astonishing results and have provided a model for the techniques we employ today.  Stone walls were built to reduce the negative impact of winter winds.  The stones also absorbed heat which helped warm the micro-climates within the gardens.  Glass jars called cloches were placed over individual plants to trap heat.  The system is extremely labor intense but from what I have read the Mariachers made a decent living.

Th Bio-Intensive System was popularized by John Jeavons in the 1970’s with his book titled How to Grow More Vegetables.  The four core principles of the system are soil building, crop rotation, companion planting and intensive spacing.  Because it relies solely on human power, using no fossil fueled machinery, it is globally adaptable and dispels the myth that organic techniques cannot feed the world.  By the way, the goal should not be to feed the world, our goal should be to help teach the world to feed itself, as similarly told in the Biblical story of giving a man a fish or teaching him how to fish. 

All plants require a certain volume of soil to fully express themselves.  If we give them that volume vertically rather than horizontally we can reduce our spacings to where the leaves barely touch each other.  This is achieved by double digging the beds and planting in staggered rows an equal distance apart in both directions.  This technique is capable of at least tripling the yield and with some crops as much as 8 times the yield is possible.  Double digging garden beds is an extremely arduous task.  The top 8 to 12 inches of soil is removed with a digging spade so that the lower 8 to 12 inches of soil can be loosened with a spading fork.  Jeavons’ recipe calls for adding 4 inches of compost to the upper layer of soil as it is replaced.  I know of no faster way to create a garden bed with such high fertility.

Gardening is a journey, not a destination. You may have good yields one year and crop failures another year. It takes resilience and practice. We encourage you to find a method of gardening that suits your needs and your lifestyle but maybe more importantly, a method that connects you back to the land you are growing on.

Onward, Jay