Here is some attempt at response. Terribly time consuming. Hope I see you in NZ in July. I'd like to forward this discussion to BDnow to see if I can stimulate any further comments.
Hugh Lovel (one "l" on the end)
Hugh--
Gill asked me to forward this request to you, their server isn't connecting. Take care.
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From: "gill cole" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "'Dave Robison'" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, "'Hugh Lovell'" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: "'Peter Michael Bacchus'" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Prep 500 and 501 effects
Date: Thu, 29 May 2003 10:35:10 +1200
X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook, Build 10.0.3416
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Dear Hugh and Dave
My partner, Peter Bacchus passed on your email addresses and recommended that I write and ask for your comments on my attempts to understand the calcium and silica processes in plants in relation to plant physical physiological processes.
Dear Gill,
The best I can do is give you my observations. I can't see how you might be applying the various BD remedies and the timing of each or the proximity of spraying the 500 and 501. These factors make a big difference, and each individual case is different with the plot's past history, present soil fertility, light availability (season), etc. all affecting the plant. For instance planting lettuce in fall it will not bloom, while in spring it races toward bloom.
I am writing up my Masters thesis on the subject of the effect of the biodynamic field sprays on nutritional quality of lettuces and would value your assistance with trying to explain what's going on. I have been on BDNow sometimes and have found your postings helpful, but have missed a lot of them, so have probably missed a lot of what you have said on the subject.
Here are some questions I have in trying to understand Calcium and Silica processes, 500 and 501 based on agriculture course, Koliskos, Lievegood, Atkinson, Pfeiffer, Remer. I grew lettuces with and without fieldsprays, and in a second trial, with and without 501 (all had 500) My particular interest has been to try to show that 501 changes metabolism in leaves, leading to changed root exudates, which affect mycorrhizal and soil microbe activity but I havnt found a way to show that.
1 How does the 501 spray affect nutritional quality of plants? Can it be demonstrated and explained in terms of physical chemical and physiological plant processes?
What kind of nutrition are you looking for? What the 501 does is it enhances the plant's silica relationships. It stimulates photosynthesis, blossoming fruiting and ripening. Insofar as it enhances photosynthesis it depends on soil fertility and its uptake by the plant. Photosynthesis is mostly a lime (in this case magnesium) process, though it involves phosphorus to shunt the energy off into the carbon/water chemistry. A rich calcium uptake holds onto the energy once stored in the carbon structure, but if calcium is low the energy tends to leak away. But you must know that the lime process is involved because for the most part the leaves spread out on the horizontal, and lime works on the horizontal, silica on the vertical.
So for maximizing photosynthesis both horn manure and horn clay should be involved in the process. Horn manure improves the plant's relationship with the nitrogen fixing microbes in the soil and the protozoans that eat them and supply the plant its nitrogen as amino acids. The horn clay improves the plant's relationship with mycorrhyzal fungi that unlock the calcium, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, etc. and assure the nutritional uptake of the plant is abundant and balanced. And the horn silica then does a better job of photosynthesis and the horn clay takes the sugars and transports them more vigorously to the roots so they feed the microbes as root exudates better. Horn clay mediates between the horn manure and horn silica.
So not much is going to happen if you spray the horn silica by itself. You'll throw things off down the road to ripeness, period. It will be worst in a clay soil of low fertility, but not much better in a sandy soil despite the tendency in sand to hold the silica forces back a bit. The plant will get more out of light, its leaf nodes will be shorter, its leaves narrower and its growth more vertical. It will blossom and make seed sooner and be a small plant in general.
But if the spray sequence were 1st evening horn manure, next morning horn silica followed by horn clay in the early afternoon you would get balanced growth with all the plant's activities tuned up. I suspect this is where you would get the most of what you are thinking of as nutrition. This process will be favored in a soil with rich microbial activity which is well balanced between bacteria and fungi but is low in soluble nitrogen and phosphorus. In other words you will need good symbiosis between the plant and the soil microbes, particularly, on the bacterial side, the azotobacters, which live off the plant's root exudates and fix nitrogen, and the protozoans that eat them and release their amino acids in the close proximity of the plant roots where the plant sucks them up before they can oxidize (acid side) to the nitrates or reduce (alkaline side) to ammonia. Azotobacters in particular are poisoned by soluble nitrogen in the soil as this is their waste product if it accumulates. On the fungal side there must be good mycorrhyzal fungi, not mushroom fungi, etc. The mycorrhyzae will also live off the plant's root exudates, but they will unlock the nutrient cations from the soil anions. Phosphorus, as phosphates as well as nitrates, are anions, so the mycorrhyzae make phosphorus available in the process of unlocking calcium, magnesium, boron, etc. Soluble phosphorus poisons this process, while rock phosphates generally stimulate it.
So it's a big deal what sort of soil conditions you have. But providing they are optimum or close to optimum here is what you will see. The plant will get its nitrogen as amino acids instead of nitrogen salts. Its protoplasm will be jelly-like and albuminous and its cell density will be fine and tightly packed with good, firm cell walls and the ability to hold its energy in at night and not give off much energy in the infrared. Its protein synthesis will be a straight assembly from amino acids into complete protein and the peptides, DNA, etc. will reach their full genetic potential because there are no nitrogen salts in the way.
If there is loose, soluble nitrogen in the soil the plant has no choice but to take this up with the water it absorbs, and then the plant's protoplasm will be salty, watery and weak to the degree it absorbs nitrogen salts, particularly nitrates. The nitrogen salt levels in the soil will be worst when using a nitrate fertilizer, and this includes raw manure, but it even includes high levels of compost as the nitrogen compounds in the compost will oxidize and nitrify before plant roots get to them. So no matter the condition of the soil you are better off using low rates of compost and bolster the microbial activity with compost tea. If you have to use high rates of compost for some reason, spread them on the surface and let them trickle in, don't incorporate them deeply.
When the plant gets nearly all its nitrogen as amino acids guess what? In the chloroplasts in the leaves each chloroplast contains billions of chlorophyl molecules. Nitrogen salts would dilute the chlorophyl if present, but if the chloroplasts aren't salted and watered down with nitrogen salts photopynthesis is markedly improved. Then sugar production is as high as possible, and what is more the plant doesn't have to burn up sugars converting nitrogen salts to amino acids. Then root exudates will be richer because the plant sap is richer in sugars. Then the soil microbes go nuts and fix nitrogen and elaborate nutrients at higher and higher levels and the plant sends this to its growing tips and its waxing fruits at a great rate and the plant grows so well you may never have seen such before. This is an entirely different result than if you used 501 by itself on land that wasn't really cooking with balanced, rich microbial activity.
It appears the silica spray has effect of increasing cell respiration and activity of enzymes such as nitrate reductase, Rubisco, resulting in changed nitrogen and sugar metabolism more complex amino acids and proteins, different sugars. This effect has also been found with growing plants in hydroponic solutions containing silica.
2 Steiner said the relationship between potassium and silica in forming protein is important how?
I don't know how. But I do know that plants that produce fiber, such as okra, cotton or hemp, are rich potassium feeders. And fiber is a function of long chain proteins. I'm not clear that anyone has uncovered the biochemical pathways that yield this result.
3 how far can 500 and 501 be related to Calcium and Silica processes?
Ca is a moon process - and winter sun process?, 500 winter sun,
Si and 501 are outer planet and summer sun process ?
There's no doubt Ca and Si do different things in winter than in summer. Also they have different activity depending on whether they are in mineral form or whether they are taken up into biological complexes. In teeth, for example, the body lays down calcium and silica in mineral form. In the skull the calcium in the bone is mineral while the silica in the brain is biological. In the hair and finger nails the silica is pretty much mineral. Steiner liked to speak in broad generalities, so he distinguished between cosmic and earthly lime and cosmic and earthly silica. So you figure. But you can see how the two, lime and silica, can be either on the mineral or the biological side, and you can trace the pathways these follow. Ask Glen about it because he has it better figured out, presumably, than I do.
I ve found Lievegood and Glen Atkinson s concepts of primary and secondary processes helpful, but still find it hard to sort out what s happening.
The primary cosmic silica forces from the outer planets work down into plants (enhanced by 501?) and into the soil, are held by silicate rocks in the earth, then clay facilitates their uptake into the plant by the Secondary Si process, giving form and pulling the plant upwards how? through activating auxins ?
The primary (I would have said earthly) silica forces of the outer planets work upward from deep within the earth, and yes, they are enhanced by 501. I would have said the secondary (cosmic) silica forces (still of the outer planets) work downward from the atmosphere into the plant through the 508 (horsetail). But as I said, Glen has this figured out better than I do. I heretofore have been lost both in Steiner's explanations and Glen's.
Does 501 help to induce an electron flow, taking in O, releasing H+, building up ATP, so interaction with phosphorus. In my first trial one extreme treatment was no compost, but putting on 500 and 2 501 sprays. In the dry, sunny conditions, it had a contracting, flattening effect on lettuces does this relate to insufficient supply of Oxygen from water?
The 501 (silica) tends toward the oxidation side of the chemical picture, so yes, it tends to incorporate oxygen and release hydrogen. The 500 (lime) tends to work toward the reduction side of the chemical picture.
Thus I think you have it backwards below. For the plant to utilize nitrate or phosphate there must be some reduction occuring, and reduction is a lime thing. Without reduction nitrates wander off into the water table or are taken up in water into the plant in a poisonous way, and with phosphoric acid things aren't much better. However, to utilize ammonia there must be some oxidation occuring or the amonia will volitalize off into the atmosphere.
Does the silica process activate anion eg phosphate uptake? and nitrate? whereas 500 enables ammonium uptake ? But 500 enables more O uptake via nitrogen, via nitrate?
Humus/compost provide dark forces, terrestrial earth and chemical - encouraged by 500 - but 501 also activates humus breakdown (Remer) - and 500 also helps to bring in light processes?
4 How does clay affect the silica forces moving up from soil into plant? not via cation exchange, as that is more a calcium process? Is aluminium important in this?
Aluminum doesn't get up into the plant much, but its younger sibling, boron, does in trace quantities. Boron is essential for calcium uptake by plants.
Aluminum is used by lichins and fungi, as for example Lycopodium, a moss that grows well at low pHs, is rich in aluminum. But there is some relationship between the way aluminum stimulates mycorrhyzal fungi and the uptake of cations. Silica just provides the upward, levitational impulse (also known as capillary action) without which nothing would move upward in the plant. But if cations are to be propelled by this silica impulse there needs to be aluminum and boron, allied with silica, to provide the basis for cation uptake. Not much aluminum is taken up by plants, but what it does in the soil, particularly in regards to mycorrhyzal fungi, is very important for the uptake of things like calcium, magnesium, potassium, etc. and we should not forget that nitrogen and phosphorus uptake is facilitated also.
5 Some of the effects of Si on plants seem similar to those of blue light, but is its importance more in increasing coherence of light? - coordinating red from Mars. Blue from Saturn, yellow from Jupiter providing the effects on DNA which enable healthy photon emission as measured by delayed luminescence and transcription of proteins. can photons be related to chemical ions?
Certainly photons are important in plant chemistry. How important photons are and how much coherence in light uptake by plants (or animals) affects things is not so clear. For example animals have chemical reactions beginning at the retina and traveling down the optic nerve to the pituitary and affecting the pineal gland, etc. on through the body chemistry. We don't know nearly enough about this, but it is important way beyond what usually is believed. Pumpkin vines make more female flowers under the (I think it is blue) influence of one end of the spectrum and more male flowers with the opposite. The effect is great enough that reflective mulch manufacturers (aluminized plastic mulches) are experimenting with different color reflective mulches for different crops. R. R. Rife as far back as the thirties found that using a monochromatic microscope he could induce the chromosomes of E. coli to turn on and off and turn into Staph aureus, etc. Too bad that his work was suppressed and he was driven out of the U.S. to Mexico and his research terminated because he found in the process of his investigations a wavelength of yellow that destroyed cancerous cells. But anyway there is a LOT more to be learned here.
6 Nitrogen enables oxygen movement through the plant, but if you have too much, and not related to life, the oxygen gets out of control free radicals?
Nitrogen drags oxygen through the animal. But if you have too much protein (nitrogen, hemoglobin) and not enough oxygen sclerosis results. In the plant nitrogen, in the form of chlorophyl (protein) combines carbon dioxide and water and releases oxygen sometimes in the form of the free radical ozone. Pine forests are especially famous for doing this.
For the most part what carries oxygen through the plant is water. To some slight degree the free radical hydrogen peroxide is a wonderful stimulant to plants as oxygen at the roots can be deficient.
I know this is a lot of jumbled stuff, but I would be greatful for any comments on any of it
Thanks
Gill Cole
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David Robison
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