Secrets of the Soil: A Fascinating Account of Recent Breakthroughs- Scientific and Spiritual- That Can Save Your Garden or Farm

Explores scientific and mystical developments that renew and enhance the soil, among them rock dust fertilizer, biodynamic agriculture, and other highly unusual fertilizers

To those who practice it, biodynamic agriculture is almost a religion, in which Rudolph Steiner serves as high priest, his Agricultural Lectures as bible. Steiner's dubious faith calls for packing manure into cow horns, burying it for a specified period, then digging up the mixture and diluting it to manufacture a spray that apparently eliminates chemical poisons commonly added to the soil. Tompkins and Bird, coauthors of The Secret Life of Plants , cite the work of scientists and philosophers such as Steiner to support their extravagant claims; they report on the special qualities of glacial water and efforts to produce it in the laboratory, and tell of a plant breeder who believes that birdsong, music and a natural foliar fertilizer can stimulate plant growth ("sonic bloom"). Such exotic journeys into the fringes of agriculture, best appreciated by true believers, make ordinary organic farming and integrated pest management, though perhaps more effective, seem positively mundane. Illustrations not seen by PW.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

This book, another preposterous (wacky might be a better adjective) work by the authors of the popular The Secret Life of Plants ( LJ 12/15/73), is about so-called "biodynamic agriculture," a method of agriculture based on organic farming and an assortment of pseudoscientific and occult principles. The book is full of references to clairvoyancy, pyramid power, and other such stuff. It is hard to imagine that many people would take seriously a book that recommends restoring soil with homeopathic doses of cow manure that has been buried in cow horns. Strictly for the gullible.
- Joseph Hannibal, Cleveland Museum of Natural History
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.