Using Preparation 500 – Horn Manure

The garden will do better if you give the soil attention first, so your first stirring should be of Prep 500

It's a good idea to get a friend or two to help you - and you can share the 500 for your gardens - as stirring for a whole hour when you're not used to it is very hard work! And there's somebody to get the tea and biscuits while you stir J

timing – You need a ROOT day so click HERE to get an online version. I like to have Maria Thun's to hand every year, so I can plan, but this will do until you can get a paper-version (assuming you like them J). The stirring should be done in the afternoon (beginning circa 3 PM local time).

Look at the Star Calendar to find the right day to do the stirring. The day before, make a plan of how you are going to go round the garden spraying, especially while you’re new to this, so you won't leave out any bits.

You need …

•  1 unit of prep 500, horn manure.
•  1 unit of prep 507, valerian juice; it’s one of the compost preps but you use it here, with the 500 to help warm up the soil and encourage earthworms.
•  a non-metallic bucket. Wood is very nice but quite expensive, a plastic or enamelled bucket from Woolworths will do perfectly well; the point is to get the preparations on the land.
•  a wooden stirring stick; we use a length of broom-handle about two foot long;  or you can use your arm and hand.
•  a 4-6 inch wide wall-papering, house-painting or plastering brush – NEW, not one you’ve ever used for painting or plastering! – from your local DIY shop and keep it, along with the bucket and stick only for stirring.

Water –  Before the day of stirring fill up your bucket with rainwater or pond water. Not tap water with all the “stuff” in it like chlorine and fluorine. Water that has just come out of a well or spring can also be a bit strong. If you have to use tap, well or spring water leave it in an open-topped container outside in the sunlight for three days before you want to stir. This biodynamic stuff needs a bit of planning as you can see!

Method

Warm the water up to blood temperature.

• To do this, take a saucepan-full of the water from the bucket and boil it up on the stove; pour the boiling water back into the bucket
•  Test it for temperature by putting your elbow into it – like mother used to test the bath water for the baby J
• Put a half a litre, a pint, into a small pot (plastic is fine, like a big ice-cream tub)
• Take the required amount of 500, horn manure – use a thumb-joints worth in a ¾ full bucket for the average town garden – from its storage jar and crumble it into the small pot, crush it with the stick so it begins to dissolve.
• When it’s fairly well mixed pour the contents of the small pot into the bucket of warm water; rinse the pot in the bucket so you don’t leave any in the pot.
•  NOTE the time on the clock !!! Decide with your friend(s) how long you are going to stir each go; Paul and I do ten minutes then swap over, so it’s ten minutes on, ten minutes off and we each get three goes at stirring in the hour.
• 15 minutes before the hour is up – after ¾ of an hour stirring – put about 10 drops of prep 507 (Valerian) into the mix and continue stirring until the hour is up.

When the stirring is done, take the bucket and brush and walk around your garden – have a plan so you don’t miss anywhere - flicking the liquid onto the land. remember LESS IS MORE, you only need a few drops on the land, not watering-cans-full.  You put the 500 on all the soil in your garden – flower beds, veg beds, lawn, fruit trees/orchard, fruit beds, rockeries, bog garden, everywhere. It doesn’t matter if you splash the plants too.

 Don’t save any left over in the bucket, it goes off after a couple of hours and is no good any more. You have to make it fresh each time.

When you're done, sit back and have a feel-good time, you've done well and the garden will thank you - watch the plants grow!

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Last modified: 07/24/09