Farming homeopath to reveal secrets for healthy gardens this weekend
VD Kaviraj is a Dutch homeopath, author, researcher and pioneer in agrohomeopathy — homeopathy with a farming and growing or gardening application.
His book, Homeopathy for Farm and Garden, has been translated into numerous languages, including five Indian languages.
The weekend course will involve theoretical and practical work on repelling slugs, beetles, larvae and other pests in a safe, effective, non-toxic manner; healing fungal and bacterial diseases; balancing nutrient excesses and deficiencies; and restoring damaged or traumatised plants and soils.
Because they cannot use conventional methods to treat diseases and pests, organic farmers and growers are interested in homeopathy.
Techniques they use to reduce the likelihood of pest and disease problems include rotations and biological controls, ducks or frogs to reduce slug populations and ladybirds to reduce aphid populations.
They are also permitted to use organic pesticides, which are usually less toxic, bio-degrading faster than other agricultural pesticides. Homeopathy is yet another approach.
In human medicine, homeopathy uses naturally occurring substances as remedies to stimulate the body’s own healing power.
In 1986 in Switzerland, Kaviraj started on his journey towards homeopathy for plants, when he successfully treated apple trees with a homeopathic belladonna remedy. The trees were suffering from rust. Not only did the remedy clear the rust, it improved the flavour of what had become bitter-tasting apples on the trees.
What could be termed an unquenchable thirst yet dryness of the trees, reminded him of scarlet fever in humans. So he used the remedy for scarlet fever in humans to treat rust in the trees.
However, for VD Kaviraj, in many cases, there are no human comparisons to be made. When this is so, he says: “We must take the plant as it is, in its own unique way.
“We have to take into consideration the soil, the weather, the climate and their food in the larger context, but also the plant family, which I consider their constitution.”
He says plant “miasms” are caused by different (wrong) cultivation methods and suppression of symptoms with poisonous substances. “The first causality is improper spacing in monocultures. Plants are too close together, which is unnatural, and they consist of a single species, also seldom seen in nature.
“The second causality is bare soil cultivation, which simply means a soil devoid of organic material. The third causality is addition of inorganic plant foods, N, P, K. This is similar to humans eating junk food, it keeps them alive, but causes problems in its own right. It is imperative to know all these circumstances in plant diagnosis.
“When there is no organic content in the soil, soil fungi are forced to attack the living crop. They have to live too, and this guarantees their survival,” according to Kaviraj.
“The second miasm relates to spacing, the stress miasm. The third is connected to the nutrients, the junk food miasm, characterised more by excess NPK and not enough micronutrients.”
A fourth — the poison miasm — relates to suppressive treatment of pests and diseases. The focus in much agriculture, including organic at times, is to treat the pest or disease, not the plant. “The suffering plant is not given any attention, other than noticing its condition. This is the wrong approach, and will remain a wild-goose-chase forever. It is the plant which suffers the pest or disease, and thus it is the plant that needs treatment,” says Kaviraj.
The implications of successful homeopathic plant treatment, which is very affordable and non-toxic, are enormous. To book a place on VD Kaviraj’s weekend course, email mark@homeopath.ie or phone Mark O’Sullivan at 087 2380720.
