Homeopathy for Plants - 5th revised and expanded edition 2021: A practical guide for house, balcony and garden plants. Extensively revised with the help of Cornelia Maute.

1 The basics

1.1 How it all began

Injured plants

Diseased plants

1.2 The principles of homeopathy – in brief

Remedy proving and the law of similars

Energised remedies, or the law of potentisation

1.3 Homeopathic compass for your garden

Choosing the right remedy

How to proceed

Dosage and administration of C potencies

Remedy given – what next?

Dosage and application in special cases

Storing homeopathic preparations

Preventive treatment

1.4 Repotting houseplants step by step

1.1 How it all began

Until now, homeopathy has played only a very minor role in treating plant diseases and deterring pests: a few daring souls formerly tried out a thing or two, but without making any kind of breakthrough – and this is still the case today. The experimenters were mainly winegrowers who were fed up with the amount of chemicals they had to spray on their vines. One newspaper article, for example, reported on a winegrower in South Tyrol who treated his vines with nothing but single classical homeopathic remedies and plant-based compounds, and was producing first-rate wines for top prices as a result. The wine grower naturally lost some of his vines to diseases, despite using homeopathy – but the same would have happened even if he had been using conventional pesticides.

In this guide, I make every effort to describe the use of homeopathic remedies in the garden as clearly and simply as possible. Below I describe how I started out by treating a damaged plant with Arnica – this motivated me to try out more. We have been using classical homeopathy in our garden ever since. We naturally also use proven, non-toxic household remedies and strengthen our plants with plant-based compounds such as comfrey, nettle, marigold and sage fertiliser or horsetail mash. We are constantly learning new things and are still at the beginning as regards homeopathic plant treatment. One of my main hopes is that our beautiful world will perhaps manage with far fewer chemical pesticides in future. This will be kinder to both the environment and our bank balances.

Fig. 1.1: Ms Maute with a delphinium

Injured plants

I first used classical homeopathy in my garden about eleven years ago on a beautiful, brilliant blue delphinium. I had bought this magnificent specimen at the weekly market. Unfortunately I dropped the plant while taking it out of the pot – the main stalk snapped, and the rest of the plant was only attached by a few fibres. I planted it anyway. As I’m curious by nature, I wanted to find out whether the homeopathic remedy for shock, blows or falls – Arnica 200C – would also help the blue delphinium. So I mixed a few globules (tiny pellets) of Arnica 200C in a glass of water, vigorously stirred this solution into 10 litres of water using a wooden spoon and used it to water the unfortunate plant. Next day, I was amazed to find that the delphinium was standing upright. The damaged area still looked slightly brown, but the plant was blooming again. So: coincidence or not? I forgot the incident and didn’t use homeopathy in my garden again for some time – whether from thoughtlessness or because I wasn’t sure whether or not the plant had recovered by itself.

The second Arnica miracle took place in my sister’s garden. During a violent storm, the crown of a blackcurrant tree broke off completely and was found lying on the ground about five metres away from the trunk. The blackcurrant tree was simply loaded with nearly ripe fruit. My sister watered the sorry-looking trunk and the damaged area with Arnica 200C, placed the crown of the tree back on the trunk and bandaged the crown and trunk with bast – that was all the support she used. She then watered the crown, the trunk and the surrounding soil with Arnica 200C once again. Shortly afterwards, the fruit was ready for harvest. One year later, she removed the bast bandage. The trunk and the crown had fused, although the damaged area was somewhat constricted. The tree still bears remarkable fruit, and the damaged area has now healed completely – no traces of the damage can be seen. My sister’s neighbours admire the blackcurrant tree every year. This year too, it was simply loaded with blossom.

Fig. 1.2: Arnica montana

Diseased plants

Our beautiful cherry tree on the terrace, which my father had grafted from exquisite heart and white heart cherries, was another specimen which benefited from homeopathic plant treatment. The leaves on our tree suddenly started looking odd. Neither my husband nor I knew why, and we didn’t pay these strange leaves much attention – after all, we would still be able to harvest enough cherries. Even so, every day we watched in concern as the leaves dried and fell off the tree as if it were autumn. My husband thought it looked like some kind of fungal infection, and I decided to treat it with Thuja 200C. I watered the trunk and the soil with the Thuja mixture. We repeated this procedure one week later. The tree recovered quickly; it was still losing dry leaves, but it started putting forth healthy green leaves in their place. Shortly afterwards, I received a phone call from an acquaintance: she wanted to know what I had done with my cherry tree: she’d paid our neighbours a visit and seen our tree from their house. It was probably the only cherry tree anywhere near Lake Constance which still had a full crown of green foliage; all the others were suffering from monilia tip drought. Only then did we look more closely at our surroundings and notice that the other cherry trees weren’t looking good at all.

Fig. 1.3: Ripe cherries

The concept of homeopathic plant treatment gradually began to spread. I was no longer the only person using homeopathy in my little garden; friends and patients also started treating their plants with great joy and good results. One day, one of our sceptical friends showed me his enormous, 1.5 m lantana bush which was absolutely crawling with spider mites. His gardener had advised him to burn it immediately, as they were supposedly impossible to get rid of and sure to infect other plants. Our friend announced, If you can get rid of those little beasts with your weird pellets, I’ll start believing in what you’re doing. At that moment, I didn’t really know what remedy could help the plant. I decided to think stereotypically: head lice in humans can be treated very successfully with high-potency Psorinum or Staphisagria. I consequently gave the plant Psorinum 10M, 6 globules dissolved in 150 ml water and distributed between two 20 l watering cans. The procedure was repeated one week later. I was very nervous, because I didn’t know which organism this treatment was going to affect, the plant or the spider mites – would they develop into invincible monster mites thanks to my treatment? Or would the pellets perhaps not work at all? Thankfully, nature is clever – the plant flourished magnificently and put forth healthy growth – without mites.

Converting disbelievers is not easy – our friend still dismisses the weird pellets as esoteric stuff and believes that the plant is sure to have recovered by itself.

1.2 The principles of homeopathy – in brief

Remedy proving and the law of similars

When we treat a sick person with homeopathy, the name of the disease or the medical diagnosis made when taking the case history is initially only of secondary importance. We start by concentrating on the patient’s symptoms. We try to find out

•what is causing his symptoms

•how his symptoms manifest themselves, where they are located, and

•what makes his symptoms better or worse.

The patient’s character is no less important: for example, is the patient introverted or extroverted? Does he have specific phobias or patterns of behaviour? Does he like or dislike certain foods, and does he feel worse in certain types of weather? We also ask searching questions about the illnesses he and his relatives have had in the past in order to get information about genetic predispositions. All this information gives the homeopath an insight into the right remedy for the patient.

The remedy the patient receives for his symptoms causes very similar symptoms in healthy people if taken over a period of time.

Note:

If healthy people take the remedy, it causes exactly the same symptoms as those which it heals in a sick person.

Example: If a healthy person takes low-potency (3X, 4X, 6X) Belladonna (= deadly nightshade) for a couple of days, he will react with severe headaches, painful, burning eyes, strong photosensitivity, high fever with steaming sweat, a tomato-red face, severe chills and possibly delirium – these are all signs of remedy proving. Let’s imagine that a child is brought to our practice with exactly the same symptoms. If we give him Belladonna, this will not make him sicker, but cure him quickly and reliably.

This is Samuel Hahnemann’s law of similars: like cures like. Samuel Hahnemann knew all about the natural laws. Some indigenous tribes still follow the same principles: the aboriginal and pygmy peoples, for example, fight bush fires by deliberately lighting another fire in opposition. The law of similars is consequently a mathematic principle: minus plus minus equals plus.

Energised remedies, or the law of potentisation

The correct preparation of the selected remedy is equally important. In homeopathy, this involves dilution and rhythmic succussion of the original substance after dissolving it in alcohol or triturating it with lactose. This dynamic process transforms the matter of the remedy’s original substance into a higher form, a vibrational pattern bearing the information from the remedy.

If we choose the right remedy, this higher form matches our vital energy like the right key in the right lock. And strangely enough, the more it is diluted and dynamised, the stronger its effect. In such cases, we are dealing with high potencies ( see Digression).

Fig. 1.4: Deadly nightshade (Belladonna)

DIGRESSION

Choosing the right potency is an art in itself, and at this point too much explanation would merely lead to confusion. That’s why I will try to restrict myself to what you as a gardener need to know.

•The X potencies (X1 – X23) are so-called low potencies which still contain matter; i.e. they still contain traces of the original substance and are used, for example, act like a fertiliser (à tomato growth, chpt. 4.4 ). Their duration of action is shorter and so the dose is generally repeated each day until there are signs of improvement, when treatment can be stopped. You need a larger number of globules for treatment with D potencies than with high potencies.

•The C potencies (30C, 200C and higher, chpt. 1.3 ) high potencies and have a longer period of action than a homeopathic remedy in the D potency. Due to the greater level of dilution and succussion between the individual potency levels, high potencies no longer contain any molecular traces or material residues. Whenever planting seeds or replanting, we look for the most suitable homeopathic remedy, in a C potency. Good results are seen with fungal, bacterial and viral disease as well as with pests. Thanks to their longer period of action, these high potencies obviously require less work, water and money. Many remedies should not be repeated more than three times a year, such as Silicea 200 C – a single dose in March or April is often sufficient here.

People who take a sceptical view of the high potencies say that you might just as well throw a lump of sugar into the ocean; high potencies have the same effect – i.e. none at all. If you throw a sugar lump into the ocean, you’re hardly going to be able to prove that it had any effect. So why and how do these homeopathic zeros work? Is it just imagination, are they just placebos? Plants don’t react to placebos at all, but they clearly show whether or not a remedy is helping them. Plants don’t interpret any improvement or degeneration of their condition, as people often subjectively do. If we give the plant the right remedy, it’s easy to see objectively whether or not it is helping.

Fig. 1.5: Homeopathic remedies

I have observed again and again that plants react very positively to high potencies (30C, 200C, 1M, 10M and CM) – their recovery is often gratifyingly quick. In this garden guide, I use the X potencies as fertilisers, but otherwise I mainly use the high potencies 30C – 200C and in a few cases even CM.

1.3 Homeopathic compass for your garden

As when treating people, when treating plants it is important to find out what might be causing the disease and what the modalities are (what makes the plant’s condition better or worse). In this guide, I have only included Made worse by and Result of in the table of modalities ( pp. 192-193). If the plant improves, e.g. by changing its location, the lighting, the temperature etc., you will obviously not need any homeopathic remedies.