The Plant Doctor – Radko Tichavsky -May 2020

Radko Tichavsky is a Czech born Mexican Agrohomeopath. He is a co-founder and director of Instituto Comenius in Mexico and author of Handbook of Agrohomeopathy, 2007 (Spanish) and Homeopathy for Plants, 2009 (Spanish), Organon de la Holohomeopatía and creator and teacher of Holohomeopathy.

He is now offering a one semester virtual course in Holohomeopathy (in English). You can learn how to define and analyze holons and how to repertorize the specific homeopathic treatment beyond just disease or pest names. You can find out more here:  www.icomenius.edu.mx

NEW BOOK:

Organon de la Holohomeopatía

Six years in the making, it is the latest book by Radko Tichavsky, researcher on the application of homeopathy in agriculture. This Spanish language book covers homeopathic interventions in agriculture from the holistic view, allowing greater certainty in repertorizations. It addresses a novel concept of metabolic similarity, not only among plants, but also among different species of the animal and plant kingdom. It studies the formation and dynamics of attractors, areas of greater vitality within the holons and coexistence units of different living organisms Holohomeopathy is a fascinating contribution to the application of homeopathy to plants.  It allows one to discover a universe of surprising relations in vital dynamism. It puts into the hands of the agricultural producer, a valuable tool for the successful handling of pests and diseases in crops of any size.  For ordering or information: [email protected]

Dear Radko,

Thank you so much for all the information you are sharing. I’ve had blight and other problems with my tomato, cucumber and pepper plants in the past. The leaves start getting yellow, then drying up and turning brown, and the fruit were rotting.

I was wondering if you can recommend a remedy and schedule for preventing problems for organic gardening, that I can use when transplanting seedlings, and/or starting from seed.  I’ve watered with silica once after planting in the past but it didn’t prevent problems. I also watered with carbo vegetablis every 2 days, once the problems started, but it didn’t seem to help

Thank you!
Emilie

Radko Tichavsky:

Dear Emilie, the problem with much homeopathic advice is that it extends human-based symptomatology to the plants, and plants are only about 50% DNA-matched with humans.

Therefore, advice given from an anthropocentric perspective has a 50% chance of having some result and 50% of not having any effect at all, which in statistics we call a hazard.

Some human homeopathics can be used in plants, but not exactly because of the similarity of the plant and human symptoms. For example, some people recommend applying Carbo vegetabilis for plants with fever and thirst, or Silicea terra for intense weakness and excessive thirst in crops.

However, this oversimplified and anthropocentric criterion produces many mistakes and uncertainties in the results in the real crops. In this case you mention that you manage two groups of plants, one belonging to the Solanaceae and the other to the Cucurbitaceae plants. Then the recommended remedies will be divided also in two groups.

For tomato and pepper plants: take a 5 cm rhizome of ginger (this is the plant with 89 common metabolites with tomato and a little less with pepper) and put it in some mineral water and blend it well.

Then you filter the contents and separately cook a small potato well, and once it’s cold, blend it together with the ginger water extract. You leave this mixture to ferment for two days at temperature above 21 C. Once a biofilm or foam is formed on the surface, mix the content well with 500 sucussions, then place 2 ml of liquid in 198 ml of water and make 500 sucussions to obtain the potency 1 JT, then place 200 ml of the potency 1 JT in 19,800 ml of water and make 500 vigorous turns to the right and 500 vigorous turns to the left, placing the liquid in a spray bag.

Then you disperse this live bionosode 2 JT in all the soil planted with tomatoes and chilies. In this way you inoculate Bacillus subtilis and Pantoea agglomerans in the seeds and plants of solanaceous plants, and you add important antifungal metabolites for your plants (there are 43 antifungal metabolites in Ginger).

In this way you will prevent attacks from the complex of fungal pathogens (Fusarium sp. Sclerotium rolfsii, Pythium sp. Alternaria solani, and some bacterial attacks such as Ralstonia solanaceum) that are killing your tomato and  pepper plants.

As for the cucumbers,  you do the same procedure, elaborating live bionosode with the carrot root that contains 43 antifungal metabolites and maintains a great metabolic similarity with the cucumber.

In this way you will inoculate a complex of bacteria such as Bacillus megaterium, Panthoea agglomerans, and Pseudomonas fluorescens that will protect your cucumber cultures from fungi and pathogenic bacteria.

Then you can apply Carbo vegetabilis 6 CH and Silicea terra 6 CH to reinforce the process you initiated in the complex of microbiomes in soil and in the plants.

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Dear Radko,

Thank you for the continued sharing of your knowledge. I read in your February answers, you stated that Colchicum autumnale, through its polyploidy links, has the possibility to increase the collaboration between mycorhizal fungi and plants. Would you think ‘inoculating’ mycorrhizal fungi prior to use would then be of potential benefit?

Thank you
James

Radko Tichavsky:

Dear James,
Colchicum autumnale temporarily inhibits root development when applied locally, so pre-inoculating mycorrhizae together with this remedy is not a good idea. Colchicum should be applied first to the aerial part of the plant, and only a few days later you can proceed to the inoculation of different microorganisms such as mycorrhizal fungi and bacteria.

These are selected based on the list of similarity of metabolism of the plants, (depending on how many metabolites they have in common), because plants with similar metabolism also present similarity of ecto and endophytic organisms suitable for collaboration.

The topic of polyploidy is still under explored, what we already know is that several species of plants develop polyploidy in other plants and organisms, not only Colchicum autumnale. But Colchicum has a little more history as a polyploidy remedy since the first experiments were done around 1930.

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Dear Mr. Tichavsky,

I have lost 2 pink dogwoods and a pecan tree to the poison ivy in my yard.  It is choking out pines and other pecans one by one and is spreading through the grass all around where the dogwoods were cut down so my daughter and her cats cannot go there without getting it on them.  The vines are almost fused to the trees they are so overgrown.  I have tried spraying with a homemade roundup replacement salt solution and my neighbors tried Roundup but the Poison Ivy only seems to come back stronger.  Is there anything I can do homeopathically to save these trees?

Thank you for your time and expertise,
Amy Owens

Radko Tichavsky:

Dear Amy,
Hedera helix is not a parasitic plant, despite this widespread popular idea, but it is an invasive plant and its great vitality can inhibit and kill even large trees and negatively transform the forest environment.

The extraordinary resistance and vitality of this plant is based on an endophytic bacterium of the phylum Firmicutes called Bacillus amyloliquefasciens, which helps the plant to fix nitrogen from the air, make phosphorus available and produce growth hormones.

Herbicides such as 2,4-D, aminopyralid, fluroxypyr, glyphosate, metsulfuron, sulfometuron have shown little efficiency against this invasive species and generate significant ecological damage.

On the other hand, the same bacteria enhances salinity stress in many plants, so the application of saline solution has no effect in the dissecation of the Hedera helix.

Hedera helix can predominate on a holon, but it also has strong enemies in the kingdom of the phylum Gammaproteobacteria, for example Xanthomonas hortorum pv.

Hederae and Xanthomonas campestris pv. Hederae. This bacterium may enter the plant through either wounds or stomata and hydathodes. They survive in infected plant debris and in the soil and are antagonistic and co-occurrent with the Acidobacteria app. and both are exclusive with the phylum Firmicutes.

That is, once the Ivy plant is infected by Xanthomonas hortorum pv. Hederae this bacterium eliminates the “secret weapon” of the Ivy: Bacillus amyloliquefasciens and the Ivy plant decreases its vitality and perishes.

Since the bacterium X. Hortorum pv. Hederae is specific for Hedera helix it does not present any danger for trees and other plants in the forest. Once the Hedera helix is deprived of its endophytic bacteria, Bacillus amyloliquefasciens, and other natural enemies of the Ivy such as the fungi Colletotrichum sp. Ramularia sp., Phyllosticta sp., Glomerella sp. and Septoria sp. Also cause spots on the leaves, and decrease its vitality.

Several insect parasites then also attack e.g. Encarsia sp., Aphis hederae and also the plant Orobanche hederae, parasite Ivy plant.

The treatment for the control of Hedera helix consists first of collecting a fistfull of the leaves affected by the bacteria Xanthomonas hortorum pv. Hederae and Xanthomonas campestris pv. Hederae. and making a live bionosode.

You can recognize this bacterium easily as it begins as water-soaked spots which expand and turn brown and eventually black.  The diseased leaves are collected and crushed in mineral water (with CO2 bubbles) in a blender. Then some rice is cooked and liquefied too, then the two liquids are put together and left at room temperature for two days until a kind of foam and biofilm appears on the surface of the liquid.

We mix the liquid, filter it and take 20 ml of it adding 1980 ml of water and make 500 sucusions. This is how we obtain the first JT potency. Then we put the two liters of 1 JT in a container with 198 liters of water and make five hundred turns to the right and 500 turns to the left with a wooden stick, so we get the potency 2 JT.

We apply by spraying on the Hedera helix both on the trunk of the plant as well as on the leaves (if t’s possible to reach them) and on the roots.

We add as coadjuvant a little bit of potassium soap, to help the adherence of the remedy and to break the protective layer of the wax in the leaves of the Hedera helix.

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Dear Radko.

I would be interested to hear your thoughts on the current Xylella ‘epidemic’ that is causing such devastation to Olive trees and other plants in Europe. I find it interesting that again it is another disease that clogs the xylem and vascular system of the trees. These seem more and more prevalent.

Kind regards
James

Radko Tichavsky:

Dear James,
I addressed the topic of Xylella fastidiosa in Olea europea previously in the May 2018 column. I could only add a few additional ideas. Xylella fastidiosa belongs to the Gammaproteobacteria.

In bacteriosociology the antagonism of the Gammaproteobacteria with three other groups of bacteria Firmicutes is well known: Firmicutes include for example Bacillus sp. Lactobacillus sp., but also Crenarchaeota (found in seaweed) and Tenericutes. The Firmicutes phylum, and specifically the Bacillus amyloliquefasciens, is precisely the bacteria that gives the extraordinary vitality to Hedera helix, and can be extracted from its roots and prepared homeopathically in the form of live bionosode.

It is an important resource to combat the Xylella fastidiosa. This year, important experiments were carried out that put the bacterium Bacillus amyloliquefasciens and possibly other species of Bacillus in the forefront of the scientific community’s interest as a possible cure for the Olive Quick Decline Syndrome (OQDS)

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Greetings Mr. Tichavsky,

We have a small farm in Pampa, Texas (Zipcode 79065 ). Last season we lost our cabbage crop to White Mold (Sclerotinia sclerotiorum ).  The stems rotted and then the leaves fell off.  In previous years we were able to deal with various plant parasites and diseases, but this one proved difficult.  Can you suggest a strategy for this?

We usually average 23 inches of rain a year.  Also, around 259 sunny days.

In July the high temperature is about 93 degrees F

The winter low in January 25 degrees F

Thank you
Leszek Kaminski

Radko Tichavsky:

Dear Leszek,
The key to the control of Sclerotinia sclerotiorum in white cabbage is the management of the different antagonistic microorganisms in the soil.

One of the best known antagonists is the bacterium Pseudomonas fluorescen. You can acquire the bacterium in the market and inoculate it in the soil or apply live bionosode made of Lentinula edodes (shiitake), a fungus that fights Sclerotinia sclerotiorum but also contains the Pseudomonas fluorescens as endophyte.

It is preferable to prepare the bionosode from fresh shiitake. Liquefy it in a little mineral water and add a raw liquefied potato (Solanum tuberosum). The potato has 90 common metabolites with white cabbage and because of this similarity it also has Pseudomonas fluorescens as an endophyte.

It is left to ferment for one day at approximately 20 degrees C and live bionosode is prepared at a potency 2 JT. 20 ml of the liquefied potato with shiitake is added to 1980 ml of water and 500 vigorous suctions are made.

Afterwards, the two liters of the potency 1 JT are placed in 1981 ml of water and 500 turns are made right and 500 turns left with a wooden stick and the water is used before seeding the white cabbage in the soil. In this way the white cabbage harvest will be fully protected against the Sclerotinia sclerotiorum fungus.