TRESILLIAN, or House in the Sun
Pic Olive Harris
Pic Olive Harris
Cover pic 7 Studios
The moon's phases dictate exactly when almost every horticultural step is taken on behalf of Tresillian Estate by head gardener R J Harris
'R J Harris's Moon Gardening'ois a 256-page compilation of self-contained, detailed sections examining and explaining R J Harris's moon-related, organic, traditional way with the growing of common vegetables in the ordinary kitchen garden. The sections are presented in logical order by plant name, and within a detailed context instructing on the kind of crop rotation that Mr Harris has revived from times gone by, and which he has made his own after a half-century-long career taking him from a traditional apprenticeship in the 1950s to head gardener status by the 1980s. Each features, in addition to its principal content, brief, highlighted practical tips and boxed self-contained information which is complementary to the section's subject matter and arises out of R J Harris's|methods and life and background in horticulture.
Each section is written for the reader who has no knowledge of
-- gardening
-- organic gardening
-- horticulture's technical language
-- lunar-phase feeding
-- lunar-phase planting
-- lunar-phase harvesting
-- lunar-phase garden management
-- compatible planting
-- crop rotation.
Underpinning the sections is a comprehensive index of the manual. The indexes of the information panels' and tips' contents of the manual's first edition, now supplanted by the second edition, remain available on this website.
A feature of the manual is an e-mail-routed enquiry service for readers with questions arising out of the manual's explanations and descriptions. This is seen as an essential element and as a way of ensuring that up-dating, extending text for subsequent editions is written and compiled in the terms of the readers' horticultural needs.
The whole is set against R J Harris's professional background as the head gardener of Tresillian Estate, near Newquay in the United Kingdom's mid Cornwall.
'R J Harris's Moon Gardening'ois an on-going project. Up-dating revisions and additions are made to it, as required, each time it is reprinted. To facilitate this -- and as a matter of policy and for the foreseeable future -- the number of copies produced at each reprint is limited to 1,000 copies.
The vegetables and the related, moon-oriented concepts that are featured in the current edition have been selected to meet the current demands of the manual's users, and in accordance with decisions reached editorially regarding the nutritional needs of the human animal -- which, increasingly, are seen by the publisher as not being met sufficiently by the commercially-available product. They comprise
BEAN: broad
BEAN: climbing french
BEAN: dwarf french
BEAN: runner
BEETROOT
CABBAGE
CARROT
LETTUCE
ONION
PARSNIP
PEA
POTATO
TURNIP
COLD FRAME
COMPOST: John Innes
DEEP-TRENCH BED
FERTILISER (including vegetable-waste compost)
MANURE
MARIGOLD: Mexican
MARIGOLD: Pot
MOON
pH
PLANTS: compatible
PLANTS: non-compatible
ROTATION
SINGLE-DUG BED
SOIL
SUPPLIERS
Index
To see sample pages, click here.
To order a copy from the publisher, click here.
THE GARDENING MEDIA COMMENTED ON THE FIRST EDITION OF R J HARRIS's MOON GARDENING
Mark Griffiths, The Times:
'So this spring he speaks to the rest of us through R J Harris's Moon Gardening, which breaks with the induction-to-the-mysteries and calendar format of most lunar gardening books and is, instead, a dictionary of crops, techniques and issues that deals with each step-by-step. Readers who are determined not to be moonstruck should still find it one of the most straightforward guides to organic gardening around -- and it makes short work of all the New Age arcana.'
Sadie Sheppard, Amateur Gardening:
'The moon tells you precisely what to do and when, as far into the future as you care to look. Follow the phases of the moon and it becomes evident that there's a right and wrong time for planting and harvesting. Moon gardening doesn't seem like lunacy, after all.'
Andrew Blackford, Kitchen Garden:
'This is basically a book of good old, down-to-earth gardening techniques (Victorian methods are still very much the order of the day at Tresillian), with some interesting tips. It has to be said that the gardening techniques are explained in painstaking detail.'
