August 2002
Is neglect a legitimate tool of gardening? The question came to mind when I fully and finally pried myself away from the PC at the end of the three-year writing stint that resulted in the completed 'R J Harris's Moon Gardening' and took myself into the unfamiliar territory that I dimly remembered as being the semi's back garden. I surveyed the three-year-old cloak of metre-high weeds and grasses that spread itself before me and, in the middle distance, spied the head of the patch's one and only Victoria plum tree.
In the ten years since it was planted this tree has borne one acceptable crop -- acceptable, that is, in being decently voluminous and composed of large, plump, well-flavoured units each carrying what R J Harris refers to as a good stone ("the better the stone, the better the fruit," to quote him in full). That was in the tree's fourth or fifth year.
Its other fruiting seasons it has marked with nothing at all, or an over-abundance of unusably small, hard fruits, or by providing board and lodging for the pest that causes leaf curl, or by smothering itself with a grey fungus and looking very pale about the gills.
Its principal achievement has been the development of wood. This it has done rapidly, making itself large enough for doubt to be cast upon the veracity of its supplier's statement that its root is of a specified dwarfing stock.
Now, I gazed it at unbelievingly and saw that the ends of its lower branches disappeared into the rampant weed growth occupying its bed, pulled down by the weight of its cargo of gorgeously huge, deep-bluish-red Victorias possessing -- as I established eventually, leaning breathlessly upon my machete -- the unmistakable, intoxicating Victoria flavour that makes it impossible to consume more than half a dozen of these fruits at a sitting. And -- an unrelated bonus -- scarcely a wasp marred the scene. Like the bees, those carnivores have been in short supply in Shropshire this season (as they have been in the past two or three seasons).
What had happened?
True, there was that discussion last year with my wife. About the Victoria's future. Standing beside the tree we agreed that one more season would be permitted to pass and that if, in that time, the creature did not do its duty, it would be taken out of the ground and its site would be put to more productive use.
Surely that had not influenced it, despite it having been right royally established elsewhere and at another time that communication between plants and humans is possible.
And then, there was the rhubarb root that had been inserted two seasons before into a correctly-prepared bed (vide head gardener Harris) positioned a couple of metres from the Victoria's trunk. The excavation for the new bed went one metre deep into the soil (encountering a few plum-tree roots on the way, it is true). Its metre-square (at least) bottom had been well loosened with a fork to create good drainage, again observing a key element of the R J Harris diktat regarding the creation of beds (the sections BED/1 to -/3 in 'R J Harris's Moon Gardening' refer).
The resultant good drainage could well have been of benefit to tree as well as rhubarb. For, whilst, unfailingly, the wretchedly few plums produced earlier had shown the unmistakable gummy, watery-looking droplets that indicate poor drainage at roots' level (my instructor in the matter is the head gardener), the glorious, post-PC harvest I witnessed now carried not a single, telltale droplet.
Be it acknowledged, too, that, by some quirk of weather pattern, the current fruit season had begun with no frost. In my part of Shropshire, late Spring frosts coinciding with fruit blossom time are the norm.
Acknowledging all of this, I was certain, however, that no steps on my part had been taken in the interests of the Victoria during the three-year enforced abdication from the garden. No liming to encourage stone formation. No feeding, for the well being of the tree as a whole. No watering at crucial moments. No mulching of the bed in which the tree stands, to conserve the soil's moisture content. No careful pruning in the one month of the year during which, I am told, this muff hound of a plant accepts surgery without going into a terminal decline.
As for the moon's quarters and the knowledgable use of them: never. When I planted the infant Victoria plum, R J Harris and I were strangers. To me, moon gardening was an unknown term and concept.
There could be no other explanation: a single condition had made the difference. Total, total, total neglect. During not one, not two, but three seasons.
Hence my question, to which I add two others: 1) if neglect benefited that one permanent plant, what others of its kind might it benefit; 2) does this suggest that here there is a field for research by some qualified institution?
p An ongoing Tresillian estate project for head gardener R J Harris is that of helping to bring about of a restoration of the once flourishing Cornish plum industry. "Just prior to the outbreak of the first world war, the West Country had numerous plum orchards and was known nationally for the quality of its more than twenty varieties," explains Mr Harris. "These, like the West Country apple orchards, were devastated just after World War II. Sadly, most of the old varieties have been lost. A new plum orchard has been established on the estate. At present, it contains about twelve varieties, one of them being a Cornish variety known as the Kea plum -- of which we have the Black Kea and the Golden Kea. There is also another Cornish type, the Wadebridge plum. So far, five crops of these have been harvested." Obtaining samples of the sought-after varieties has presented many challenges. These have been met successfully thanks to the informal and unsung fraternity of head gardeners, and by the exercise of the bargaining skills that all head gardeners possess. "There are many more Cornish plums that I have yet to acquire," comments Mr Harris, "but acquire them I will, for that is the way that the worthwhile things in horticulture are preserved."
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