\ i
general must have been the belief in the influence of the Moon on
vegetation at that time, the following extract is given:—
A short Instruction nsery profitable and necessary fo r all those that delight in
Gardening, to kno^ the Times and Seasons nvhen it is good to sovo and
replant edl manner of Seeds.
Cabbages must be sowne in Febraary, March, or April, at the waning of the
Moone. and replanted also in the decrease thereof.
Cabbage Lettuce, in February, March, or July, in an old Moone.
Onions and Leeks must be sowne in February or March, at the waning of the
Moone.
Beets must be sowne in February or March, in a full Moone.
Coleworts white and greene in February, or March, in an old Moone, it is good
to replant them.
Parsneps must be sowne in February, April, or June, also in an old Moone.
Radish must be sowne in February, March, or June, in a new Moone.
Pompions must be sowne in February, March, or June, also in a new Moone.
Cucumbers and Mêlions must be sowne in February, March, or June, in an old
Moone.
Spinage must be sowne in February or March, in an old Moone.
Parsley must be sowne in February or March, in a full Moone.
f'ennel and Annisseed must be sowne in February or March, in a full Moone.
White Cycory must be sowne in February, March, July, or August, in a full
Moone.
Carduus Benedictus must be sowne in February, March, or May, when the
Moone is old.
Basil must be sowne in March, when the Moone is old.
Purslane must be sowne in February or March, in a new Moone.
Margeram, Violets, and Time must be sowne in February, March, or April, in a
new Moone.
Floure-gentle, Rosemary, and Lavender, must be sowne in February or April in a
new Moone. ’
Rocket and Garden Cresses must be sowne in February, in a new Moone.
Saveli must be sowne in February or March, in a new Moone.
Saffron must be sowne in March, when the Moone is old.
Coriander and Borage must be sowne in February or March, in a new Moone.
Hartshorne and Samphire must be sowne in February, March, or April, when
the Moone is old.
Gilly-floures, Harts-ease, and Wall-floures, must be sowne in March or April
when the Moone is old. *
Cardons and Artochokes must be sowne in April or March, when the Moone
is old.
Chickweed must be sowne in in February or March, in the full of the Moone.
Burnet must be sowne in February or March, when the Moone is old.
Double Marigolds must be sowne in February or March, in a new Moone.
Isop and Savorie must be sowne in March when the Moone is old.
White Poppey must be sowne in February or March, in a new Moone.
Palma Christi must be sowne in February, in a new Moone.
Sparages and Sperage is to be sowne in February, when the Moone is old.
Larks-foot must be sowne in February, when the Moone is old.
Note that at all times and seasons. Lettuce, Raddish, Spinage and Parsneps may
be sowne.
Note, also, from cold are to be kept Coleworts, Cabbage, Lettuce, Basill,
Cardons, Artochokes, and Colefloures.
In ‘ The English Gardener’ (1683) and ‘ The Dutch Gardener’
(1703) many instruétions are given as to the manner of treating.
•plants with special regard to the phases of the Moon; and Rapin,
in his poem on Gardens, has the following lines:—
“ I f you with flow’rs would stock the pregnant earth,
Mark well the Moon propitious to their birth:
For earth the silent midnight queen obeys,
And waits her course, who, clad in silver rays,
T h ’ eternal round of times and seasons guides.
Controls the air, and o’er the winds presides.
Four days expir’d you have your time to sow,
Till to the full th’ increasing Moon shall grow;
This past, your labour you in vain bestow:
Nor let the gard’ner dare to plant a flow’r
While on his work the heav’ns ill-boding low’r ;
When Moons forbid, forbidding Moons obey.
And hasten when the Stars inviting beams display.’^
John Evelyn, in his ‘ Sylva, or a Discourse on Forest Trees,’
first published in 1662, remarks on the attention paid by woodmen
to the Moon’s influence on trees. He says: “ Then for the age of
the Moon, it has religiously been observed; and that Diana’s
presidency in sylvis was not so much celebrated to credit the
ficitions of the poets, as for the dominion of that moist planet and
her influence over timber. For my part, I am not so much inclined
to these criticisms, that I should altogether govern a felling at the
pleasure of this mutable lad y ; however, there is doubtless some
regard to be hac —
* Nor is’t in vain signs’ fall and rise to note.^
The old rules are these: Fell in the decrease, or four days
after the conjunction of the two great luminaries; sowe the last
quarter of it; or (as Pliny) in the very article of the change, if
possible; which hapning (saith he) in the last day of the Winter
solstice, that timber will prove immortal. At least should it be
from the twentieth to the thirtieth day, according to Columella;
Cato, four days after the full, as far better for the growth; nay,
Oak in the Summer: but all vimineous trees, silente lund, such as
Sallows, Birch, Poplar, &c. Vegetius, for ship timber, from the
fifteenth to the twenty-fifth, the Moon as before.” In his ‘ French
Gardener,’ a translation from the French, Evelyn makes a few
allusions to the Moon’s influence on gardening and grafting
operations, and in his Kalendarium Hortense we find him acknowledging
its supremacy more than once; but he had doubtless
begun to lose faith in the scrupulous direcitions bequeathed by the
Romans. In his introdudJion to the ‘ Kalendar ’ he says:—“ We
are yet far from imposing (by any thing we have here alledged
concerning these menstrual periods) those nice and hypercritical
puncilillos which some astrologers, and such as pursue these rules,
seem to oblige our gard’ners to; as if forsooth all were lost, and
our pains to no purpose, unless the sowing and the planting, the
cutting and the pruning, were performed in such and such an exacft
minute of the Moon: In hac autem ruris disciflina non desideratm