Stone and wind, sea and fire - these are the four elements as Empedocles discovered them. Find out how plants are attuned to these elemental and primal forces.

Some of the texts here are based upon 'Planting by the Moon'.

There now follows an introduction to lunar gardening, taken from the 2000 edition of the book.
 

INTRODUCTION To everything there is a season and a time to every purpose under heaven: a time to be born and time to die: a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted. Ecclesiastes, 3:1-2 HAVE YOU EVER WONDERED whether your garden vegetables would benefit if you planted them in synchrony with the phases and the cycles of the Moon?  Since time immemorial, man has held a belief in the efficacy of such a practice in various guises and according to different traditions which have developed on this subject. In many countries today lunar calendars are available for farmers and gardeners. There is now considerable evidence that crops can benefit from the right use of a lunar gardening guide, as this 1999 issue of Gardening and Planting By The Moon attempts to show.  It must be said, however, that present-day lunar gardening guides do disagree with each other on just about every recommendation they make. Old traditions on the subject have grown confused with the passage of time and a new start has appeared within the twentieth century organic farming/gardening movement known as Bio-Dynamics. The guide you are now reading differs from others in that it spends a few chapters reviewing the subject as a whole, before coming out with its own calendar structure. Folk traditions are described, as also is the evidence of modern studies. The book is for readers who want a practical grower's guide to the cycles of time and for those who would like to develop more of a perspective on the issues involved.  The aim is to stimulate interest and research in the area as well as to improve your vegetables. The reader is introduced to various modern studies concerned with the question of lunar influence, placed within the context of the burgeoning organic movement. But those who simply wish to apply the recommended sowing times for 1999 can turn straight to those chapters that talk about how to use the calendar itself. These recommendations are not the same as those in other lunar gardening guides but they may have a better chance of producing dependable crop improvements.  A gardener works with time. He or she has continually to make judgments of how the seasons are progressing, what the weather may do, and so forth, while simultaneously considering the limited time available. Gardening and farming take on an extra dimension if one is aware that, besides these mundane considerations, there are also basic cycles of the heavens to which animals and the plant world are very much attuned. Plants receive their energy for growth from the sun but, in other more subtle ways, they are continually affected by the Moon's ever-changing rhythms. A decision as to when to plant a tree should take such lunar cycles into account, just as a sailor puts to sea only when the tides are right.  With my colleague Simon Best, I produced earlier versions of Planting by the Moon in the 1980s. This new edition is concerned to reaffirm our advice, but has several new features in addition. It has, for example, data from years of racehorse breeding which has not hitherto been published. The book is intended as a 'hardy annual' and future editions may not contain the critique of different schools of thought as is here presented. A more detailed work describing the evidence on which it is based is planned shortly. My collaborator Simon Best has been busy elsewhere but may return as co-author in the future as much has developed from our original synthesis.  The idea that the Moon exerts a determinable influence on plant and crop growth may be as old as agriculture. The idea is found embedded in the folklore of many ancient societies, ranging from the Celts in early Britain to the Maoris in New Zealand. As far as recorded comments on the subject are concerned, Pliny the Elder (AD 23-79), the Roman historian, in his Natural History(72) gives many instructions on how to regulate agricultural activities according to the cycles of the Moon.  With the dawn of modern science the Moon was reduced to a lifeless orb which influenced nothing hut the tides and marine creatures. Beliefs which until then had been taken for granted, that astronomical factors and the changing Moon were important for the growth of crops, became discredited and lingered on only as superstition and old wives' tales. So it remained until relatively recently.  During the twentieth century, systematic experiments began to determine how the various lunar cycles played a part in plant metabolism, growth and development. Certain keys to understanding the relationship of plant response to lunar influence have now emerged and can be incorporated into a gardener's or farmer's plans as to when best to carry out various tasks, in particular sowing, planting* and harvesting.  This manual is presented more as an invitation to gardeners and others to investigate the time cycles involved in plant growth than as a dogmatic statement of how they work. It is an attempt at a synthesis of time-honoured traditions and twentieth-century research. Except where stated, all the advice and knowledge is based on experimentation. This is cited, with explanatory graphs and diagrams where appropriate. Although we are responsible for all the statements that appear in this manual, we would like to acknowledge the influence of the work of the two women, Lili Kolisko (l 889-I 976) and Maria Thun (b. 1922), on our own research and conclusions. While differing from them on some fundamental issues, we nevertheless recognize them as pioneers in lunar-planting research.  There are various astrological and related concepts used in the calendar. Readers unfamiliar with such things need not worry however. Clear step-by-step explanations are given in separate chapters. A star-calendar useful for gardeners is here presented, composed of two kinds of process: on the one hand there are rhythms of energy that pulse, or ebb and flow, in approximately nine-day cycles which should resonate with the sympathetic worker; and there are specific moments, celestial events, which the gardener should endeavour to catch.  It is our hope that this manual will come to be used not only for its practical advantages but also as an inspiration to gardeners to become more aware of the life-rhythms in nature which mysteriously connect the growth of plants with cosmic time-cycles.  *Here and throughout the term 'planting' includes the sowing of seed as well as the planting of seedlings.

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