Lunar lessons in gardening

As I have writ­ten before, I have some­thing of a fix­a­tion with how his­tory and folk­lore tie into gar­den­ing. My favorite gar­dens tie into his­tory, like Eng­lish herb gar­dens, or colo­nial cut­ting gar­dens. But recently I became aware of a gar­den­ing tech­nique awash in folk­lore and his­tory: gar­den­ing by the moon.

As much as I wanted this to mean gar­den­ing by moon­light while lis­ten­ing to Ste­vie Nicks, it does not. Gar­den­ing by the moon is a prac­ti­cally ancient method that fol­lows the cycle of the moon, divid­ing gar­den tasks accord­ingly. Although gar­den­ing by the moon was not started by The Farmer’s Almanac, it has long been pop­u­lar­ized and pub­lished by it. With the new Farmer’s Almanac hav­ing just been released, I thought it would be fun to explore this the­ory in gardening.

First, here is a lit­tle back­ground on The Farmer’s Almanac. The almanac ties astron­omy and folk­lore in a fun and uncom­pli­cated way that is easy to read. With this being the first edi­tion of The Farmer’s Almanac I have pur­chased, I was excited mainly for the long-range weather fore­cast and fig­ured I would not read much else. I ended up read­ing it cover-to-cover and have referred back to it sev­eral times.

The Farmer’s Almanac has been con­tin­u­ally pub­lished since 1818 by the Almanac Pub­lish­ing Com­pany in Lewis­ton, Maine. Although it is not the only Almanac pub­lished, it is the most widely cir­cu­lated. The almanac pre­dicts the weather by a secret for­mula that com­bines astron­omy, astrol­ogy and climatology.

While the fore­casts are often reli­able, the almanac for 2012 was notably far off in its win­ter pre­dic­tions. One of the first fea­tures in the 2013 Farmer’s Almanac high­lights that they were indeed wrong about last win­ter “This past win­ter (as much as we dis­like admit­ting it) threw a knuck­le­ball at our long-range cal­cu­la­tions fore­cast a win­ter of ‘clime and pun­ish­ment’ …” Although, the freak snow­storm in New Eng­land over Hal­loween 2011 was pre­dicted by the almanac.

The almanac has pre­dic­tions for every­thing. The best days to fish, bake bread, get mar­ried, plant pota­toes, butcher a chicken, sell a car, etc. The rec­om­men­da­tions for gar­den­ing rely heav­ily on the cycle of the moon.

A major theme in gar­den­ing by the moon is that when the moon is wax­ing, or from the new moon until the full moon, above-ground crops such as toma­toes, pep­pers, corn, egg­plant, berries, etc. should be the focus. Then, the period from the full moon to the new moon is the ideal time to focus on root crops like car­rots, pota­toes, onions and gar­lic. How­ever, in the span of those times, there are cer­tain days that are more favor­able than oth­ers — and some that are con­sid­ered “bar­ren” alto­gether. These days are good for killing nox­ious and inva­sive plants, or clear­ing gar­dens. Also, there is to be no plant­ing on the actual days of the new or full moon. Those are all gen­er­al­iza­tions, but if you would like to read the spe­cific fore­cast, I have a link posted on our Delaware County Mas­ter Gardener’s Blog (mgdelco.blogspot.com) to the Farmer’s Almanac website.

A few high­lights that apply to us here in Delaware County:

• Today is con­sid­ered a bar­ren day. So if you didn’t feel like fac­ing the crowd today at the nurs­ery, just as well. Today is a bet­ter day for chores like weed­ing or till­ing the soil in your veg­etable gar­den to pre­pare for plant­ing fall crops.

• Sun­day, how­ever, is an excel­lent day to plant flow­ers, and the best days for trans­plant­ing are Sept. 28–30.

• Plant your onions Oct. 3–4 or 7–8 — Oct. 5 and 6 are barren.

• Plant spring-blooming bulbs Oct. 14–15.

While I may have my doubts about this con­cept, it is a lot older than any of us. So who knows — maybe there is some­thing to it? If you have fol­lowed the guide­lines of gar­den­ing by the moon, I would love to hear your thoughts!

A few other ran­dom facts I enjoyed learn­ing in the almanac:

• The aver­age lifes­pan of a Canada Goose? 33 years.

• Peak dates for autumn foliage in Ohio? Oct. 5–21.

• Aver­age first frost date in Colum­bus? Oct. 13.

And accord­ing to the long-range fore­cast, the like­li­hood of a white Christ­mas is promis­ing. If only I could look back at the plants I’ve failed to grow and check the dates — maybe I planted on “bar­ren” days and it is not my fault!

Stephen Jones is a OSU Exten­sion Mas­ter Gar­dener volunteer.

Posted by Master Gardener on Sep 14 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.