This week, while I was at work, someone mentioned gardening according to the moon cycles. I hadn't heard too much about this so I did a little bit of research. This belief has been around for hundreds of years and involves planting and harvesting at different times of the month depending on whether the moon is waxing or waning. There are gardening calendars available with this information on them and I also found a few NZ websites about it-
www.koanga.org.nz/knowledgebase/moon-calendar-2/
https://organicediblegarden.co.nz/gardening-by-the-moon/
However after a bit more digging I found that there is not a lot of scientific evidence to back up these claims. The moon's gravitational pull does cause tides but the amount of water in plants is so small that the effect on them would be almost nonexistent. The following article also explains that the theories themselves contradict each other so they are hard to believe.
www.gardenmyths.com
My coworker put it best when she said that even if the theory does hold up a productive nursery can't really follow this schedule as we need to be planting, pruning, potting up etc all month and can't restrict ourselves to the moon cycle.
I would be interested to hear of anyone's experience with gardening by the moon or if you know of any good studies on it 😊
