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 😊
Hi yes I agree it would be hard to run a nursery by the moon calendar. I once had a request by someone that we do a revegetation planting by the moon calendar they strongly worked with the Biodynamic concepts (have you looked into that as a way of growing with the Moon calendar?). Anyway this just wasn’t going to fit our schedule for planting which needed to be done in winter and when everyone had time and that wasn’t going to be with the ascending moon.
ReplyDeleteEven though there might not be huge scientific proof, it is definitely something that many cultures use and have done so forever. I recommend trying it in your home garden even if it is just a way having some scheduled time to put seeds in. I find that I unintentionally always seem to put my vege seeds in just after full moon. I can’t prove that they geminate better but they work pretty well .
As you said, I don't think it would work in a nursery setting but at home I think it could work well.
ReplyDeleteMaybe could do a little experiment with a patch in the garden to see the outcome?
It's interesting how cultures have tied in these ideas and I personally think it's really interesting seeing these practices, as they remind me of spiritual ceremonies and rituals from older civilizations! Thank you for writing about this!
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