Inspired by a full moon one recent night (hmm… must have been when I was taking my Trixie dog out for a late night potty run), I wondered if the moon had any effect on plants.
Some say that it absolutely does.
photo courtesy of www.pixabay.com
According to “Ask an Astronomer” from the Astronomy Department at Cornell University:
“There are two main ideas behind moon gardening practices. First, lunar gardeners believe the moon’s gravitational pull affects the flow of moisture in the soil. Just as the moon has a noticeable effect on the oceans in the tides, the moon may have a subtler effect on smaller bodies of water and thus change the levels of water in the soil. For example, to take advantage of the lunar cycle, a gardener would avoid turning over the soil in his or her garden when there is the most moisture in it (and thus when the soil was hardest to turn over) which lunar gardeners propose is during the new and full moons. Another, less direct, proposed connection between the moon and gardening is that moonlight is thought to have an effect on seed germination because exposure to light can enhance germination.”
With the exception of a study regarding tilling the soil at night to control weeds, they point out that there is no conclusive data to support the idea that the moon has an effect on the outcome of a garden.
Here is a photo the man took using his iPhone and our telescope in 2011. The moon was full that night, but it was difficult getting the scope and camera to capture the whole thing using the phone holder contraption. Trying to keep the scope and camera steady while getting the moon in perfect view, not so easy. The dark spot was a dirt speck on the telescope. All in all, not bad for an iPhone photo of something 238,900 miles away from us!
The folks over at Farmers Almanac are definitely on board with lunar gardening. They provide the thinking behind their philosophy, here. It seems kind of complicated with the timing and all. I am doing good just to get the right seeds and plants in the ground at roughly the right time of year, without extra timing criteria to follow. However, Farmers Almanac offers a “Growing by the Moon” calendar to help out with that.
As if it weren’t interesting enough, there is even a website called Gardening by the Moon. Here is a link to one of their articles that describes how lunar planting works. It all comes down to gravitational pull and the forces affecting the water content of the soil.
It is important (to me, at least) to note that both this site and the Farmers Almanac site refer to the added factor of planting during the appropriate zodiac signs. While I think it’s fun to read my horoscope occasionally, I personally am not a believer in astrology. It’s still interesting to read the theories, though.
I can appreciate the last paragraph in the Gardening by the Moon article: “In our busy lives it is hard to coordinate your schedule with the perfect time to plant, so you might use a good sign in a bad phase to justify planting. And sometimes it is more important to get it in the ground without waiting for the perfect moment. Perhaps weather will force your hand, or the next best time won’t be for another month, and that would be too late. All normal rules of gardening are just as important as the lunar influence–perhaps more so.”
What are your thoughts? Have you given this any thought at all? It’s fascinating to me that this is a thing.
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