April 1, 2008...3:05 pm
Bordering on Lunacy
Lunar planting! I thought it was just a matter of whether you sowed your seed when it was a full/new moon. Should have known it wasn’t that easy.
With apologies to those who are in the know if I’ve simplified things too much, in a very small nutshell, planting according to the position of the moon is an ancient agricultural system. It became a ‘forgotten art’ with the introduction of fertilisers etc. which helped to manipulate the growing environment artificially.
There are three approaches: synodic, sidereal, biodynamic.
The synodic month is the length of time the moon takes to orbit Earth and return to the same position, that is 29.5 days. Tasks are dictated by the four phases of the moon – new, waxing, full, waning. This is the simplest method, certainly the easiest to observe.
The sidereal month is the length of time the moon takes to orbit Earth relative to distant stars and takes 27.3 days. This method is driven by the ascent and descent of the moon as the sap rises when the moon is ascending (scientifically proven!) so tasks like pruning should be performed when the moon is descending.
The biodynamic method is based on the sidereal month but uses the passage of the moon through the zodiac signs (hmm, yes, but bear with me) to determine the best time to take horticultural action. The idea was developed as part of biodynamic agriculture, an organic, holistic approach that uses the interrelationships between the natural elements, or to put it more simply: it works with nature. To very briefly summarise, when the moon is in:
- a fire sign, it is good for fruiting plants but bad for leafy plants;
- an earth sign, it is good for root plants but bad for flowering plants;
- an air sign, it is good for flowering plants but bad for root plants;
- a water sign, it is good for leafy plants but bad for fruiting plants.
We already know that the position of the sun and moon has a massive effect on life on Earth, determining day length, seasons, tides etc. So, if you disassociate the star signs with the horoscopes in the press and view them as names to describe a specific planetary and stellar configuration at a given time, then maybe it starts to become more intellectually acceptable.
A Universal Lunar Calendar can be found at lunarium.co.uk/calendar.php if you want to see for yourself. You just need to enter the Month, Year and nearest City.
When I started to read up on lunar gardening, I was initially sceptical on seeing the astrological references. My gardening course focussed on understanding the science behind horticulture so I prefer a proper explanation as to why something works. This was reinforced when I couldn’t find any references to lunar gardening on the RHS site, and the only reference on the BBC site was Cleve West’s blog last year, which started “Call me an old hippy …”. However, now, that I’ve looked at it myself, there appears to be a lot of observational evidence to support it. After all, that’s how horticulture started, experience was passed down through the generations before our knowledge of the natural world caught up and we understood the science behind it. I’m going to give it a try anyway, weather permitting of course!
References
The Gardeners Calendar the-gardeners-calendar.co.uk/Moon_planting.asp
Wickipedia en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biodynamic_agriculture
Lunar Organic bio-lunaire.com/us/page2.php
Gardening by the Moon gardeningbythemoon.com/signs.html
Leave a Reply