Moon Gardening; absolute rubbish or not?

It is really surprising just how popular this subject is. I have been asked several times on my views and there a speakers doing the rounds to WI talks etc., preaching about the benefits of lunar phase gardening.It does work; but it is worrying that the facts with regards why it works have been distorted so far away from the truth. The real facts are far more interesting and steeped in traditional sustainable gardening and farming. However a plethora of predominantly US based websites, authors and practitioners, firmly in the belief that a) the gravitational pull of the moon can affect plant growth and b) the alignment of constellations can seriously affect plant growth and behaviour, (Astrology for Flora), have actually been able to convert huge numbers of people into practising these techniques and of course because it works they are thus credited.The reason the system works so well is simple: Several thousand years of honing precision in agricultural and horticultural techniques have resulted in the very best of systems and cultivars to maximise food and flower production. It was however only in the last century that affordable timekeeping was available to many of the people involved in this progression. Together with the introduction of night time entertainment on electrical appliances, there was no longer any need to read the great computer that was provided by the night sky. Traditional methods of determining the optimum times of planting were simply linked in with the easiest system to schedule with for all - the lunar phases.thus when using translated lunar charts for the planting, newcomers were surprised and delighted to discover that it worked so well and it is frankly insulting to our ancestors to ignore the time and effort put into developing these charts and schedules in a way that was designed to be so easily read and that instead it has been attributed to poor science and astrology.Maybe it is our desire and love of myths and mysteries that easily persuades the most sensible and intelligent of people to believe in astrology for plants or the more easily believed gravitational pull argument. But if the moon's gravitational pull cannot effect the largest freshwater lakes or even smaller seas, (including the Med), it cannot possibly have an affect on your potatoes - and astrology, well if you can succumb to Russell Grant's description of your future with wide eyed astonishment, there is little point in trying to persuade you otherwise.We should be celebrating our ancestors skill and knowledge which honed horticulture and agriculture into the precise industry it now is and the one industry capable of supporting the worlds population at a time when there are more people alive at the moment than there ever has been in history. And with climate change happening it is worrying that the information contained within the charts for lunar gardening may well be altered due to dramatic changes to the changing seasons to which true lunar gardening is intrinsically linked.

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Comments

Nick Donaghey @ Garden Gurus September 21, 2010 at 4:01pm

Excellent blog post. Nice to see some fact-based reasoning over the "because it shows limited results it must work" argument
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Phil Voice December 20, 2010 at 10:52pm

http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20101217/sc_space/amazingspectacletot...

Look out for the total lunar eclipse tomorrow morning