Down to earth... with Anne Morris (From Salisbury Journal)

Down to earth... with Anne Morris

12:55pm Thursday 13th November 2008 in Going Green

ACCORDING to my gardening by the moon calendar, today is the optimum planting and sowing day being a full moon.

I was given a lunar calendar for Christmas last year and fully intended to stick by its planting regimes throughout the year.

Planting according to the moon’s cycle has been followed for centuries from the ancient Greeks and Romans to gardeners today.

The basic principle of lunar gardening is to observe the moon’s phases and only plant or sow during the waxing period, when the moon grows from new to full. This, apparently is when the moisture level in the soil is at it’s highest and when you should do your planting.

Moisture content is at its lowest during the waning moon which is from full to last quarter. There is less sap rising in trees and shrubs during the waning period, so although not advised to sow or plant, this is when you should prune.

Using a specially devised lunar calendar is helpful because good planting days each month are marked with a tick, as well as the moon symbol and so called ‘bad’ days when you should never plant or sow are marked with a cross.

You don’t have to have a calendar though, daily newspapers give you moon settings as does Old Moore’s Almanac.

Reality set in for me after a week of trying to use the calendar as a window of optimum planting and sowing days passed in torrential rain and the allotment was waterlogged. And though I do refer to it every time I want to sow and plant and try to avoid the ‘bad’ days, I cannot actually concede that there has been any significant difference.

As for sowing my overwintering broad beans, I managed to get a couple of rows in last weekend and will repeat at the beginning of December, when the moon waxes once again.