Moon Sowing - Charles Dowding 2023
Gardeners at my talks and courses show keen interest when sowing by the moon comes up. This does not mean sowing by moonlight! It is about choosing dates for seeds to germinate when the moon phase or position can give plants a desirable imprint for their whole life.In 2011 I conducted several trials with plants alongside each other, comparing growth and weighing harvests. To study any differences between waxing and waning, I sowed half the seeds two days before full moon (waxing) and the other half two days after full moon (waning).Carrots sown either side of the full moon in mid-March showed stronger growth of the waxing carrots, and when pulled in June, those yielded 7.8kg of roots compared with 4.8kg from the waning carrots. This difference arose partly from greater slug damage to the waning-sown carrot seedlings - and was that because they were weaker, due to moon phase? However I then sowed two batches of turnip seed, waxing-waning in the same bed in July: they yielded 3.3kg and 3.5kg respectively by November, while potatoes in another bed also reflected that result with 4.3kg waxing and 4.7kg waning.Then in 2012 I ran a similar experiment to the first one above, and in the same bed too! I had spread two inches of cow manure on it in November and there was a lovely soft surface by March. Carrots sown two days before full moon on 6th March yielded 9.9kg, while those sown three days after full moon on 11th March yielded 9.2kg, of similar excellent quality (despite the lack of rotation....), so less of a difference than in 2011 but still significant.Such variable results can raise questions as much as give answers, and there are other factors to consider, besides total yield. For example, a comparison of french beans, in two large beds, gave 15.41kg from sowing two days before full moon, compared with 13.97kg from those sown two days after full moon. But the lower yield of waning-moon beans was offset by their greater longevity: although they produced less initially, when beans were prolific, they gave more in September when beans were scarcer.Another aspect of moon sowing is by constellation, with the moon changing every two or three days compared to a month for the sun. For example, sowing with the moon in Pisces, a water sign, should emphasise leaf growth (good for lettuce, spinach) while sowing in Taurus, an earth sign should encourage root growth (good for carrots, beetroot) and sowing in Leo, a fruit sign, should result in proportionately more tomatoes and courgettes.So we sowed half a bed of carrots with moon in a water sign and half a bed, one week later, when it was in a root sign. Both grew well, in fact the former looked stronger, but after weighing up the final harvest I found a 20% increase in total yield of carrots from the root day sowing. And two sowings of dwarf french beans, half on a leaf day followed by half on a fruit day, saw the latter yield 9% more.