Planting with the Moon Phases

[cbr6fs]

Its not about gain, you dont gain more crops per se. Its about harvesting at the best time for best quality. Or harvesting roots for storage when moisture content it low so they store for longer. Thats about it as far as harvesting goes. Planting at the right time shortens the growing season for that plant by a couple of weeks, it gives it a better start. Nothing more to it than that really.

It's ALL about yield gain.

If a farmer can rotate crops faster then trust me, they would ALL be doing it.
Likewise if a farmer could produce healthier and better tasting crops then they would also ALL be doing it.


Supermarkets make up around 80% of the fruit and veg bought from UK farmers, these supermarket buyers are notoriously picky.
You can have you produce picked and packaged ready to go and the supermarket refuse them if they don't look right.

Add to that the fact that farmers are usually forced to sell at very little profit, and you can see that if there was any possible gain, from taste, to storage, from yield to colour they would jump on it with everything they've got.

As i say if there was any evidence that lunar gardening/farming worked even 0.5% of the time then trust me everyone in the world would be doing it.
Imagine Ireland in the 17th century over 1 million people died from starvation.
If lunar farming offered a 0.5% gain in yield then that would have saved 5000 lives.

As i say, if your curious then your hurting no one by giving it a go.

Personally i think it's BS though and yet another superstition.

 

[mrcharly]

Supermarkets reject and discard a hell of a lot more than 0.5% of veg because it isn't straight enough. I don't think you can use supermarkets as a measure of yields and quality.

 

[HillBill]

Again, you are referring to it from the farmers point of view when you mention gain.

What isn't about gain is how the moon affects the plants. Which is the point i was making. Its about the quality of the crop.

It's ALL about yield gain.

If a farmer can rotate crops faster then trust me, they would ALL be doing it.
Likewise if a farmer could produce healthier and better tasting crops then they would also ALL be doing it.


Supermarkets make up around 80% of the fruit and veg bought from UK farmers, these supermarket buyers are notoriously picky.
You can have you produce picked and packaged ready to go and the supermarket refuse them if they don't look right.

Add to that the fact that farmers are usually forced to sell at very little profit, and you can see that if there was any possible gain, from taste, to storage, from yield to colour they would jump on it with everything they've got.

As i say if there was any evidence that lunar gardening/farming worked even 0.5% of the time then trust me everyone in the world would be doing it.
Imagine Ireland in the 17th century over 1 million people died from starvation.
If lunar farming offered a 0.5% gain in yield then that would have saved 5000 lives.

As i say, if your curious then your hurting no one by giving it a go.

Personally i think it's BS though and yet another superstition.

 

[cbr6fs]

Supermarkets reject and discard a hell of a lot more than 0.5% of veg because it isn't straight enough. I don't think you can use supermarkets as a measure of yields and quality.

Exactly the point i was trying to make.
If there was any gain what-so-ever, be it shape, texture, shelf life, colour or taste then big business would jump on it like there were no tomorrows.

Again, you are referring to it from the farmers point of view when you mention gain.

What isn't about gain is how the moon affects the plants. Which is the point i was making. Its about the quality of the crop.

If the quality of crop was better then the farmer would get less rejections = gain

 

[HillBill]

Quality of the crop, and uniformity are 2 very different things.

 

[zarkwon]

Glad to hear you accepting new information into your hypothesis. I know I said it could be extra moonlight a couple of posts ago (now you like my thinking eh?) but it was just an example of a possible alternative way to account for your observations. Another is bias. Your observations will be subconsciously informed by the outcome you expect or want. This is a significant and recognised problem with running experiments and gave rise to the standard "double blinding" of all experiments. You can imagine that with the example of "The Pepsi Test", the tester in charge of the test may somehow unknowingly influence the choice of the drinker if that tester knew which drink was which. To avoid this possibility both the tester and taster must be in the dark as to which drink is which thereby isolating any statistical result from the possibility of that particular influence. After all, things like taste, juiciness etc are pretty subjective.

Moisture content could be examined more empirically. Not being a plant biologist I am unable to give much of an opinion on the likelihood that the comparatively little light reflected by the moon (much less than on a cloudy, overcast day even when the moon is not obscured by clouds (a good Floyd album)) might influence water content within fruit and roots etc. Obviously it wouldn't affect the amount of water in the soil. For example, I can imagine that the extra light might enable the plant to photosynthesise at night and that photosynthesis entails increased water uptake. Chlorophyll can absorb red and blue light more than green. Chlorophyll cannot absorb green light and so instead reflects it making leaves look green. The moon's albido may absorb some wavelengths more than others and leave the resultant reflection bereft of usable light. This is all just speculation for the sake of illustrating the point that without a properly designed experiment and hypothesis one can quickly become lost in supposition. I remember reading about a suggestion that moonlight interferes with some plants ability to tell the time (oh yes they do) and indeed some plants may have evolved defenses against moonlight because of this. I doubt the veracity of this simply because the moon has always existed throughout the plant's evolution and so the plant would have evolved with this in mind (so to speak). I may be misremembering the facts of that too.

 

[Bushwhacker]

I'm just thinking about the term "Harvest Moon"

 

[Pandabean]

Thanks for the debate guys. Pretty interesting reading (still have to go back over a few posts and follow the rest - been busy the passed day or so.
Whether it is down to the increased light during the nights of a full moon or due to the gravitational pull I am still uncertain. It seems most of us here are also uncertain.

What I may do next year is get the calender for that year and try some experiments in the greenhouse and outside to see if there is a difference. Although there are alot more variables outdoors than in such as the weather varying between when one crop was planted and the other.

It could all be superstition in the end of course.


Bushwhacker - Each moon had its own name and it was more of a callender system. Some people called the moon around Autumn time the harvest moon. It varies between culture and their location some further south may harvest earlier than those up here in the noth of Scotland.

 

[mrcharly]

Exactly the point i was trying to make.
If there was any gain what-so-ever, be it shape, texture, shelf life, colour or taste then big business would jump on it like there were no tomorrows.



If the quality of crop was better then the farmer would get less rejections = gain

No

The supermarket rejections (that I was referring to) have absolutely nothing to do with the quality of the crop. They were just about whether the veg fitted into the prepack trays.

 

[cbr6fs]

Quality of the crop, and uniformity are 2 very different things.

Rubbish.

If a harvest is not uniform in every respect (i.e. taste, shape, texture, ripeness, colour etc etc etc) then it's not a quality harvest.

 

[Bushwhacker]

Bushwhacker - Each moon had its own name and it was more of a callender system.

Ah right, cheers. It's the only one I've ever heard of, do you know any of the others?

 

[cbr6fs]

No

The supermarket rejections (that I was referring to) have absolutely nothing to do with the quality of the crop. They were just about whether the veg fitted into the prepack trays.

What has prepacked trays got to do with lunar gardening/farming?

Please try and keep on topic as clouding the waters talking about packaging has absolutely nothing to do with this thread.

 

[HillBill]

All plants have variation from one seed to another. Only F1 seed has the regular uniformity.

Rubbish.

If a harvest is not uniform in every respect (i.e. taste, shape, texture, ripeness, colour etc etc etc) then it's not a quality harvest.

 

[Pandabean]

Ah right, cheers. It's the only one I've ever heard of, do you know any of the others?

Google has all the answers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_moon#Full_moon_names

This is what I find fascinating about it. Its a pretty simple way (without a modern watch/calender) to keep track of the months. You just count the full moons and keep track that way. Although you will end up being out as the number of days in a lunar calender fall short of a solar calender.

Celtic
January:	Quite Moon	July:	Moon of Claiming
February:	Moon of Ice	August:	Dispute Moon
March:	Moon of Winds	September:	Singing Moon
April:	Growing Moon	October:	Harvest Moon
May:	Bright Moon	November:	Dark Moon
June:	Moon of Horses	December:	Cold Moon
English Medieval
January:	Wolf Moon	July:	Mead Moon
February:	Storm Moon	August:	Corn Moon
March:	Chaste Moon	September:	Barley Moon
April:	Seed Moon	October:	Blood Moon
May:	Hare Moon	November:	Snow Moon
June:	Dyan Moon	December:	Oak Moon

 

[mrcharly]

What has prepacked trays got to do with lunar gardening/farming?

Please try and keep on topic as clouding the waters talking about packaging has absolutely nothing to do with this thread.

Someone used supermarkets firms as a way of telling if there was any point in lunar gardening - they suggested that if there was even a small amount of truth in it, the supermarkets would use this. I was pointing out that the supermarkets have other measures of quality.
I'm with HillBill on this. Uniformity of shape has nothing whatsoever to do with quality of taste and nutrition in the product.

 

[HillBill]

Yes you did say it could be. Perhaps i was just being a little stubborn with my ideas. But i do think and reflect on things and am not averse to changing my opinion. or admitting i was not wholly correct . When i thought about it, the reflected light idea fitted in with my conclusions.

It doesn't necessarily alter them, just adds to, and something else to take note of.

Thanks for the info of how chlorophyll can absorbs certain lights, didn't know that.

Plants telling the time? Well i like the tests done which said plants have a certain level of consciousness, so i wouldn't argue that point.

Glad to hear you accepting new information into your hypothesis. I know I said it could be extra moonlight a couple of posts ago (now you like my thinking eh?) but it was just an example of a possible alternative way to account for your observations. Another is bias. Your observations will be subconsciously informed by the outcome you expect or want. This is a significant and recognised problem with running experiments and gave rise to the standard "double blinding" of all experiments. You can imagine that with the example of "The Pepsi Test", the tester in charge of the test may somehow unknowingly influence the choice of the drinker if that tester knew which drink was which. To avoid this possibility both the tester and taster must be in the dark as to which drink is which thereby isolating any statistical result from the possibility of that particular influence. After all, things like taste, juiciness etc are pretty subjective.

Moisture content could be examined more empirically. Not being a plant biologist I am unable to give much of an opinion on the likelihood that the comparatively little light reflected by the moon (much less than on a cloudy, overcast day even when the moon is not obscured by clouds (a good Floyd album)) might influence water content within fruit and roots etc. Obviously it wouldn't affect the amount of water in the soil. For example, I can imagine that the extra light might enable the plant to photosynthesise at night and that photosynthesis entails increased water uptake. Chlorophyll can absorb red and blue light more than green. Chlorophyll cannot absorb green light and so instead reflects it making leaves look green. The moon's albido may absorb some wavelengths more than others and leave the resultant reflection bereft of usable light. This is all just speculation for the sake of illustrating the point that without a properly designed experiment and hypothesis one can quickly become lost in supposition. I remember reading about a suggestion that moonlight interferes with some plants ability to tell the time (oh yes they do) and indeed some plants may have evolved defenses against moonlight because of this. I doubt the veracity of this simply because the moon has always existed throughout the plant's evolution and so the plant would have evolved with this in mind (so to speak). I may be misremembering the facts of that too.