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market-farming - Re: [Market-farming] ? about moon phase planting

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  • From: Road's End Farm <organic87 AT frontiernet.net>
  • To: Market Farming <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] ? about moon phase planting
  • Date: Fri, 1 Nov 2013 12:22:18 -0400


Do all you people who plant by the moon live somewhere where you can count on continuously good soil conditions for planting all through your planting season?

Here the soil may be unpredictably too wet to work in at any time. Weather reports for temperature are fairly accurate, but for amount of rainfall often wildly inaccurate (and, as there can easily be 2" of rain a mile north or south of here and 0.2" here, or vice versa, I don't see how they could be otherwise.) Temperatures are also quite variable -- more so than they used to be -- and a given day in May or June may be 95º or 40º.

To further complicate matters, while some of my crops are planted only once per season, others are planted repeatedly multiple times through the year; and the season of planting even for those planted once varies from April (peas etc) to late October (garlic.)

I plant as much as possible when soil conditions permit. If I went by the moon, I would often wind up planting in fields I shouldn't even be walking in due to excess moisture, or in fields parched dry and scorching hot (my irrigation water is limited.) I rather doubt that the moon actually has an effect; but, if it does, I don't see how it's going to outweigh the effect of being sealed into overwet clay soils, or of spending several days seriously overheated or overly chilled before the weather next breaks, or of being planted weeks or months before or behind schedule if I were to try to wait for a coincidence of soil conditions and moon phases.


-- Rivka; Finger Lakes NY, Zone 6A now I think
Fresh-market organic produce, small scale







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