Moon phases

Sambucus_Nigra

zarazara wrote: »

I have indicated to the moderators that some posters are posting what amount to abusive off-topic deliberately provoking replies, and there appears to be a particular couple of people engaged in an on going argument. My original post was to ask if anyone had tried growing by the moon phases. I do not see what winning money,the nazis or the occult has to do with this. Either people have planted and harvested produce by the moon or they have not and if they have I wish to ask them did they think they had an improvement in quality and taste. I do hope the moderators now lock this thread or remove it altogether. It is pointless asking a perfectly normal sensible question if people are going to try to turn the thing into their own particular bandwagon.

Nor me; it's like saying the tides are turned by witches - go find them and burn them!!!!

Sambucus_Nigra

http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/2826441/Moon_

It looks much prettier this way.....

cootambear

Shall we just agree that this conversation has run its course?

Sambucus_Nigra

cootambear wrote: »

Shall we just agree that this conversation has run its course?

Well, to be frank we've not really had the opportunity for a conversation - it's been more about a few people trying to have a friendly discussion with someone with a loudhailer standing right next to them shouting all sorts of facts and figures at them to try and stop them from having a nice friendly discussion....so perhaps you could stand back now that you have [STRIKE]cut and pasted shedloads of googled information from t'internet[/STRIKE] said your piece?

cootambear

Hardly a loudhailer. Your mouse should have a little scroll wheel button in the middle that enables you to scroll down and away from ideas you do not wish to think about.

I do find it ironic that so many subscribers to `alternative` theories are so unwilling to listen to the other point of view.

Sambucus_Nigra

cootambear wrote: »

Hardly a loudhailer. Your mouse should have a little scroll wheel button in the middle that enables you to scroll down and away from ideas you do not wish to think about.

I do find it ironic that so many subscribers to `alternative` theories are so unwilling to listen to the other point of view.

Sorry - but you really should read your 'posts'.....and yes - I did scroll down.

You seem to under a misapprehension - all the stuff you [STRIKE]copied and pasted[/STRIKE] spouted had naff all to do with actual gardening!

As it is very hard to disprove whether the moon has any effect [as you can't exactly remove the moon an measure the effect] - your reasoning starts off flawed.

gardenroute

cootambear wrote: »

Shall we just agree that this conversation has run its course?

The insulting/baiting is a bit pointless. Would anyone be interested in trying this out?
We could start some late winter/early spring sows and pool the results.

emiff6

gardenroute wrote: »

Would anyone be interested in trying this out?
We could start some late winter/early spring sows and pool the results.

I think you would have to do this for several years to be sure that the results were not just a fluke bad or good year, and I wouldn't have the patience to keep records like that (or the patience to wait for the precise hour to plant, especially if it meant planting or harvesting etc in the middle of the night!).

Most of the stuff I plant grows, and that is satisfying enough. (Except sweet peas - why can't I grow sweet peas?? )

On a tangent to the OP question, my Mum, and to some extent me also, always gets the urge to go out and do some gardening just before it rains. It can be the brightest, sunniest day, but neighbours say they know it will rain within 24 hours if my mum is working in the garden. It seems totally subconscious on her part - do you think she could be sensitive to a change in the air without knowing it, a bit like cats seem to be?

Sambucus_Nigra

My data is as follows. This was a trial during 2008/9.

I sowed 5 cloves of garlic on moon days and non-moon days during Sept, Oct, Nov and Dec/Jan [20 of each overall]. They were all planted in a patch of clay soil at my lottie; next to each other on untreated soil. they were all numbered with 1 being in the centre of the patch and 5 being at each edge.

I left all the plants in the ground and harvested exactly 6 months to the day.

I weighed each clove at the start, and each plant at the end. No roots etc were cut off and only mud was removed from each plant.

The increases in weight from original clove weight were as follows [as summaries, the individual weights and pictures of each set of final plants are on my blog which is available if anyone wants it]:

Sowing Moon increase [%] Non-moon increase [%]
Sept 223 169
Oct 440 382
Nov 1479 1264
Dec/Jan 2952 1386

This trial also told me that garlic is best grown by planting on the shortest day and harvested on the longest, so I usually pop some in during sept and oct but the main batch goes in on the 21st Dec.

I've also done tomato trials, which came in as the moon plants averaging 343g of fruit per plant and non-moon 313g fruit per plant - however this trial had to be curtailed as the rest of the plants got blight......but up to that date there was a slight increase in yield over 9 plants all sown over a few weeks period and grown side by side with each other. What I also found out about this trial was more moon toms made it to produce actual fruit than non-moon. None of the moon ones died or got any damping off...and the non-moon ones got the blight a few days before the moon ones.