Gardening by the moon & groundhogs

As I sit here in my office trying to get my head wrapped around interview questions I'm preparing on Corporate Sustainability, my mind drifts to the lunar planting calendar I've been following. I heard about planting according to the moon cycle from my permaculture friends up in Maine. This year I found an excellent Lunar Planting Calendar on the Farmer's Almanac site. So, a few weeks back when I was getting ready to plant my garden I printed out the calendar and circled the best days to plant root crops, greens and other above ground veggies, tomatoes, beans, etc.

Ironically, just as I was getting the feeling I had to get my seeds in, the lunar calendar showed I was at peak time to plant. Don't ask me how lunar planting works. It definitely doesn't mean planting in moonlight (though I think the last few of my seeds did go in under moonlight.) It means following the cycles of the moon to plant. Since the moon effects the tides, intuitively it feels to me it might effect plant growth. I don't know the exact science behind it. I welcome anyone who wants to research it. All I know is that it provides some kind of guide. And now that we're past peak seed planting time but I still have more potatotes to plant and some later root crops I want to get in, the lunar planting calendar sounds as good as any.

My garden is beginning to look like a garden. The potatoes I planted early are now over a foot tall. The seeds I planted a few weeks ago have all come up. I've had to thin out the radishes, spinach, swiss chard and beets. The tomatoes I bought from the Farmer's Market (New Minglewood Farm, known for their heirloom tomatoes, and Balet Farms a multi-generation locally owned nursery) are doing great. The eggplant and basil are coming along.

My resident groundhog got my cucumber starters and has foraged into the radishes. So now I'm on a mission to finish putting up fencing so that he doesn't get anymore. I've thought about "relocating" mr. groundhog, but I figure he is really part of the landscape so I ought to find ways to adapt. Besides, based on last year's forage, I know there are certain crops they have no interest in, such as potatoes, tomatoes, squash. And certain ones they prefer, like beans, radishes, lettuce and now, cucumbers. Oh yeah - they love sunflowers.

Actually, groundhogs are vegetarians and prefer flower heads. I was really hooked on keeping him around after one day last spring when I saw him so gracefully and cutely eat the head of a dandelion. They are really quite tame at times. So, I may do what I've heard others do, which is leave one area of garden (often the front) open to allow them to forage, and then they won't bother with digging under fencing to get the rest of the garden. For now, I feel lucky I live adjacent to the Spa State Park where there's lots of other habitat around for him. But, I'm still planning to buy more fencing and get it up before he finds my other beans and radishes.

And, before I signed off, I had to do a quick search on lunar garden planting, here's what I found: On her Web site Gardening by the Moon, Caren Catterall writes, "Plants respond to the same gravitational pull of tides that affect the oceans, which alternately stimulates root and leaf growth. Seeds sprout more quickly, plants grow vigorously and at an optimum rate, harvests are larger and they don't go to seed as fast."

To learn more check out the full National Geographic article on lunar gardening - just so that you know it's not all "lunacy".