I am fascinated by the farmers round here who blithely use chemicals yet at the same time follow the biodynamic calendar. Our neighbour has prepared the field alongside us to plant beetroot and yet done nothing. Now it’s true that the ground has been wet, but he managed to do the harrowing. I suspect he will not touch the field until Monday week when the calendar says it’s auspicious for sowing and planting.
I tend to be lazy about this and say planting is auspicious when (a) I have the time and (b) it’s not raining and (c ) the ground conditions are ok (not easy with our heavy clay). In other words, this afternoon looks pretty “auspicious”. I also wonder, surely plants catch up? So even if the start is less than auspicious don’t plants make up ground later?
If you do follow the biodynamic calendar I’d be interested to know whether you think it really makes a difference throughout the life of the plant.
Unscientific nonsense! I just make sure to hang a corn dolly in the inglenook directly after harvest festival and bathe in the duck pond on Easter day. . . . .
Maybe Mike, but there are some pretty serious agriculteurs round here farming very large farms who always make sure they plant in accordance with the moon’s phase
My next door neighbour is 83 and a very accomplished gardener and seedsman by all local accounts. He advises me on when and how to plant, and teaches me too. But he is never presumptuous or pressuring.
He has a ‘dicto’ for virtually every day of the year and plants, tends and reaps accordingly. There are lots of religious associations, ‘holy days’ which are either auspicious or not. And times of day, too.
Normandy is noticeably religious in the Roman Catholic tradition, as far as I can observe. He always makes a sign of the cross on a pain or baguette before cutting or tearing it, and cautions against lying bread ‘on its back’.
I think these practices are pretty well known throughout rural France?
Certainly all our local brico and gardening stores have the lunar calendar by the till.
I have four Lunar Diaries myself going back to 2015 and I did try to follow their guidance but very loosely. This year I didn’t buy one, and tend to follow the intuitive and witchy Sue Jarvis method nowadays. I think the moon rays have given up fighting climate change. It’s too wet at present to do anything much in the waterlogged ooze of our garden.
We tend to take advice from our neighbours as to when is best to plant things. They all use the lunar calendars, so directly or indirectly we are influenced by that. Having a copy gives us something to discuss with them.
One of our neighbours always cut trees down by the lunar calendar, and claimed this produced better seasoned wood, faster. He claimed that in our property you could see the difference between the robust main roof (belle charpenterie) and the annexes where you can hear the woodworm chomping!