Simple Times: Planting and Living by the Moon Signs

BY SUZY McCRAY

Her best pair of sewing scissors and the Old Farmer’s Almanac always hung on a nail on the wall by her rocking chair.

The little book was thinner then and the pages weren’t glossy, but in the late 1940s, it was almost the “bible” of the how-to’s and when’s of planting and completing other jobs around the farm, whether it was when to castrate a hog or the best time to plant peas.

Going by the moon signs or working by the seasons wasn’t just considered folklore or superstitions in long years past. It was as calculated and carefully followed then as any modern science is now where GPS guides farmers in planting seed or distributing fertilizer.

While many may scoff at the notion today, even those who are most skeptical seem to always have several remembered stories of how their grandparents or great-grandparents wouldn’t sow or reap unless “the signs were right” and how their crops always seemed to match their faith.

This spring as my husband readied to plant potatoes in our now extended garden, he covered the soil with plastic temporarily to deter the rainy season we were having (last year the first batch of potatoes planted tried to rot in the ground while those planted during a drier time flourished). Then he hunted an almanac to tell him just when to plant that first long row.

Since our last year’s garden had increased fourfold in size, planting at the right times was even more important.

Around here, most gardeners always said to plant your okra when the farmers around you planted their cotton. But there’s much more to it than that! As we’ve studied to go back to a simpler way of life, it’s hard not to believe that the way practiced by my grandparents, great-grandparents and great-great-grandparents right here on this patch of earth wasn’t based on some sort of truth!

If you’re just trying to plant by the moon phases listed on a calendar (our bank calendar and the one from our insurance agent both show the moon signs), it may seem more complicated than it really is. That’s why I like to use an almanac to help my poor brain figure it out!

The 2021 Farmer’s Almanac gives this simple explanation: plant flowers and vegetables that bear crops ABOVE GROUND during the light, or waxing, of the moon (from the day the moon is new until the day the moon is full). Plant flowering bulbs and vegetables that bear crops BELOW GROUND during the dark, or waning, of the moon (from the day after it is full to the day before it is new again)!

That almanac and most others then feature a chart featuring different days that tell you when those best actual dates are for that year! If that still sounds too complicated for you (but I promise it isn’t) the almanacs have other charts showing such ways you can observe nature and still plant correctly such as “plant potatoes when the first dandelion blooms” or “plant corn when oak leaves are the size of a squirrel’s ear.” (And no I will not kill you a squirrel so you can measure its ear!)

I interviewed a local Blount farmer famous for his giant juicy red tomatoes and other farm crops several years ago. He told me he never followed the signs but that statement, like so many other farmers I’d talked to, was ALWAYS followed by a big “But .…” He remembered that his grandparents always followed the signs religiously.

A family member of ours recounted how she’d grown squash a few years ago and had bushy green plants but almost no squash! A local farmer took one look, asked when she’d planted them, and simply shook his head … she plants by the signs now and has had no more trouble.

Many almanacs and articles on the internet explain there are phases of the moon when you can cut your hair if you want more growth, cut your hair if you don’t want growth, set your hens when you want only girl chicks, castrate animals in order to not have extra-ordinary bleeding, when to wean calves (and human babies!), and more.There’s even some who will tell you there are better days to harvest your crops so that they “keep better!” If it still seems complicated, simply go to your local Co-op and ask THEM when the farmers around you plant whatever seed you are buying right then!

We can’t eat at our dining room table right now; it’s covered in seeds: Seeds we bought at the Blount County Co-op last year when the seasons were ending and we wanted to be prepared for whatever might come this growing season in our unsteady world; seeds we saved from our heirloom plants from last year; and seeds sent to me by friends, such as the loofah seed a nearby friend gifted me to use in some of my goat milk soap for extra scrubbing!

We’ve tried planting in our greenhouse again using the signs as our guide and so far, things are going well.

So, whether you’re planting in containers or have two acres of fertile soil, why not try an experiment? Plant some things by “the signs” and others just whenever the fancy strikes you, and then see which plants do the best. It might be a fun experiment for the kids!

Charts utilizing the “signs” go back as far as 1300 B.C. And many old-timers, such as those interviewed in the Foxfire Books, quote Genesis 1:14 and Ecclesiastes 3:1-2 as how this is all biblical and not superstitious.

As I am writing this on my laptop, the sun is shining and the warm fertile soil smell here is the same as my many grandparents enjoyed, the smell that set them to planting their gardens and even their cotton crops. Old Pete the mule (who worked in the nearby ore mines but plowed my uncle’s and my grandparents’ fields in the afternoons after his “real” job) has been replaced by a shiny green tractor.

I wear my jeans and a tee shirt instead of long dresses and bonnets like my mama and others wore (but Mack may still sport a pair of overalls while he works!).

So much has changed but what matters remains the same. “And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons and for days and years.” Genesis 1:14

(Suzy and Mack live on a small homestead in Blount County and can be reached on Facebook or at suzy.mccray@yahoo.com.)