The Vegetable Gardener’s Guide to Planting by the Moon

In ancient times when man had not quite got round to inventing the wristwatch, the most reliable source of telling the time was the sun, moon, and stars. 

There seems to be several opinions of who came up with the moon planting calendar first. Was it the Egyptians or the Babylonians? It is more than likely that each and every farmer had a planting calendar based on the moon phases, and there would be different variations depending on the geographical location. 

As their calendars where passed on through the generations they evolved to cover the different crops they tried to grow, and the more productive farming techniques used. 

 It was noticed that different plants grow better when they are planted during different phases of the moon. Each of these phases imparts an influence on the way vegetation grows on the planet through the rising and falling of the moisture in the ground and in the plants.

To provide more accurate records it was noted that certain crops faired better when planted whilst the moon was in a specific constellation. As the moon can take only 2-3 days to pass through a constellation, the planting calendar was a ‘cutting edge’ technology.  

Planting was not the most important time for the farmer, harvest time also had to be recorded. If you harvest at the correct time your crops will last much longer. It is down to how the plant stores the water in the fruit/crop at different times of the Lunar cycle.

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Guide To Wild Foods

from celtnet: Welcome to the Celtnet guide to wild foods. As this recipe site has grown it has become obvious that to allow people to replicate some of the more ancient recipes on this site (especially from the Ancient, Roman and Medieval periods it is necessary to list modern alternatives but also to produce a guide so that the curious can find the original (often wild) ingredients for themselves. These pages are an attempt at bringing all these potentially useful and often forgotten wild foods together into one place. The pages linked to from here provide a pictorial guide to wild foods, including a brief description of the plant in question and which areas of it are edible. For obvious reasons this is not a complete guide and is intended as a companion for the wild foods used in the varoius recipe sections of this guide. Also, as wild foods have started to become more popular (samphire is now used in restaurants) and there are a cornucopia of wild plants to be collected for free in every season; this is an attempt to allow people to re-gain much of the herb-lore lost in the twentieth century and to allow the curious to directly connect back to their ancient roots. Those are the worthy reasons. But the truth is that foraging for wild foods is fun! Even more so when you discover a taste sensation in the wild that you can then make a delicious dish from. The more you understand the ingredients you use, the better your food will be in the end. Using this guide is simplicity itself: just click on the first letter of the wild food you're intrested in. Alternativey why not just browse throgh the list of wild foods. You may well find something that surprises and intrigues you and which gets you foraging for yourself!