Planting By The Signs

The holiday season is upon us, and in most places across North America the weather is getting colder and many of our outdoor gardens are dormant. While we love our indoor gardens and houseplants, this is also a great time of year to do some other things—like catch up on our reading. Over Thanksgiving weekend at the Gardzen Test Gardens, we re-read Foxfire. For those unfamiliar, Foxfire began in 1966 in Rabun Gap, Georgia as a high school project. Students collected the folklore, folkways, and traditional living methods of the Appalachian Mountains, publishing them in a magazine and eventually in book form. The first volume of Foxfire has a chapter exploring the traditional method of “planting by the signs”—selecting times to plant and harvest based on astronomical and astrological readings. Planting by the signs is a piece of gardening history, still widely used in many places, and there may just be something to it. Let’s dig in and learn more about planting by the signs!

Planting By The Signs Throughout History

All of us look to the sky, and throughout history and around the world different peoples and cultures have made their own astronomical observations and used them as the basis for calendars and schedules. For this article we’ll be focusing on the signs used in various times and places around North America. Different kinds of signs were used—some were based on the appearance and location of stars and constellations, some on the weather, and some on how wild plants and animals behaved. Native Americans/First Nations people made close observations of both astronomical and natural phenomena, creating a body of knowledge which was then absorbed by European settlers. When astrology became popular in the second half of the 19^th century, it fused with traditional observations and became the basis of a new take on planting by the signs. These traditions continue to this day—many older gardeners and organic/all natural gardeners still make use of them, as do traditional farmers and subsistence gardeners around the world.

Traditional Signs for Gardeners and Farmers

We’ve collected some of our favorite signs that were used to determine planting and harvesting times. These come from various sources, including the first Foxfire book, some from other gardeners we talked to, and some that we’ve heard of the years but can’t provide a source for. These are presented as examples only; we’re not suggesting that you plan your garden around them.

• Always transplant seedlings during an “earth” or “water” sign: Taurus, Cancer, Virgo, Scorpio, Capricorn, or Pisces.
• Never transplant on a Sunday, as it is a “hot and barren day”; the “sun’s day”.
• From Foxfire, volume one: “Graft just before the sap starts to flow, while the moon is in its first or second quarter, and while it is passing through a fruitful, watery sign, or Capricorn.”
• Some folks plant by the phase of the moon. There are various versions of this—“plant aboveground crops when the moon is waxing”, “Plant root crops when the moon is waning”, “Always plant sweet corn during the new moon”, “Harvest under a waxing moon”.
• The signs don’t just affect planting and harvesting. Per Foxfire, volume one: “Set eggs to hatch in a fruitful sign like Cancer. The chicks will mature faster and be better layers.”
• Again, from Foxfire, the best time to plant potatoes is “a dark night in March.”
• “Plant corn when the oak leaves are the size of a mouse’s ear” is an old piece of farming advice, often repeated in rural areas to this day. We can’t find the origin, but we’ve heard it from gardeners and farmers as far apart as Scotland and Alabama.

Does Planting By the Signs Work?

This is a difficult question to answer directly, but we’ll do our best. Traditional gardening and agricultural practices developed in specific places to meet local conditions, and the wisdom they contain can be effective in successful gardening to this day. While there’s no science linking the signs of the zodiac to the growth or success of garden plants, “planting by the signs” may serve as a way of codifying observations about nature and plant life that were collected over time and passed along from generation to generation. So, will it work for you? We can’t say for sure, but it might be worth learning about the traditional practices of your local area, wherever you are in the world, and seeing if they can help your garden thrive. Good ideas are where you find them, and at Gardzen we appreciate any opportunity to learn about the history, lore, and techniques of gardening.

Do you plant by the signs? Have you learned some traditional gardening folklore? We’d love to hear from you so please get in touch.