I was late in sowing winter salads for the greenhouse. Had meant to get everything done in early September but life intervened. Then, when I did have time, my Gardening by the Moon calendar said that these were Bad Days!

Dilemma.

I decided to stick to the principles and wait for a Good Day (i.e. a waxing crescent moon). And as I was planting salads, I decided to wait an extra 24 hours for an auspicious day for sowing leaf crops – 25th September. Hmmmm. Part of me did feel a bit silly, waiting on when I was already late in the month for seed sowing, the days becoming shorter and shorter. Easy to be sceptical.

Well! Returning from a few days away, I called in to the plot on the 28th to water the seed boxes and was amazed to find germination in most of them – after just four days.

The foliage in front of the trays in the top photo is a happy flourish of Frances’s Choice, the open source seed I got from the remarkable Dr Alan Kapuler in Oregon. I had had very poor results with it and had quite forgotten I’d planted a sickly seedling in the greenhouse. This had then been completely overgrown by the bullying achocha ‘Fat Baby’ all summer yet has leaped into flourishing activity in the 2 weeks since the achocha was relegated to the compost and is now huge and budding happily!