Each day's planting window and moon sign, by crop.
Planting by the moon
Which moon window is it today?
The moon's cycle splits into four planting windows: leafy crops from the new moon to the first quarter, fruiting crops from the first quarter to the full moon, roots and bulbs from the full moon to the last quarter, and rest from the last quarter to the next new moon.
With JavaScript on, this becomes a month calendar for your own time zone, with each day's window and moon sign and your next windows by crop type. The windows and the fruitful signs are listed just below.
How to read this lunar planting calendar
- Each day is colored by its window: Leaf, Fruit, Root or Rest.
- The sign under the date is where the Moon stands at noon. F marks a fruitful sign, the days the signs tradition keeps for sowing and transplanting.
- Pick what you are planting to dim the other windows and outline the best days, the ones in your window that also fall on a fruitful sign.
- Download a year of windows for one crop type to your calendar app, or print the month as a moon gardening calendar for the shed wall.
The four moon windows
| Window | Moon phase | What goes in | Example crops |
|---|---|---|---|
| Leaf | New moon to first quarter | Above-ground crops with the seed outside the fruit | Lettuce, spinach, cabbage, kale, celery, leafy herbs |
| Fruit | First quarter to full moon | Above-ground crops with the seed inside the fruit; transplanting | Tomatoes, peppers, beans, peas, squash, melons |
| Root | Full moon to last quarter | Roots, bulbs, perennials and fruit trees; harvest for storage | Carrots, potatoes, onions, garlic, beets, radishes |
| Rest | Last quarter to new moon | No sowing: weed, prune, compost, prepare beds | None |
This is the four-quarter version of the almanac rule at the heart of gardening by the moon. The simpler two-half rule: sow what you harvest above ground while the moon waxes and what you harvest below ground while it wanes. The planting by the moon guide covers both, where the traditions disagree, and what the published research found.
Fruitful and barren signs
The Moon passes through each zodiac sign in about two and a half days. In the planting-by-the-signs tradition, as NC State Extension describes it:
- Fruitful, for sowing and transplanting: Cancer, Scorpio, Pisces, Taurus, Capricorn, Libra.
- Barren, for weeding, pest work and harvest: Aries, Gemini, Leo, Virgo, Sagittarius, Aquarius.
The calendar uses the tropical signs the almanacs print. Biodynamic calendars use the star constellations instead, so their root, leaf, flower and fruit days fall on different dates; this calendar does not compute them.
Frost and soil come first
Sowing by the moon works inside the weather, never against it. Sow when your last frost date and the soil temperature your crop needs say you can, then let the moon pick the day inside that span. Southern Hemisphere gardeners use the same phases and flip the months.
For the phase alone, the moon phase calendar shows tonight's moon, and the plant lore behind the garden lives in green witchcraft.