"Moon Rhythm"

Although master gardener and nursery owner Diana J. Morkassel thinks she knows why she had a gangbuster crop of potatoes last year, she’s not about to go official with her news.

“It’s not science,” she stated firmly. “As a master gardener I really can’t teach it, because it’s really not scientific.” For many years Morkassel has gardened by the moon: that is, she plants, weeds, prunes and harvests according to the moon’s cycle. “When the moon is waxing, getting larger, things are healing and growing,” she said. “So that’s good for above ground plants. [It’s good for] pruning, cutting grass … It’s a good time for harvest. When the moon is waning—from full moon to no moon—that’s good for [planting] root vegetables and good for killing weeds.”

Morkassel picked up this approach from the Farmer’s Almanac, she said. As a child she worked in the family vegetable garden, but she doesn’t remember if her parents followed the moon. “I don’t know if Dad paid much attention to the moon stuff,” Morkassel recalled, “but I remember him saying, ‘Well, if the moon’s wrong, your postholes won’t settle in.’ But I’m not a fence builder, so I don’t know what kind of moon you need for that.”

At Morkassel’s Spruce Up Nursery in Marshall County, she grows annuals, perennials, shrubs, grapes and apple and plum trees. “I can’t explain it,” she said, “[but] when I pick apples by the light of the moon—when it’s waxing—if you pick apples then, they keep. Any bruises that you make actually heal instead of decaying.”

Morkassel waits impatiently for someone to prove, through scientific investigation, that the moon really does have the kind of influence that she has observed in her gardens. “You have to come up with a thesis and then prove it by repeating it,” she said. “It wouldn’t be that hard, it just takes time—and I’m a busy person. I’m always running in 10 directions at once. Make that 20 directions.”

Diana Morkassel