Gardening by the Moon Weekend To-Do

An idea as old as agriculture, based both folklore and superstition but there are scientific ideas to back it up.

Lunar Phase:  New Moon on Friday, September 30 -  Saturday-Wednesday: Moon in the sign of Cancer/Leo/Virgo - Harvest, cultivate, weed, and control pests … Pumpkins are ready to harvest when the foliage starts to turn yellow so stop watering them at this point and let the plants die. Halloween is still weeks away but you can leave the pumpkins in the patch or move them to a shady location until you are ready to carve them.

Later in the Week

... The spent Hydrangeas flowers/stems can be pruned off now and you can shape the rest of the plant. You don't want to prune the plant(s) severely. Heavy pruning of older varieties removes the flowering wood so you will get little to no flowers next year.

Other Things To-do

…Daffodils are graded by the number of flowers they produced. All the other bulbs are graded by size usually in centimeters. A Jumbo Daffodil bulb will produce three to four flowers per bulb while a #1 yields two to three flowers and a #3 produces, usually one.  The bigger the bulb the more flowers.