Soil-testing months both for your fall and winter gardens
Now comes the time of rich purple in the fields and meadows, denoting not only a time but a maturity. It is as though the whole Summer had been building toward this deep, strong color to match the gold of late sunlight and early goldenrod.
— Hal Borland
THE SECOND WEEK OF LATE SUMMER Lunar phase and lore
The Black Walnut Leafdrop Moon, full on August 15 reaches apogee (its position farthest from Earth) at 6:23 a.m. on August 17. Rising in the evening and setting in the morning, this Moon will pass overhead (its most powerful position) in the middle of the night, encouraging creatures to eat and bite, especially as the cool front of middle August coincides with Full moon.
Weather trends
The weather in the third week of August is somewhat stable, bringing highs in the 90s on 15 to 20 percent of the afternoons, milder 80s 55 percent of the time, and cool 70s the remaining 25 percent. And full moon on the 17th favors cool 70s! Chances of rain increase from 25 percent at the beginning of the period to 30 percent by August 21, and then drop abruptly to just 15 percent on the 22nd.
The natural calendar
August 16: After midnight, autumn’s Pleiades rise up over the northeastern tree line. Orion fills the east before dawn.
August 17: It is high bloom for velvetleaf, jimson weed, prickly mallow, wild lettuce, ironweed and wingstem, but teasel and tall bell flower time is over.
August 18: Goldenrod and the rich purple of ironweed brighten the fields, while tall bellflowers soften the mood of the decaying forest undergrowth with their blossoms of powder blue.
August 19: Big, white puffball mushrooms emerge like moons among spring’s rotting stems and leaves.
August 20: Wild plums are ready for jelly when starlings gather on the high wires.
August 21: Elms, sumac and sycamore start to turn. Most cardinals stop singing until late January.
August 22: August 22 is Cross-Quarter Day and marks the halfway point between summer solstice and autumn equinox. The sun enters Virgo on the same day.
In the field and garden
August and September are soil-testing months – both for your fall and winter garden as well as the fields where you intend to sow winter wheat and rye, alfalfa, clover and timothy. Plant or renew pasture in September or October for April and May.
Elderberries and wild grapes should be perfect for juice and wine by the middle of the month. Garlic planting time is here along the Canadian border from Washington to Maine.
Second-crop raspberry and strawberry harvest time picks up. Mum selling time is approaches for the mum growers. Pansy time is here for the autumn pansy market.
Second-brood corn borers, the second generation of bean leaf beetles, and the rootworm beetles still work the fields. Banded ash clearwings attack local ash trees.
The summer apple harvest is typically more than half complete along the 40th Parallel. Farmers are making preparations for the seeding of winter rye, wheat, and barley.
Learn the phases of the moon
These warm summer nights, learn the lunar phases. Begin with the full moon. Everyone has seen it at least once, rising near dusk. The full moon does the same thing every month, always rising out of the east between 5:00 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. It is the only eastern evening moon, and moves across the sky, shining all night, and setting after dawn. If you get up early, you will see it lying in the west.
The other lunar phases are not so obvious, but still, they aren’t so difficult. You need to know that the moon rises approximately 50 minutes later each day, completing a fourth of its cycle in approximately one week. And so, by the time the full moon has reached it fourth quarter, it is rising near midnight, setting toward noon. You will see it overhead if you get up before sunrise. The fourth quarter moon is always the high morning moon, contracting to its final phase.
As it wanes more and more, the moon finally reaches its darkest point and then renews itself. That new moon rises, nearly invisible, near dawn. It is overhead around noon and sets near sundown. It is doubly dark then, covered by the shadow of the earth and hidden by the brilliance of the sun.
As the new moon waxes, it also rises later in the morning, sets later at night, so that its thin crescent can be seen after sundown. The thin west evening moon is always a first-quarter moon. And the higher it is when you see it at night, the thicker it will be.
By the time it has reached its second quarter, the moon is rising in the early afternoon, is overhead by supper time, and lights up the western sky until the middle of the night, setting near 1:00 a.m. Then as it appears later and later in the afternoon, it becomes fuller and fuller, until it is the full moon once again, rising in the early evening. Listen to Poor Will’s radio almanack on podcast any time at www.wyso.org.