Celebrate the First New Moon of the Year
The first New Moon of 2024 is here and there are many fun ways to celebrate. This year the first New Moon is happening on Saturday January 11th at 9:54pm Pacific time. The first New Moon of the year is a potent time for fresh starts and new beginnings. How will you celebrate?
This time of year is still very still and restorative for us, but that first Full or New Moon of a new calendar year is always a great way to shift us forward into a fresh start. While I definitely still feel like hibernating for another month, THIS is the best time to plan and actually start your spring garden! Throughout history, the New Moon has been a time of (literal) seed planting. There is legit scientific data that proves seeds planted with the New Moon do better than those planted at other times through out the cycle. If you haven’t experienced aligning your garden with the moon cycle, this is a great year to give it a go- and if you aren’t ready this weekend, start planning and get your seeds started at the next New Moon! You can learn more about moon cycle gardening here.
This is a great time for a unit study on the moon, the moon cycle, and lunar holidays around the world, there’s a HUGE one coming up next month (Lunar New Year on 2/11/24).
FIVE WAYS TO CELEBRATE THE FIRST NEW MOON OF THE YEAR:
Practice your first New Moon Ritual of the year- If you have never had any kind of moon cycle practice, or if it’s been a while- this is the PERFECT weekend to start! Clean BEFORE the New Moon as much as possible, but leave the actual weekend of the New Moon for restorative energy- not cleaning. You can use salt and herbs to cleanse the energy in your home during the New Moon too. Start a simmer pot with cinnamon, chamomile, lavender and basil. Blow cinnamon through your front door with the intention of welcoming abundance into your home this moon cycle and for the year ahead! Use this time to PLAN your spring cleaning and organizing and kick that off in a couple weeks when the moon is Full and bright and it’s time for letting go. I have a couple blog posts on how you can create a fun moon cycle ritual with your kids that can be as simple as acknowledging the Full and New moons throughout the year.
Read, Research and Report. We love to head to the library or local used book store learn more about Lunar New Year, the moon cycle and gardening. You can also spend time doing web searches and gathering fun facts and info on these topics then report, or share with each other in a discussion or presentation.
Get Creative- there are so many hands-on ways to connect with this New Moon. A very popular art project at this time of year is to make lanterns, as the Lunar New Year kicks off the Lantern Festival - lasting 15 days until the Full Moon. It’s also a fun time to make mosaic art with seeds, make seed bombs. It’s a great time of year to do a seed-sprouting or plant life cycle observation project.
Feast- I always like to talk about the food we associate with celebrations. Lunar New Year, of course, has some very specific (and delicious) foods that are a must when celebrating. Check out some ideas here and here. In our personal First New Moon of the Year celebration, we are sure to include seeds, breads, muffins, overnight oats, dried, brined or tinned meats, dried fruits and other things associated with this time of year when the ground is still hard but the shift of seasons is shimmering just ahead. We also like having fires in the yard at this time of year (safely, in a fire pit!).
Start your seeds- here in LA we are a sub-section of Zone 10 which rarely sees any frost- however, it’s in the 40’s at night right now and the wind has been rockin- so we are starting our seedlings indoors! If it happens to be snowy and cold where you are, you can still start your garden right now. If indoor seed starting is not an option- you can give the “milk jug method” a try, though you may want to wait a bit on this depending on how low your temps are and how much snow you’re getting. Simply cut a milk jug nearly in half, horizontally, and add your soil and seeds! You can learn more about this method from my friend Lindsay (Zone 6B) who is an awesome gardener and shares tons of tips and how-tos on her TikTok account. Here are a few tips for getting your seeds started indoors:
Soil: We use coconut coir because it holds moisture well and helps get our seeds going. I strongly recommend getting the bricks and breaking them up vs getting the pellets. A mix of coconut coir and “seed starting soil mix” work well too, and you can totally mix in some worm castings or compost if you’ve got it!
Light: I recommend setting up stable, level space near a South-facing window. I did ours in a West-facing window in 2022 and can now say from experience there is a big difference here and I’m back at the back window this time around. Depending on your location there may not be enough hours of light for your seedlings once they sprout so if that seems to be an issue check out a grow-light like THIS ONE.
Water: This can be fun if you are getting rain where you live. We don’t get too much here near Los Angeles, but this January, over the past few weeks, it’s been raining big time. There is lots of data that explains why plants thrive more on rainwater than on tap, so if you have any rain in the forecast set up a container and collect it to water your seedlings! If not, trust me, tap is more than fine, but as homeschoolers we love doing experiments and comparing the two, plus the extra step of collecting the water is something my kids are super into. It’s important to make sure the soil does not dry out in the beginning, while germinating. We like using a spray bottle to spray the soil daily (or every other day if it is not as warm or dry where you are). We transition to deeper watering once they have sprouted.
When to transfer: When to transfer or transplant will depend on the plant, your zone and your garden space- you may end up repotting the seedlings to a bigger sprouting pot before you move them outdoors. Here are some tips from the Old Farmer’s Almanac on this.