http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/ ... NTCMP=SRCH
Is there a hobby anywhere that's more burdened with folklore and superstition than gardening? On any allotment you'll soon find someone convinced that potatoes must be planted on Good Friday, that garlic keeps aphids away, or that human hair wards off eelworm.
The extreme version of this is biodynamics, the "holistic" approach to plants favoured by Prince Charles, which combines organic gardening with new-age magic. Biodynamic gardeners sow according to the moon and the zodiac. They spray homeopathic remedies, some of which must be prepared in a sheep's skull or a deer's bladder. And they bury cow's horns filled with manure and quartz to focus "vital forces".
Biodynamic gardening is dismissed by the Royal Horticultural Society, and likened to witchcraft by leading plant scientists. Yet it still has its adherents. Former Formula 1 champion Jody Scheckter owns one of more than 120 biodynamic farms in the UK. The patron of the Biodynamic Association is Patrick Holden, the former director of the Soil Association. And the Prince of Wales, in his 2010 book Harmony, described moon planting as part of "a profound knowledge neglected by modern techniques".
Of course, some of the old folklore is sound. Techniques of rotating vegetable crops and creating compost survived because they work. But other nuggets passed down the generations are nonsense and, in a culture where gardening folklore is venerated, quackery and snake oil thrive.