I have been using it for the past two or three years!
Many of you will know that my website is a summary of the diaries I have ket for the last thirty years but even with all that information I never know when to start up my gardening year.
This last three years I have been experimenting with natural timings.
OK the start of the year is the first of January or week one if you use my website but plants don't work to a calendar as such so how do they know when to get going, because if I new that I would probably get more accurate timing so here I what I am doing now!
I use my Snowdrop,Crocus and Daffodils as a guide like this:
When my Snowdrops appear I use that date as my start up date for example:
If they appear before the first of January let say by a couple of weeks I mentally adjust all the timings in my website to be a couple of weeks earlier, or conversely two weeks later if the appear in mid January.
OK that take care of my early stuff!
Then the crocus appear that's when I start sowing more tender stuff like tomatoes and Peppers so once agai I relate that date +or- on the date shown on my website which might indicate the season has picked up or is a bit late so I adjust my timings by that amount!
Next comes the Daffodils and usually this is when I start up my vegetables e.g Brassicas.
Then when the Daffs die down and I have left them to die back for around six weeks then that fits in with planting out time for things such as potatoes onions.
Then I compare this date with my planned planting out times in my website and do another + or - calculation to tell me when to plant out the rest of my stuff.
I am pleased to say that for the last three years it has worked out quite well
It is certainly better than dropping my trousers and testing the soil temperature with my bare ass.
Another thing I am think of experimenting with is sowing insitu seeds when the annual weeds start emerging because as I see the soil must be warming up.
Now I never new such practices had such a fancy title as Phaentology but now that I know that it makes me feel like a right clever beggar.