Persephone Days

Plants and humans have a lot in common. Like humans, plants need water, nutrients, and air to live. 

And light. We all need the light.

Growing up on a family farm in South Carolina, my dad always pointed out the winter solstice or “shortest day.” It marked a turning point in his seasonal mindset. Sure, he had a farmer's seasonal awareness for planning farm activities. But for both my parents, who suffered from seasonal depression, the winter solstice was more about the longest night than the shortest day. The winter solstice marked a point at which things would get better. Gradually, almost imperceptibly, better. With each passing day, the long night would be just a little shorter and the short day just a little longer. Some of us tend to think of growing seasons in terms of temperature only. We don't have lush winter gardens because its too darn cold! But the length of the day is almost as important as the temperature. I had a vague awareness of plant light needs from my childhood on the farm, but I didn't know those short winter days had another name until my garden friend Dana told me a few weeks ago. (Thanks, Dana!)

Enter the Persephone Period

Plants generally grow best with at least 10 hours of sunlight each day. Even if the short winter days are mild (and we've had some relatively warm days this winter) plants won't actively grow. Cold-tolerant plants don't die during this period, but at best they just kind of sit there. Maine gardener Eliot Coleman, who wrote Four-Season Harvest, dubbed these shorter fall and winter days the Persephone days after the myth of Persephone, Greek goddess of spring. (Greek mythology has a whole lot going on there, so Persephone is also goddess of vegetation, life, and death, and queen of the underworld. For our purposes, we'll focus on Persephone and the myth of four seasons. Click here to watch a short video that presents one mildly entertaining version of the story.)

In Greek mythology Demeter is the goddess of agriculture and the harvest and the mother of Persephone. As the myth goes, Persephone was abducted by Hades and taken to the underworld to be his wife. In her despair over her daughter's disappearance, Demeter no longer nurtured the earth and everything withered and died in the cold. Zeus realized that no good could come of this for the earth and sent his messenger Hermes to strike a deal with Hades for Persephone’s return to her mother. Before her departure from the underworld, Persephone ate part of a pomegranate offered to her by Hades. In Hades' world (and unbeknownst to Persephone) anyone who ate his food was bound to stay with him forever. When they ate together, they were home. After finishing her tasty pomegranate pre-travel snack, Persephone hit the road to return to the world with her mother, who was overjoyed at her return and nurtured the world into springtime life.

When Zeus learned that Persephone had eaten part of a pomegranate in the underworld (UH OH!) he came up with a compromise so that Persephone would not have to return to the underworld forever (which he knew would drive her mother into another earth-chilling despair). Each year Persephone would spend one month with Hades for each of the pomegranate seeds she had eaten in the underworld – four months for four pomegranate seeds. For those four months, the Persephone period, Demeter misses her daughter so much that nothing grows. Kathy Jenal said it well in a master gardener article in the Providence Journal in 2014. “For a few weeks on either side of the winter solstice the sun’s path is so low in the sky (and Demeter is so lonesome for her daughter) that plants don’t grow.” The lonesome Persephone period ends when the days get a little longer and plants get at least 10 hours of sunlight. 

Persephone and Parktown

Here in Durham, NC, the Persephone period isn't four months long. It's more like two months, starting in mid-November and ending in mid-January. We can use this knowledge to our advantage in planning a winter garden or an early spring garden. If you've been gardening at Parktown, you've probably noticed that we had a pretty crop of fall greens well into the winter. In fact, we harvested all kinds of lettuce, kale, chard, and cabbage on the Martin Luther King Day of Service in January. Those crops were planted in the late summer and early fall, and had time to establish themselves before Thanksgiving.

If we time plantings such that our crops like lettuce and kale will be maturing when the Persephone period starts, we can protect them during the coldest temperatures with row covers or a portable hoop house and have a kind of living refrigerator in the winter garden. The greens may not be actively growing, but they're alive and fresh. We did that this year. And if we start plants like spring peas and tender lettuce in hoop houses or a cold frame when the Persephone period ends, they'll have enough light to get a head start for a spring garden.

But wait, there's MORE! Crops that are not quite ready to harvest when the Persephone period starts can hit pause for a few weeks. They don't grow, but they don't die. When the long night gets just a little shorter and the short day just a little longer, they resume their march toward maturity. Parktown was gifted some bok choy plants and pansies by our friends at Ace Hardware in late October. We were worried that there was not enough daylight for the plants and, sure enough, they just sat there. We considered pulling them out and tossing them on the compost pile. At least they would have purpose in enriching the soil.

And then in January they turned a corner toward life. The bok choy looked positively perky the last time I looked at it. And the Swiss chard that we'd cut to harvest on the Martin Luther King Day of Service? Persephone returned from her annual visit to the underworld, and those greens started sending out fresh tender green leaves. Purple pansies started to bloom. We haven't officially started the spring garden, but the garden is starting herself while we're building a cold frame inside. 

Why do we care?

To plan for a winter crop or a spring garden, you need to know when your Persephone days start and end. The dates vary a bit with latitude. Many folks point you to the US Naval Observatory for a tool to generate a duration of daylight table for your specific latitude. Sadly, the data page was being updated and had apparently been delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic when I first tried to access the information. Luckily, there are other online tools. For example, I looked at this calendar to see that my 2020-2021 Durham Persephone days ended on January 15, 2021. You also need to know how long it takes your plants to mature so you can calculate your planting dates.

The Parktown garden keeps teaching us lessons. Lessons about hoop houses and cold frames. Lessons of patience and hope and community. Honestly, the fall-winter season of 2020-2021 seemed to be much more about patience than hope. Like the plants that go dormant during their Persephone days, maybe you're waiting and living through your own Persephone days of face masks and social distancing. Are you surprised by pansies that decide to bloom even when you forgot about them? By daffodils that still know the way to grow is up even when our world seems upside down? Welcome back, Persephone. Your mom missed you.