Planting by the Moon in April 2027: Dates, Moon Signs and Traditional Planting Days

April 2027 has a new moon on April 6 at 7:51 p.m. ET and a full Pink Moon on April 20 at 6:27 p.m. ET. Between them, almanac tradition opens five planting windows: two for leafy crops, one for fruiting crops and two for root crops, bulbs and perennials. This page lists each window, every Moon sign change in Eastern time, and a day-by-day table for the whole month.

April 2027 at a glance

The month begins in the fourth quarter, with a waning Moon that is 26% lit at noon ET on April 1. It ends with the Moon waning and 33% lit on April 30, and the full Pink Moon falls on April 20 at 6:27 p.m. ET. The traditional planting windows are:

• Leafy crops (first quarter): April 8-9 (Moon in Taurus), April 12-13 (Moon in Cancer)
• Fruiting crops (second quarter): April 19-20 (Moon in Libra)
• Root crops, bulbs, perennials (third quarter): April 21-22 (Moon in Scorpio), April 25-27 (Moon in Capricorn)

These windows come from almanac tradition, not from a proven effect of the Moon on crops, and the local frost calendar comes first. Frost dates and soil temperature decide whether a crop can go in the ground. The Moon, for gardeners who follow it, only chooses among days that are already open.

The windows come from a two-part rule, explained in the section on traditional planting days below. For the general method behind it, see planting by the moon.

What to plant in April

Almanac tradition assigns each Moon quarter to a type of crop. The groups below follow the almanacs, not any state’s recommendation for April.

• Leafy crops (first quarter): lettuce, spinach, cabbage, broccoli, celery.
• Fruiting crops (second quarter): tomatoes, peppers, beans, squash, corn. Two crop pages cover the tradition in detail: when to plant tomatoes by the moon and when to plant peppers by the moon.
• Root crops, bulbs and perennials (third quarter): potatoes, carrots, garlic, onions, beets. The potato page is when to plant potatoes by the moon.

Whether any of these can go in the ground in April depends on your state, and often on your own yard. A gardener in Georgia and one in Wisconsin work from very different calendars, and no Moon table changes that. Start with your state’s planting calendar, which gives the sowing and transplanting dates for your area. Then, if you follow the Moon, look at the traditional windows in the table below and see whether any of them overlap those local dates.

When no window overlaps, the local calendar wins. The Moon is an optional second filter, never a reason to plant early or late. Crops that do not appear in the list above are not part of this page, and the tradition’s lists vary a little from one almanac to the next.

Moon phases in April 2027

The full Moon of April is called the Pink Moon in Old Farmer’s Almanac usage. It peaks on April 20 at 6:27 p.m. ET, with the Moon in Scorpio. The Moon entered Scorpio at 5:20 p.m. ET that day, about an hour earlier. This convention labels Scorpio a fruitful sign, and the full Moon is also where the almanac’s third quarter begins, the quarter it assigns to root crops, bulbs and perennials. Names for the other full moons of the year are listed in planting by the moon 2027.

Traditional planting days in April 2027

The almanac rule

The almanac rule has two parts. The Moon’s quarter picks the crop type: leafy crops in the first quarter, above-ground crops that bear seed inside the fruit in the second, root crops, bulbs and perennials in the third. Then the Moon has to be in a sign this convention labels fruitful (Cancer, Scorpio, Pisces) or semi-fruitful (Taurus, Libra, Capricorn). The signs it labels barren (Aries, Gemini, Leo, Virgo, Sagittarius, Aquarius) remove the other days. That is why April 10-11, with the Moon in Gemini, and April 14-18, with the Moon in Leo and Virgo, are not windows.

The fourth quarter is the rest quarter in the tradition, kept for weeding, pruning, turning the soil and composting. It has no planting window. In the day-by-day table below, it covers April 1 through 6 and April 29 and 30.

The five windows

Every crop type has at least one window this month, so none is listed as “none this month.”

Partial days at the edges

Days are read at noon ET, and the Moon changes sign during the day, so the first or last day of a window can be partial. The exact sign change times are in the next section. A few examples from this month:

• On April 12, the Moon enters Cancer at 2:31 a.m. ET, and the First Quarter arrives on April 13 at 6:56 p.m. ET.
• On April 20, the Moon leaves Libra at 5:20 p.m. ET, an hour before the Full Moon at 6:27 p.m. ET.
• The Capricorn window runs from the morning of April 25 (10:51 a.m. ET) to late evening on April 27 (11:23 p.m. ET).

Moon sign changes in April 2027

Signs here follow the tropical zodiac. The second label column is the biodynamic calendar’s day type, based on the Maria Thun triplicities. The convention labels in the third column are the common almanac sorting, and sources differ on Virgo, Sagittarius and Aquarius.

The Moon moves through all twelve signs in a little under a month, so the month has thirteen entries. It was already in Aquarius when April began and is in Pisces again when the month ends. The biodynamic day types are a separate system from the almanac’s fruitful and barren labels, and the two do not always agree with each other.

Day by day: phase and Moon sign

Each row is read at noon ET. A sign or quarter shown for a date can change later that day. The new Moon, for example, comes on the evening of April 6, so April 6 still shows quarter 4 and 0% lit.

The quarter column here is the almanac’s four-part split of the month, not the astronomical phase names. April 13, April 20 and April 28 show how it works. Each is still in the earlier quarter at noon, and the astronomical quarter turns later that same day, at 6:56 p.m., 6:27 p.m. and 4:17 p.m. ET.

Questions about April 2027

When is the full moon in April 2027?

The full Moon, called the Pink Moon, falls on April 20 at 6:27 p.m. ET, with the Moon in Scorpio.

When is the new moon in April 2027?

The new Moon falls on April 6 at 7:51 p.m. ET, with the Moon in Aries.

Which days are the traditional days for root crops?

According to almanac tradition, the root crop, bulb and perennial windows are April 21-22 (Moon in Scorpio) and April 25-27 (Moon in Capricorn). Your state’s planting calendar still decides whether any of those days is open where you live.

Related guides

• when to plant spinach by the moon
• when to plant grass seed by the moon
• planting on a full moon
• planting during the new moon
• when to plant carrots by the moon
• when to plant beets by the moon
• when to plant asparagus by the moon
• when to plant turnips by the moon
• when to plant kale by the moon
• when to plant lettuce by the moon
• when to plant peas by the moon
• when to plant broccoli by the moon
• when to plant cabbage by the moon
• when to plant radishes by the moon
• when to plant strawberries by the moon
• when to plant herbs by the moon
• when to plant roses by the moon
• when to plant hydrangeas by the moon
• when to plant cucumbers by the moon
• when to plant zucchini and summer squash by the moon
• when to plant sweet corn by the moon
• when to plant watermelon by the moon
• when to plant cantaloupe by the moon
• when to plant parsnips by the moon
• moon sign gardening
• May 2027