Gardening by the Moon in July

FULL MOON
Friday, 1 July 2011
Garden: 
  • Think carefully about what possible seed saving you might like to be doing over the next season.
  • Now is the time to decide how important it is for you to be growing veges and fruit with a high nutritional density (bearing in mind that eating nutritional dense food will be the most sustainable way of staying healthy while taking care of the environment!!) The only way to do that is to be growing them in a balanced, highly mineralised soil with high levels of humus and microrganisms. If you want to increase the nutrient density of your produce and you feel you need specific direction then I would recommend you get a copy of the Institute brochure Growing Nutrient Dense Food. You will then be able to obtain the correct balanced mineralised product for your garden. If you are clear you want to go for nutritional density but do not which to do a soil test then I would recommend you use EF:Nature’s Garden Fertiliser and EF Active Lime, togther with EF Bio Rocket. We are actively seraching for other more sustainable ways of growing nutrient dense food here at the Koanga Institute and as we learn new techniques and strategies we will add these to our Growing Nutrient Dense Food booklet,( there are already many ideas in the booklet). You can also click here to see where our research trials are at and what we are learning along with pics
  • Organise your seed raising mix for the spring. If you’re making your own use 1/3 screened garden soil, 1/3 screened aerobically made minerally dense compost, 1/3 sand . If you don't have the compost you could substitute with 10%  well made vermicast that has also had minerals added (unless you know you fed the worms high brix food) The best commercial seed raising I know of is Daltons which not only does not contain fungicides but does contain beneficial microbes!
Orchard: 
  • Finish planting  fruit trees. Be sure to plant your trees well.click here for instructions how you plant them will largely determine how well they grow and how much fruit they will give you. Environment determines genetic expression!!!
  • Finish pruning your deciduous fruit trees.Pruning fruit trees is a bit of a lost art, don't be put off because you don't know how to do it. Find somebody to learn from, it will be a life long journey .... but your trees are part of your family and how well they produce fruit (you can actually harvest), grow and remain healthy will be some extent dependant on how well you prune them. click here to see info about our pruning workshops

 

FIRST QUARTER
Friday, 8 July 2011
Garden: 
  • Clean out tunnel houses, green houses and potting benches ready for spring planting - slugs and snails live under rubbish and things lying around
  • Repot and revitalise pot plants
  • Prepare beds for early potatoes, peas and broad beans(in the north). Aim to grow high brix early potatoes if you wish to avoid the psyllid. They must be in before early September to avoid being taken out by the Psyllids. click here to see our potato planting guide
Orchard: 
  • Once all planting and pruning, manuring and mulching is over in the orchard, it’s holiday time. If you’re onto it you’ll get a small break before the vege garden is full on!
FULL MOON
Friday, 15 July 2011
Garden: 
  • Collect your seeds ready for a big early garden planting into seed trays next new moon
  • Plant early potatoes Jersey Bennes, Karoro, King Edward and Maori, in areas where the tops will not be taken out by early frosts and also in areas where there is good garden drainage
  • Plant broad beans and peas into trays ready to transplant when tops are up.
  • Remember environment determines genetic expression... you have to put the effort in to get excellent results. Now might be the time to book yourself into a Bio Intensive Gardening Workshop? This workshop will equip you with the best information and practical experience I know of to get you growing in a way that works, shows you how to get the best results and in the most efficient way possible. We need food production experts around every corner, on every block. Perhaps ypu need a copy of the Koanga Garden Guide by Kay baxter or The Sustainable Home Garden by John Jeavons to get you onto a sustainable track, or perhaps you could book yourself onto one of the Koanga Institute monthly Guided Tours which will inspire you and give you the very basics to get you going?
     
Orchard: 
  • Have a knees up
LAST QUARTER
Saturday, 23 July 2011
Garden: 
  • Check out new and inspirational books! Time to do lots of dreaming about your garden goals for the year to come and get your creative juices flowing.. we're hard out designing new gardens and using every technique we can find to create sustainable systems, including finding the best ways of composting and using our humanure...our favourites right now include Composting and Growing Compost Materials Ecology Action booklet, Growing  and Gathering Your own Fertilsers Ecology Action Booklet, and Future Fertility another Ecology Action Booklet
  • If you see learning to make your own high quality aerobic, minerally balanced compost as being a challenge you need to take on, as we do, then can we suggest you get yourself a good compost thermometer so you can actually see what is going on inside your heap. A heap that gets too hot is sending the valuable carbon and nitrogen back up into the atmosphere and adding to the greenhouse effect. It possibly means you are making anaerobic compost,which may mean you are wasting your time. We all need to learn the art of compost making !!!!
  • Sharpen garden stakes, trim pea stakes, prepare labels, check all cloche and cover materials as well as all netting hoops and bird covers. Make sure you have enough seedling trays to get you through Spring. We  have beautiful macrocarpa kit set flats available through the shop
  • Make up hot beds if you will be needing them for peppers, eggplants, tomatoes and other early crops next month.. 20cm of horse manure (insulation underneath) with some sand on top will decompose slowly and get your seedlings off to a good start if you insulate the horse manure on the bottom and sides, perhaps with hay .
     
Orchard: 
  • Plant fruit tress
  • Prune fruit trees
  • Manure and prune fruit trees, remember probaby all of our fruit trees could do with available calcium and phoshate and more. The best all round fruit tree fertiliser we know of, if you have to buy it, is EFSoilForce. If you have had issues in the past with lots of flowers and not much fruit and you know you have the bees and the pollinator trees then get some EF FRuit Foliar which will provide your tree with the correct mineral balance to ensure fruit set.
  • Prune tie and de-sucker, manure and mulch, if not already done, berry fruits, blueberry, cranberry, blackbery, loganberry, raspberry, currrants, etc Design Your Own Orchard has a chapter on pruning berry fruits
  • Prune macadamias and tamarillos that have finished cropping
NEW MOON
Sunday, 31 July 2011
Garden: 
  • Clean out green house and propagation facilities
  • Sow seed for early tomatoes, in glass houses or for cloches. If cloche-grown then they’ll need to be dwarf varieties, Scorseby Dwarf is our best one.
  • Plant peas into trays for transplanting when 3 -10cm high
  • Sow broad beans into seed trays and transplant as soon as the tops emerge above soil
  • Sow dwarf beans and courgettes into seed trays in warm green house
  • Make a late sowing of sweet peas
  • Sow eggplant and pepper seed in a tray of its own, needs 20 degrees day and night for strong even germination (bottom heat trays with thermostats are excellent for making sure you don’t miss this critical germination time)
  • Sow early potatoes
  • Plant into seed trays petunia, larkspur, calendula, aquilegia, foxglove, hollyhock, honesty, love-in-a-mist, poppy, scabiosa, cornflower, stock, sweet william.
  • Prepare cloches to warm up the soil in preparation for planting out early beans and courgettes also possibly early cabbages, beetroot, lettuces, cucumbers, and for direct sowing rocket, mizuna, kale and mustard lettuce for spring salad greens; to be cut and harvested as mesclun crops
  • Sow Essene flax seed direct onto beds, (broadcast thickly) lightly rake in, or chop in and cover with bird netting or microclima to protect from birds until 2cm high.
  • As vege beds become dry enough to work begin taking out compost crops, making compost and either digging over or U Barring beds
  • Feed strawberries and rhubarb at this time
     
Orchard: 
  • Last chance to check all winter plantings to make sure all trees are staked well, that their bark is not rubbing on tree stakes, and that all ties from last year are not strangling the trees.
  • If you’re having problems with pollination of fruit trees, and bees is not the problem, then it may help to record all your flowering times on a chart for a season or two. Set this up now if needed