Gardening by the Moon in July

LAST QUARTER
Monday, 5 July 2010
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
  • Sharpen garden stakes, trim pea stakes, prepare labels, check all cloche and cover materials as well as all netting hoops and bird covers
  • Make up hot beds if you will be needing them for peppers, eggplants, tomatoes and other early crops next month
Orchard: 
  • Plant fruit trees
  • Prune fruit trees
  • Manure and prune feijoas
  • Prune tie and de-sucker, manure and mulch if not already done berry fruits, blueberry, cranberry, blackberry, loganberry, raspberry, currants etc
  • Prune macadamias and tamarillos that have finished pruning
NEW MOON
Monday, 12 July 2010
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 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
FIRST QUARTER
Sunday, 18 July 2010
Garden: 
  • Loads of pricking out
  • Sow seed of peas, broadbeans, winter lettuce, Land Cress, Garden Cress , beetroot, coriander, onions etc  into trays now if you didn't do it last week
  • Sprinkle EF 10/25 (a huge range of beneficial microorganisms, bacteria and fungi) over seed trays when planting seed so that they are incubated and distributed over entire garden as seedlings are transplanted out
  • Foliar feed garlic and onion patch
  • Foliar feed entire newly planted garden area from now on throughout the spring, summer and autumn twice a month before and after full moon for maximum benefit. You can check that your foliar feeding is actually working using your refractometer. take a Brix   reading at say 3 in the afternoon. apply a foliar spray then 2 hours later do the Brix test again. If the reading has gone uo then what ever foliar feed you aplied had a beneficial effect on your plants. The best all round Vegetataive Foliar spray on teh market is EF Vege Foliar (see the Koanga Shop. www.koanga.co.nz )
  • Spend a few nights this week checking out the slug and snail situation, maybe require night patrols with a torch and a container of hot water, before it warms up too much and the seedlings start going out. Quash  or the EF version is the slug bait I’m happiest to use. It is completely non toxic apart from large quantities in waterways for fish!
  • Bed preparation critical tis month as soil allows
Orchard: 
  • If you didn't do this last Autumn .. apply rock phosphate RPR or a form of Biologically active phosphate ( Nature's garden or Bio Phos).. if you have serious soil health and tree health/ growth  issue then do it again anyway
  • lime now before it dries out if you didn't lime in the Autumn.. for faster  effectiveness use a biologically active Lime or a fine lime powder rather than the usual lime which may  take years to become available.. always apply lime after phoshate asthe phosphate binds the lime to it and holds the lime up in the area of soil where it is useful. Lime tends to head towards the centre of the earth otherwise!!!
  • If you are wanting to improve fruit set, and or quality of fruit health of rruit and treeapply a foliar spray to all fruit trees bi monthly from now on .. use a spray that will encourage fruit set ie EF Fruit foliar
FULL MOON
Monday, 26 July 2010
Garden: 
  • Feed leaves and soil with your choice of nutrients and micro-organisms
  • Plant early potatoes now into trenches of  compost ( that has been made with lime of some form  in it), seaweed or  Natures Garden and Bio Lime
  • Direct sow carrots and beetroot under cloches into well prepared soil
  • Place kumara tubers into sand boxes,( or Tapapa ) and put in a warm place to grow kumara tupu
  • Plant water chestnuts into seed trays with a plastic liner to keep very moist
  • Plant Chinese root ginger into large black containers that can be hilled up an xtra 50cm over the season, and place in green house
  • Begin sowing Jerusalem artichokes
Orchard: 
  • Continue foliar  health maintenance program before and after full moon throughout the growing season
  • Prune autumn fruiting raspberries
  • Manure and mulch citrus trees