Gardening by the moon in March

FULL MOON
Monday, 1 March 2010
Garden: 
  • Liquid feed three days after full moon
  • Plant carrots, swedes, beetroot and turnips, and other root crops
  • Apply liquid comfrey, with carbon added e.g. vermicast, sugar, molasses or compost, or humates to tomatoes and peppers
  • Harvest basil, tomatoes and peppers for processing
Orchard: 
  • Harvest and store apples and pears
  • Bottle, dry or make into jam, wine or sauces, pickles and chutneys any windfall or excess fruit
  • Plant spring bulbs in orchard herbal ley, keeping in mind the range of flowering times from the Erlicheers to the last daffodils
  • Attend to drainage, fencing and maintenance jobs before it gets wet
LAST QUARTER
Monday, 8 March 2010
Garden: 
  • Prick out all the emerging seedlings for Winter garden
  • Transplanting, weeding
  • Turn under catch crop flowering mustard or spray the beetles with neem oil
  • Check grain crops (quinoa, amaranth) for bird damage and maturity and harvest if necessary. If ready to harvest lay in a warm place in the greenhouse to finish maturing before threshing and winnowing
  • Watch drying corn for bird and rat damage, leave on plants to dry as long as possible then harvest and put in dry warm place to finish drying. You could pull the husks back and tie in twos and hang over loops of strong string to dry
  • Harvest and process peppers, tomatoes and basil. Keep the best to save seed
  • Harvest Summer squash (not the long keepers), the first of the kumara and onions and keep the best for seed
  • Harvest main crop potatoes, saving egg sized tubers from the best plants for a seed crop
  • Harvest dried shellout beans and put in greenhouse to dry until crunchy when they can be jumped on and separated from pods
  • Harvest hulless pumpkin but do not remove seeds for several weeks
  • Finish lifting and transplanting Spring flowering bulbs
  • Lift and plant rooted carnation layers in pots or fresh beds
  • Prepare ground and sow new lawns
Orchard: 
  • Check all young fruit trees and shallow rooted trees for moisture stress such as citrus, feijoas and subtropicals
  • Manure citrus trees now and spray with foliar seaweed/fish
  • Plant subtropicals only if you have water available for irrigation
  • Summer prune last of the stone fruit which makes job easier in Winter and there is less chance of disease
  • De-sucker any remaining banana suckers
  • When harvesting fruit check all trees for size of crop, disease, other problems, so you can think about changes that need to be made over the Winter
  • Shift hawk kites and/or nets over trees where fruit is ripening
  • Pick up all fallen fruit (or let chooks/ducks/pigs eat it) to avoid bugs overwintering
  • Thin inside growth of gooseberries and currants
  • Cut out old fruit rods of loganberries and raspberries, and tie new growth up
NEW MOON
Tuesday, 16 March 2010
Garden: 
  • Prepare garlic beds
  • In warmer areas this is your last chance to sow orach, silverbeet, rainbow chard, endive, brassicas, peas, coriander and celery
  • Plant green manure and compost crops in empty beds
  • Last planting of biennial flowers and herbs such as hollyhocks, sweet William, columbine and verbascum
  • Sow calendula, cineraria, poppies, snap dragons and pansy seed for flowers in the Winter vege garden
  • Sow heartsease for companion to garlic and onions over the Winter
  • Plant out Autumn /Winter flowering annuals that are ready now
Orchard: 
  • A great time to establish your orchard herbal leys while the ground is warm and moist
  • Plant subtropical fruit trees
  • De-sucker bananas and cut off the male part of flower when fruit has set
  • Manure, mulch and compost around fruit trees while ground is warm, but after rain comes
  • Plan and organise Winter plantings
  • Take out any trees that need removing before it gets wet
NEW MOON
Tuesday, 23 March 2010
Garden: 
  • Plant compost/carbon crops for Winter
  • Plant strawberry runners, into trays to strengthen roots for transplanting in May into garden
  • Plant Winter salad greens under microclima, cloches or cold frames
  • Transplant flowers for early Spring flowering, heartsease, snap dragons, calendula larkspur, love in a mist, hollyhock
  • Feed all brassicas, celery, beetroot, salad greens that need it while the soil is still warm and active
Orchard: 
  • Feed citrus well now, manure, seaweed, rock phosphate, dolomite and mulch
  • Spray neem on apples for codlin and woolly aphid (if you have woolly aphid you’ll have to put neem onto the roots of the apples using a watering can as well as spraying the leaves because the bugs over winter and live in the roots re-infecting the tops), pears for pear slug and citrus for aphid and mealy bug if necessary