Gardening by the Moon in November

FIRST QUARTER
Thursday, 3 November 2011
Garden: 
  • Prick out and transplant seedlings, make sure you have loads of companion flowers going into the vege garden: zinnias, sunflowers, cleome, marigolds, bedding dahlias, cosmos, love lies bleeding, gaillardia
  • Basil, alyssum and classic zinnias are great companions for tomatoes. Plant them now.
  • Give a regular foliar spray using seaweed, vermiliquid, fish/phyter etc
  • Apply liquid feed such as comfrey, liquid cow manure by watering can to ground under tomatoes, peppers and any other plants needing a boost.
  • Harvesting flowers and herbs for drying
  • Decide how you're going to manage blight in tomatoes and potatoes. Prevention is more efeective than any way of sorting the problem once blight is there. Either do weekly fish and phyter, or fish and phyter monthly and a raw milk spray weekly, or Agrisea seaweed spray weekly, or a copper spray with rain guard to make it last longer when needed.
  • Feed and water asparagus to keep it producing until Christmas
Orchard: 
  • Keep up the watering
  • Check for pest problems, spray if necessary
  • Remove any unwanted suckers from berry fruit
  • Watch for breaking branches as early fruit swells, may need to thin fruit or prop up branches, especially the Orion peach and Marabella plum
  • Chop up flowering Abyssinian bananas for mulch around subtropical orchard
  • Feed citrus to encourage strong healthy growth at this time
FULL MOON
Friday, 11 November 2011
Garden: 
  • Foliar feed all veges.
  • Liquid feed ground around any plants that need a strong boost.
  • Plant kumara tupu.
  • Plant main crop potatoes onto trenches of wilted comfrey leaves.
  • Plant Jerusalem artichokes, Chinese artichokes, yams, yacon, aniu, beetroot and carrots, scorzonera, salsify.
  • More transplanting.
  • Mulch any beds that are ready.
  • Harvest flowers, herbs and seeds for drying.
Orchard: 
  • Keep watering and watch for pest/disease problems.
  • If there is still moisture in the ground there will be loads of grass that can be scythed to use as mulch on the garden.
LAST QUARTER
Saturday, 19 November 2011
Garden: 
  • Weed, mulch and water.
  • Continue pricking out and transplanting.
  • Watch carefully for insects/diseases and learn what they are, how they impact you and what the best ways are to manage them.
  • Continue harvesting flowers and herbs for drying.
Orchard: 
  • Continue watering and mulching.
  • Observe which trees are happy and which ones are stressed. Why? What can you do about it? What can you learn for the future?
  • Time to prune your cherimoyas, back to three buds of new growth, cover cuts with pruning paste to stop borer getting in.
  • Great time to plant sub-tropicals.
  • Mulch all fruit trees you can use the scythed grass from the orchard to do this a this time of the year
NEW MOON
Friday, 25 November 2011
Garden: 
  • Check for water stress - the less stress, the less pest problems
  • Transplant last of spring plantings - late crop tomatoes, beans and corn, basil, courgettes, cucumbers and leeks
  • Watch out for young, black shiled bugs - use neem oil spray
  • Take care of liquid fertiliser barrels; keep stirred and refilled with comfrey, manure, seaweed etc. Tomatoes, corn, pumpkins may need a boost now
  • Plant seed into trays for late summer harvesting of dwarf and climbing beans, courgettes, carrots, beetroot, lettuce (tree lettuce will take the heat), basil, tampala, short season corn (if you are in an area with a long summer) celery
Orchard: 
  • Check young trees carefully for moisture stress. Water stress now will mean damage from cicada, shield bugs, pear slug, woolly aphids and die back on young trees.
  • Watch fruit carefully and net trees where you need to. We use 10m squares of knitted bird netting, raised over the trees with a bamboo pole on two corners of the netting and pulled together underneath.
  • Watch carefully for branches of stone fruit showing signs of silver leaf - often just one limb of a tree will have silver leaves. Now is the time to cut that limb off and burn it and inoculate the tree with Trichopaste and/or Tricho dowels.