Gardening by the Moon in October

FIRST QUARTER
Tuesday, 4 October 2011
Garden: 
  • Keep planting salad greens every month
  • Foliar feed with EF Growth- Foliar if plants are in their  early growing stages, or EF Fruit- Foliar if they will son be flowering or setting fruit or seed.before full moon
  • Major time for bed preparation and taking care of seedlings and newly transpalnted seedlings
  • Continue transplanting out into beds all your seedlings
  • Quite a few of your perennials will be feeling the ground warming and will be sending up their first shoots (e.g. echinacea, stevia, bergamot) and may need checking for slug and snail damage (especially stevia).
Orchard: 
  • Watch for water stress and try to avoid it by careful watering, time watering will be time not spent dealing with pests and other associated problems
  • Watch for Bronze beetle attack on apples, feijoas, and all trees that are likely to be water stressed. You may need to spray Neem oil. You will do a better job of stopping the new few generations as well
FULL MOON
Wednesday, 12 October 2011
Garden: 
  • Good time to foliar feed or spray
  • Direct sow carrots and parsnips
  • Plant main crop potatoes (onto comfrey and or seaweed), carrots, beetroot, Jerusalem artichokes, yams all tubers and root crops
  • If your waterchestnuts have not been planted into a tub or plastic lined groing trough then  do it now. They need 20cm of water fed with lime and cow manure.
  • Plant kumara when the Pipiwharororoa puts a tail on his call
  • Continue bed preparation, loads of work with seedlings , snail patrols
  • Keep all planted beds weed free and aerated every week if possible on the waning moon
  • If your dahlias over wintered in the ground then now is the time to lift and divide and replant
Orchard: 
  • Good time to foliar feed for health
  • Moisture levels critical for shallow roots. If any of your trees are looking unhappy then carefully check their roots: are they too dry, are they repelling the water you're putting on because they are too dry?
LAST QUARTER
Thursday, 20 October 2011
Garden: 
  • Continue pricking out seedlings and transplanting
  • Mound up earlier plantings of potatoes, critical that you either mulch or mound up well to obtain heavy crops and avoid potato worms, also make sure you are growing high brix potatoes to avoid both blight and the psyllid wasps. If your potatoes are under 12 brix you will very likely atract both problems. A foliar spray with raw milk is a great way to kill blight spores ad then a foliar spray with high quality compost tea will be a great way to strengthen the microbe populations on the potato and tomato leaves to help avoid blight but the best way is to grow high brix plants...test with your refractometer then test to see what additions make the brix go up. I usually find foliar EFBio-Cal, alternated with EFGrowth -Foliar work well to take it up if it's less than 12. I try to get it over 14. Psyllid wasps can also be detered by using Neem Oil early in the season, to stop numbers from building.
Orchard: 
  • Dig up comfrey root, cut into 3-5 cm pieces and plant into seedling tray to get roots before transplanting into orchard. If soil conditions are good you can directly plant the pieces of root straight into the ground now.
  • Make sure all the irrigation systems are working well now
  • Weed  and feed comfrey borders and barriers, pull back kikuyu if this is a kikuyu barrier
  • Cut back canna lily borders so they will come away strong as barriers for comfrey, they will grow better if fertilised at this point too
  • If it's warm and the grass is growing well in the orchard then scything the grass will mean you can mulch your fruit trees. Weed eating the grass does not provide useable mulch, scything does.
NEW MOON
Thursday, 27 October 2011
Garden: 
  • Last time to plant comfrey root cuttings
  • Prick out and transplant all seedlings ready to go into the garden
  • Prepare beds for late spring planting
  • Plant patches of mustard as a catch crops for shield bugs
  • Plant seeds for summer/autumn flowers, sunflowers, zinnias, cosmos, love lies bleeding, nicotiana, gaillardia
  • Plant more corn, beans, courgettes, cucumbers, late tomatoes, lettuce, basil, magenta Spreen etc
  • Mulch as many of your vege beds as practical, corn, pumpkins, tomatoes and peppers are easy to mulch
Orchard: 
  • Check moisture levels under young trees and water where necessary
  • Mulch deciduous orchard areas
  • Check all apples trees for woolly aphid ( white furry aphids in the cicada damage on branches) sprinkle neem granules on ground around tree and spray tree with garlic and pyrethrum and neem oil (mix the sprays),
  • Bronze beetles on feijoas, apples, pears indicate water stress, may need spray of garlic/pyrethrum and water well
  • Mulch berry fruits and organise netting
  • Time to clean up, mulch and replant any gaps in the subtropical orchard
  • Time to establish initial plantings (Abyssinian bananas, acacia pravissima) if a subtropical orchard is a future plan.
  • Fertilise and mulch and water if necessary bananas to get strong suckers
  • Use garden shark to cut off all black leaves and dead growth throughout subtropical orchard and mulch