Gardening by the Moon in October

LAST QUARTER
Friday, 1 October 2010
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
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
Friday, 8 October 2010
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
FIRST QUARTER
Friday, 15 October 2010
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 liquid 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 effective than any way of sorting the problem once blight is there. Growing High Brix tomatoes is the ultimate answer, make sure they have plenty of available calcium and phosphate as well as seaweed….. foliar feed with EF Fruit Foliar or seaweed or your own brew but keep up the nutrition and the moist soil if you want high health high production tomatoes
  • Feed and water asparagus to keep it producing until xmas
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
Saturday, 23 October 2010
Garden: 
  • Foliar feed if necessary all veges.
  • Liquid feed ground around any plants that need a 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
Sunday, 31 October 2010
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