NEW MOON Wednesday 29th October

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 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
• Soak ground under avocadoes with fish and phyter to prevent phytophera
• Use garden shark to cut off all black leaves and dead growth throughout subtropical orchard and mulch

FIRST QUARTER Thursday 6th November

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. Either do weekly fish and phyter or fish and phyter on the soil 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 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 Thursday 13th November

Garden

• Foliar feed if necessary all veges with seaweed, fish/phyter, vermiliquid etc
• 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
• More transplanting
• Mulch any beds that are ready
• Harvest flowers and 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 Thursday 20th November

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

NEW MOON Friday 28th November

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 for young, black shield bugs – use neem tree 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 a 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 in 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.