Garden
- Time for dreaming, resting, learning, planning and finding inspiration for the year to come
- Do some learning, via books workshop or on-line workshops
Temperate Forest garden
- Plant fruit trees
- Prune fruit trees
- Feed prune feijoas (feijoas are pollinated by birds so need to be pruned from inside to be open)
- Feed and mulch all berry fruits, blueberries, cranberries, blackberries, logan berries and raspberries,
- De-sucker raspberries
- Make sure your Black raspberries are pruned and tied up
NEW MOON
Garden
- Think carefully about what possible seed saving you might like to be doing over the next season.
- Now is the time to decide how important it is for you to be growing veges and fruit with a high nutritional density (bearing in mind that eating nutritional dense food will be the most sustainable way of staying healthy while taking care of the environment!!) The only way to do that is to be growing them in a balanced, highly mineralised soil with high levels of microorganisms. If you want to increase the nutrient density of your produce and you feel you need specific direction then I would recommend our online Growing Nutrient DEnse Food Work, our Booklet or our onsite Workshops. Basically it is about getting the air, moisture, carbon, minerals and microbes right!
- Organise your seed raising mix for the Spring. If you’re making your own use 1/3 screened garden soil, 1/3 screened compost, 1/3 sand and then add 10% vermicast.
Perennials
- Time to plan your perennial garden, and get the seeds/plant material you will require
Temperate Forest Garden
- Decide to deal with all pests and diseases in the orchard over the next year by: focusing totally on soil health which will give us tree health! That means loads of support species that can either be coppiced and chipped or cut up and dropped as well as evergreen legumes that can be chopped and dropped. Check out the Koanga Support Tree Seeds list and or any willow and poplar cuttings that may be available on the website
- Finish planting and pruning fruit trees
JULY FIRST QUARTER
Garden
- Clean out tunnel houses, greenhouses and potting benches ready for spring planting – slugs and snails live under rubbish and things lying around
- We prepare beds at this time by pulling out all carbon crops for composting them cover beds with black plastic for 3-4 weeks so you have no wedding to doi. Then simply apply compost and plant beds
- Prepare beds for early potatoes, peas and broad beans, garlic and grains if you are growing them. (hulless barley, wheat, flaxseed at this time)
- Enjoy the last of your winter break
Temperate Forest Garden
- If you are still planting be sure to do the best possible job of planting your trees, how you plant them will determine how much fruit they produce over their lifetime. See our Koanga Planting Guide and also our Fruit Tree Health Guide
- Mulch and prune feijoas
- before you have a break remove all of the mummified fruit remaining on trees to get rid of disease for next year’s crop
- Prune tie and de-sucker, manure and mulch if not already done berry fruits, blueberry, cranberry, blackberry, loganberry, raspberry, currants etc Pruning instructions for all berries in Design Your Own Orchard
- Once all planting and pruning, staking, manuring and mulching is done in the orchard, it’s holiday time. If you’re onto it you’ll get a small break before the vege garden is full on!
JULY FULL MOON
Garden
- Begin collecting your seeds ready for your early garden planting into seed trays next new moon.. If you are saving your own seed now is a great time to go through them all and select the very best seeds for planting and spend time with the seeds…handle them… listen to them ….
- once you have your garden planned then check out the plan and see if you will need any garden bed hoops, bird netting or frost cloth and organise so you have it when you need it
Temperate Forest Garden
- Have a knees up,, crack out last year’s apple cider out blackberry wine etc
JULY LAST QUARTER
Garden
- Check out new and inspirational books! Have you thoroughly read the Art of Composting Booklet, as home gardeners our solutions for regeneration mostly lie via the compost as far as I can see, a critical area to upskill in . Maybe you are a Beginner Gardener and our Beginner Gardener Booklet ( major updates ad edits in 2024) will be your start here. Time to do lots of dreaming about your garden goals for the year to come and get your creative juices flowing. The Koanga Garden Planner is a sophisticated design process for achieving all of your goals in the garden, now is the time to use it to design your entire garden to do everything you require. Check out our online garden masterclass or for those who learn best by doing, come and do a workshop at Koanga.
- Sharpen garden stakes, all tools, oil wooden handles, trim pea stakes, prepare labels, check all cloche and cover materials as well as all netting hoops and bird covers
- make your seed raising mix
- Make up hotbeds ( can use compost heaps, or horse manure) if you will be needing them for peppers, eggplants, tomatoes and other early crops next month Koanga Garden Guide has a horse manure design for bottom heat. You also use bubble plastic around trays overnight, etc etc .
Temperate Forest Garden
- If you’ve done your pruning and planting, take a breath as the garden is about to explode!