FULL MOON – August 2nd
Garden
- Begin collecting your seeds ready for a big 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…
Temperate Forest Garden
- Have a knees up, crack out last year’s apple cider or blackberry wine etc.
LAST QUARTER – August 8th
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 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 Kōanga 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.
- 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 up hot beds if you will be needing them for peppers, eggplants, tomatoes and other early crops next month. Kōanga Garden Guide has a horse manure design for bottom heat.
Temperate Forest Garden
- If you’ve done your pruning and planting, take a breath as the garden is about to explode!
NEW MOON – August 16th
Garden
- Clean out green house and propagation facilities.
- Sow all garlic, shallots, potato and tree onions now.
- Sow onion and leek seed now.
- Sow seed for early tomatoes to be grown in glass houses or passive solar cloches. If cloche-grown then they’ll need to be dwarf varieties. Henry’s Dwarf Bush Cherry is our best tomato for small spaces or pot growing.
- Plant peas into trays for transplanting when 3 -5cm high.
- Sow broadbeans into seed trays and transplant as soon as the tops emerge above soil.
- Sow dwarf beans and courgettes into seed trays in warm greenhouse, for planting out into green houses or good cloches in warmer areas.
- Make a late sowing of sweet peas.
- Sow eggplant and pepper seed in a tray of its own, needs 20 degrees Celsius day and night for strong, even germination (bottom heat trays with thermostats are excellent for making sure you don’t miss this critical germination time).
- Sow early potatoes in warm areas only.
- Plant into seed trays petunia, larkspur, calendula, aquilegia, foxglove, hollyhock, honesty, love-in-a-mist, poppy, cornflower, stock and Sweet William.
- Prepare cloches to warm up the soil in preparation for planting out early beans and courgettes, also possibly early cabbages, beetroot, lettuces, cucumbers, and for direct sowing rocket, mizuna, kale and mustard lettuce for spring salad greens; to be cut and harvested as mesclun crops.
- Sow Essene flaxseed directly onto beds, (broadcast) lightly rake in, or chop in and cover with shade cloth to protect from birds until 2cm high.
- As vege beds become dry enough to work begin taking out compost crops, making compost and either digging over or U Barring beds.
- Feed strawberries and rhubarb at this time.
- Ensure all perennials are well mulched ready for Spring production.
Perennials
- Plan your perennial garden NOW and get your seeds and plants.
Temperate Forest Garden
- Last chance to check all winter plantings to make sure all trees are staked well, that bark is not rubbing on tree stakes, and that all ties from last year are not strangling the trees.
- If you’re having problems with pollination of fruit trees and bees, and nutrition are not the problem then it may help to record all your flowering times on a chart for a season or two. Set this up now if needed.
FIRST QUARTER – August 24th
Garden
- Loads of pricking out.
- Fertilise garlic and onions…. More compost if you have it or liquid feed, I use cow manure and molasses.
- Now is the time to decide on a mineralisation program for your entire garden area from now on throughout the spring, summer and autumn twice a month before and after full moon for maximum benefit. We recommend you either check out our online Growing Nutrient Dense Food Workshop or our Growing Nutrient Dense Food Booklet, both of which give you local regenerative solutions you can do it all yourselves.
- Spend a few nights this week checking out the slug and snail situation, maybe require night patrols with a torch and a container of hot water, before it warms up too much and the seedlings start going out. Quash is the slug bait I’m happiest to use. It is completely nontoxic apart from large quantities in waterways for fish!
- Bed preparation critical as soil allows.
Temperate Forest Garden
- Now is a good time to decide how you will manage soil and tree health in your forest garden. Read this short article , it might be helpful.
FULL MOON – August 31st
Garden
- Great time to feed plants via leaves and also feed soil.
- Plant early potatoes now into trenches of mineralised compost, seaweed and well-rotted manure.
- Direct sow carrots under cloches into well prepared soil, and cover with an old sheet until seeds germinate.
- Place kūmara tubers into sand boxes and put in a warm place to grow kūmara tupu, or order your heritage kūmara tupu now.
- Plant water chestnuts into seed trays with a plastic liner to keep very moist, and sprout in green house, or order your water chestnut plants now.
- Plant Chinese root ginger into a 20-30cm deep box in green house.
- Plant turmeric into wicking bed in greenhouse or large pot in greenhouse or house.
- Begin sowing Jerusalem artichokes, or order your heritage starter plants now.
Forest Garden
- Chop your prunings and spread down as mulch all around forest garden to feed fungi.
- Compost and or feed citrus trees, and mulch heavily.
