DECEMBER 2022

FIRST QUARTER 1st December

Garden

  • Finish planting any seeds needed for continuity including late sunflowers and flowers for autumn colour (zinnias, gaillardia, cosmos, and marigolds)
  • Keep up regular watering and nutrient maintenance
  • Foliar feed three days before full moon –
  • Watch for shield bugs, aphids, psyllid, all signs of nutrient deficiencies and or water stress..ask yourself What is the stress point?
  • decide how to manage better next year

Perennials

  • Asparagus will need to be left to grow this month after Xmas,
  • Globe artichokes will finish this month
  • Continue removing seed heads from Welsh Bunching onions to ensure continued growth
  • Runner beans (Phaseolus coccineus) good as green beans now, they need cool roots so keep moist

Temperate Forest garden

  • Check moisture levels on all young trees, look at the soil and leaves
  • Watch for bronze beetle damage, pear slug and cicada damage
  • Foliar spray with seaweed vermiliquid

FULL MOON 8th December

Garden

  • Feed and keep up with watering where necessary.. a big job this month,
  • Feed tomatoes and peppers, possibly pumpkins with liquid comfrey weekly from now on for maximum crops

Temperate Forest Garden

  • Energy is going back to the roots now, be sure you have laid the grass/ mulched trees to feed fungi and applied minerals. However you do it to ensure next seasons crop
  • Summer prune stone fruit as the fruit has finished on each tree – you’ll have less disease issues and the autumn growth will grow where you need it.

LAST QUARTER 16th December

Garden

  • Prick out seedlings as necessary
  • Keep up watering
  • Carefully observe all plants – they’ll tell you if they need some more water, nutrients, help with pest control, tying up or more space. This is a very important time to good care of the tomatoes and peppers
  • Transplant leeks into garden for autumn winter use
  • Sow seed for late autumn/winter early spring flowering—snap dragon, calendula, marigold, sweet william, hollyhock, granny’s bonnets, cineraria, primrose and polyanthus

Temperate Forest Garden

  • Pinch growing tips out on your fig trees to encourage the growth to go into the fruit
  • Net and harvest ripening fruit
  • Watch moisture levels, check young trees carefully
  • You should be able to have a break for a few weeks now if you’re up to date with all the above jobs. Time to begin picking the fruit and enjoying the season!

NEW MOON 23rd December

Vege Garden

  • Water carefully, using fingers to make sure the ground is getting wet where you need the moisture. It’s critical after taking care of your crops to this point that you don’t lose your harvest for lack of watering
  • Harvest garlic, dry out of sun, then clean and select your mother seed for next year
  • Harvest onions and shallots, dry out of sun, then select mother seed and store separately
  • Sow late and glasshouse crops of cucumbers, courgettes, beans, basil where you have either a long season or a greenhouse
  • Plan and sow seed for autumn crops like cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, silver beet, spinach, celery, endive, Brussels sprouts, kale, and lettuce.
  • Weed and prepare beds as they come empty ensuring you have checked your garden planner and have your next set of seedlings ready to go in
  • Continue feeding where necessary to maintain growth, the better your soil gets the less you will have to do this
  • Transplant brassicas and leeks into garden for Autumn Winter use. Ensure you cover all brassicas with row crop cover or frost cloth to keep off super hot sun and white butterflies.
  • Sow seed for late Summer flowering, zinnia, sunflower, marigold, cosmos, aster, dahlia
  • Sow seeds for Autumn/Winter early spring flowering—snapdragon, calendula, sweet William, hollyhock, granny’s bonnets, cineraria, primrose and polyanthus
  • Thresh dried flax seeds and store
  • Clean dried peas and store
  • Either dry or freeze excess broad beans for future use
  • Begin processing excess tomatoes
  • Excess sugar snap peas make excellent ferments
  • Be thinking about how you will find ramial wood chip to fork into top 5cm of beds where lupins are being planted this Autumn to feed beds and raise humus content

Perennials

  • Stop picking asparagus to let it recover ready for next year
  • Perennials are finishing now, time to water well, feed and mulch well and lay to bed to regenerate and gain strength for next season
  • Watering and feeding comfrey and alfalfa beds now will ensure far more growth over Summer, mulching with ramial wood chip once a year would be great fertiliser as well as mulch
  • You might want to harvest your asparagus seed from the female plants to avoid birds spreading it everywhere
  • Keep removing flower heads from Welsh Bunching onions to keep them growing, they need lots of water and nutrition
  • Use loppers to cut out spent globe artichoke stalks to enable new shoots to come up, will encourage an Autumn crop
  • Day Lillies at their colourful best, remember they have highly edible buds

Forest Garden

  • Now is the time to feed your fruit trees as availability of balanced and high levels of nutrients is needed now to make next year’s crop!
  • Pinch growing tips out on your fig trees to encourage growth to go into the fruit
  • Pinch tips, back to 1 or 2 buds beyond the beginning of all pruned new shoots on espaliered trees, to encourage fruiting spurs rather than loads of long shoots, regularly
  • Net and harvest ripening fruit
  • Watch moisture levels, check young trees carefully
  • Get a Reams Soil Test done urgently if not already done, to know how to feed your fruit trees by the middle of this month see below, get fertiliser required urgently. We have used EF:NanoCal and EF:SoilForce, but are now using ramial woodchip
  • Now is the time to decide how you will store excess fruit to keep you out of the supermarket over winter. Get ready to go!
  • Now is a good time to decide how you will supply fruit tree nutrients and maintain tree health into the future….see Design Your Own Forest Garden and Design Your Own Orchard
  • Order your Vinevax dowels NOW so you can inoculate your trees against Silverleaf or heal it if you already have it in your trees. Available from AGRIMM if you have enough for a wholesale order or your local Farmlands who get them from AGRIMM Technology

FIRST QUARTER 30th December

Garden

  • Check water requirements
  • Check tomato and pepper maintenance. Getting it right now, will make a huge difference to your harvest this season See Koanga Garden Guide, or Knowledge Base on website
  • Foliar/soil drench (EF:CalPhos) feed three days before full moon if needed, especially heavy feeders such as tomatoes, and pumpkins and peppers
  • Prick out and transplant as necessary
  • Finish all planting not done in New Moon section
  • As you transplant your brassicas into your beds direct sow vetch seeds, or transplant seedlings to act as a leguminous ground cover to prevent weeds and support your brassicas
  • Dead head all old flower heads to keep plants flowering

Perennials

  • See New Moon section

Forest Garden

  • The energy in the trees is coming back up from the roots with nutrients to set buds for next seasons fruit
  • Ensure soil moisture levels facilitate nutrient movement
  • NOW is a good time to sort all of your silver leaf infected trees and or inoculate all the rest that could get infected.. all your pip and stone fruit. You can often see that you have silver leaf by the silvery leaves in Spring and Autumn however sometimes the fungal disease is there and you can’t see it unless you cut the branch off and see the black discolouring in the centre of the wood. We use Trico dowels, or dowels or plugs of wood inoculated with the Trichoderma spp that destroy the silver leaf fungi in the tree. You can buy them from Farmlands, instructions are on the bags . You will need a drill with a 6mm bit to drill the holes . The time to do this is after the Spring growth flush, now is a good time
  • Check moisture levels on all trees especially dwarf apples, dwarf pears, feijoas, young trees, kiwi fruit and citrus as all have shallow roots and hate drying out. Brown leaves, bad pear slug, bad cicada damage and serious bronze beetle damage are all very often symptoms of water stress, or actually nutrient stress because there is no moisture to allow the plant roots to pick up the minerals!
  • Last week to get nutrients on the ground for optimal fruit tree production next season… must be available by 15th January.
  • Observation of each fruit tree (record fruiting times and any issues) will help future planning and management
  • Check all fruiting trees for crop and health performance, will help make good decisions later
  • Begin bottling, drying, fermenting and storing fruit