January 2023

FULL MOON 7th January

Garden

  • Water as required, especially just around the full moon as the plants are really wanting to grow
  • Sow root vegetables such as carrots, beetroot, parsnips, radish, daikon, turnips and swedes
  • Feed if required three days before full moon. Check out our new Making Regenerative Fertilisers online workshop to learn how to make your own fertilisers and build resilience
  • Keep up tomato and pepper maintenance
  • Spray Kōanga Psyllid Solution for psyllid and or shield bugs, also look to see if your plants are water stressed or nutrient stressed
  • Layer carnations
  • Plant bulbs in garden beds, orchard or pots
  • Dead head dahlias and all flowers to keep them flowering

Perennials

  • Asparagus needs to be left to grow big fronds now, to photosynthesis and sequester carbon in the soil and grow stronger roots to send up shoots again next Spring. Water deeply, feed and mulch and let the tops grow tall. If you don’t want asparagus seeds germinating everywhere then remove all the fleshy orange seed balls. We put a string around the bed to prevent the tops falling all over other beds
  • Globe artichokes will be finished now, time to get a pair of strong loppers or a pruning saw and cut them back so young shoots can regrow to produce the next round of artichokes. You can divide the clumps once the shoots regrow, to make new plants, which will be exactly like the parent unlike the seedlings which are variable
  • Welsh bunching onions hate hot dry roots. Mulch them heavily and keep moist and fed top grow fast and amazing green onions for being harvested constantly. I mulched with ramial wood chip and they loved it. (Check out our Booklet Growing Nutrient Dense Food and/or our online workshop Making Regenerative Fertilisers for info on making and using ramial wood chip)

Forest Garden

  • Watch for water and or nutrient stress, and take action, foliar feeding might help.
  • Make a careful notes of when all your fruit ripens so that you know where the gaps are for future plantings, especially also note which trees are stressed and need extra mulch or nutrient support to enable a strong healthy crop next season
  • If you wish to take a break over winter, then now is the time to prune your fruit trees, as you finish harvesting the crop from each tree.

LAST QUARTER 15th January

Garden

  • If you don’t already have a good garden plan then do it now. Use The Kōanga Garden Planner if you need help to create a plan that gives you the veges you want to eat in an efficient regenerative way
  • If you do have a plan then check it carefully now to ensure you get all the seeds needed for Feb planting ready
  • Prepare beds, prick out and transplant seedlings as they are ready, for late and autumn crops
  • Ensures all transplanted brassicas are covered with row crop cover or frost cloth to ensure the white butterflies don’t get to them and also to keep out of the high mid Summer heat. They love the cooler more shaded situation and with no white butterflies you will never have seen better plants
  • Continue watering
  • Continue tomato/ pepper maintenance
  • Weed and aerate the surface of newly planted beds
  • Prepare ground for Autumn flowering annuals
  • Harvest main crop garlic if not already out garlic, dry then clean and select your mother seed for next year

Forest Garden

  • Summer pruning can be done now on stone fruit after fruit comes off
  • Plan now for next season’s plantings. Get a copy of Design Your Own Orchard and the Koanga Designing and Managing Forest Gardens Booklet. These two will give you all the knowledge and skills to do your own design and planning to create something that is capable of regeneration of your backyard ecosystem and your health on every level.
  • The Kōanga Fruit Tree catalogue and also Forest Garden Support tree lists go live here on the Koanga website in early February each year
  • Summer prune stone fruit
  • Watch for branches breaking under the weight of a heavy crop, may need to thin or stake up or tie up branches
  • You will have loads of plums now, a good time to make vinegar, bottle fruit and make juice to store (using a steam juicer)
  • Chooks, ducks and geese all eat waste fruit

NEW MOON  22nd January

Garden

  • Bird protection (see Kōanga Garden Guide, and Growing Grains on the Knowledge Base on Website) on all Summer grain beds eg millet, amaranth, quinoa
  • Collect, dry, freeze and store any vege and flower seeds
  • Harvest onions and shallots, dry, then select mother seed and store separately
  • Plant seed now for cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, kale, Brussels sprouts, lettuce, peas, celery, coriander, and parsley. This planting is really important to avoid big gaps in May and June
  • Harvest shellout or dried beans when the sun is out and it is hot, do not leave on plants in rain for days at this point, if they need further drying place on sheet in greenhouse etc and when pods are crunchy stomp on them to release seeds and store seeds
  • Weeding and aeration
  • Plant beds that have a gap before the next crop with fast growing green manure crops such as mustard, buckwheat and phacelia. Check Kōanga Garden Planner and do your homework, to ensure you have no gaps next year
  • Plant a wide range of flowers for autumn and spring flowering such as calendula, chamomile, stocks, hollyhocks, Sweet William, Chinese forget me nots, columbine
  • Continue to store and process excess crops for future use (Change of Heart has recipes) lactic pickled gherkins, Bread and Butter pickles, fermented tomato sauce, fermented pepper sauces, fermented beans, beet kvass

Perennials

  • Keep moist but have a break in this department!

Temperate Forest Garden

  • Bud development happening now as energy comes back up from root zone
  • Watch moisture levels in the soil carefully, especially under young fruit trees and citrus, feijoas and kiwifruit which all have very shallow feeder roots. Water stress now could mean bad cicada damage and pear slug damage.
  • Bird protection on trees with ripe fruit
  • Tree roots are very active now finding the nutrients they will need to set next years fruit

FIRST QUARTER 29th January

Garden

  • Plant empty beds in carbon crops (check out the website for our new range of carbon crop seed mixes). Check Garden Planner, but I suggest if you are building soil and soil fertility then plant in carbon crops that are also legumes, and fork in 2.5cm of Ramial wood chip into the top 5cm of garden bed soil to use the cooler months to build your soil and fertility as well as moisture holding capacity and enormous fungal networks which hold the structure in your soil and enable you to become no dig and actually have it work!
  • Carbon crops that are legumes are blue lupins and crimson clover.. these are my favourite two
  • The crops planted now will provide the most carbon next spring
  • Foliar feed, or soil drench if required three days before the full moon

Temperate Forest Garden

  • Watch moisture levels everywhere