LAST QUARTER March 4th
Garden
- Prick out seedlings, transplant and weed
- Check corn, quinoa and amaranth grains for maturity and harvest
- Harvest, dry and store seeds from your favourite veges and flowers, ensuring you have followed rules of minimum numbers and isolation distances as in Koanga Save Your Own Seed Booklet or the Koanga Seed Savers Wall Chart
- Follow instructions in above publications to know how to harvest dry clean and store seeds
- Harvest Austrian hulless pumpkins when they have a deep yellow stripe on them, to process see Seed Saving Booklet. Leave to sit for 4 weeks before cutting to remove seed.
- Harvest shellout or dried beans and process and store
- Make sure all onions, garlic and shallots are harvested and stored well, with Mother seed set aside
- Plan Winter garden and make sure you know which beds your, garlic and early peas and broad beans will be in. As summer crops come off these beds you could plant crops to dig in three weeks before planting the crop
- Spray roses with seaweed, water roots well and liquid feed
- Sow anemones and ranunculi for winter flowering
- Finish planting all daffodils and flowering bulbs
- Lift gladioli when foliage turns yellow
- Water and feed dahlias for long, strong flowering
- Take geranium cuttings
- Prepare beds for planting Autumn Winter flowers
- Harvest summer squash (not the long keepers), the first of the kumara and onions and keep the best for seed
Temperate Forest Garden
- Tree energy is returning from the roots to the tops now ready to elongate the branches and set buds that will become next seasons fruit
- Summer prune apricots, peaches and plums after the fruit has been picked. This makes winter pruning easier and there is less chance of disease
- once the energy can be felt returning to the earth ( usually once rain comes) then it i stim eto chop and drop your legumes and nitrogen fixers around your fruit trees
NEW MOON March 10th
Garden
- Prepare and compost beds for Winter planting
- In colder climates tomatoes peppers and eggplants will need to be heavily harvested and taken out so your compost crops can be planted before it ets too cold for growth
- Check flour corn for maturity and harvest. It doesn’t have to be dry on the plant but must be fully mature inside the cob
- Plant seed for the final winter garden such as cauliflower, cabbage, broccoli, kale, lettuce, onions, swedes, turnips, parsley, welsh bunching onions, silverbeet, chard, orach, celery, peas, miner’s lettuce and corn salad
- Plant flowers for winter and spring colour such as calendula, heartsease, stocks, chamomile, hollyhocks, Sweet William, forget-me-nots, columbine
Perennials
- Leave them until the rains come then cutback, feed and mulch
- great time to prune out old canes and tie up new raspberry canes
Temperate Forest garden
- Terminal bud set occurring then energy goes back down to roots
- Irrigate all trees as required until the rain comes
- Cut grass and release all trees planted previous Winter, in readiness for rain as well as to feed soil; fungi to feed roots as they become active again
- Clean up herb banks and trim lavender
- Make lists of tasks needing to be carried out in the orchard such as maintenance work on fencing, irrigation or drainage or this winter’s development before it gets too wet to carry out
- Make a list to help organize winter planting and order any trees you need
FIRST QUARTER March 17th
Garden
- Plant green manure and compost crops as beds become empty
- compost the beds you are planting your Winter vege into
- soil drench newly transplanted seedling with Fish hydrolysate for microbe stimulation 100:1
- Check moisture levels everywhere as plants grow very strongly over the full moon period only if they have the moisture and nutrients to do so
- Prick out and transplant seedlings
- Sow heartsease and calendula for companion to garlic, onions etc over the winter
Temperate Forest Garden
- finish last ofSummer pruning
- chop and drop or annual heavy prune on legumes and nitrogen fix
- enjoy the fruit
- note what is cropping well , what not cropping so well to help make future decisions
FULL MOON March 25th
Garden
- Plant carrots, swedes, beetroot, radishes, daikon and turnips
- Harvest basil, tomatoes and peppers for processing, before removing plants and turning beds over
- Making compost
Temperate Forest Garden
- Harvest and store apples and pears
- Bottle, dry or make into jam, wine or sauces, pickles and chutneys any windfall or excess fruit
- Plant spring bulbs in orchard herbal ley, keeping in mind the range of flowering times from the Erlicheers to the last daffodils
- Attend to drainage, fencing and maintenance jobs before it gets wet, andafter ground softens up after rain
- release trees, or manage geese to do it for you
- pick up or use the geese or pigs to clean up all fallen fruit to keep codlin moth to a minimum next season