September Moon Calendar

SEPTEMBER 2021

NEW MOON  7th September

Garden

• • In warmer areas time for early veggies to be planted out under cloches, e.g. courgettes, bush and dwarf tomatoes, early cucumber and beans, beetroot

• • Do loads of weeding and compost making

• • Get a copy of the Koanga Booklet The Art of Composting to ensure your compost is capable of growing soil and nutrient dense food

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• • You should be beginning to take out all compost crops  and preparing beds for major plantings next month or so

• • Make sure you have a good plan for how you will nourish your soil and your plants this season to ensure you are regenerating the soil, the plant health and your health.. If you aren’t then you are degenerating all three.. Time to make a choice.. maybe time to get your copy of Koanga Booklet How to grow Nutrient Dense Food 

• • Check out these amazing Koanga Heritage Vegetable Selector Charts for pumpkins, beans, tomatoes and corn to help you select the best cultivars for your garden this spring

• • Sow seed into trays of early spring flowering plants nasturtium, sweet pea, calendula

• • Plant loads of early Spring vege seeds, into trays ready to prick out when first leaves appear.. lettuce, coriander, parsley, purple leaf mustard, ruruhau, tatsoi, Red Coral mizuna, corn salad, Miner’s lettuce 

• • Scatter sow into trays, ready to plant into garden as soon as 5cm high rocket, peas, broad beans and onions (onions need to stay in tray until 10 cm high)

• • Sow eggplants and peppers in an even warmer place. These seeds really need 20 degrees day and even nights to germinate well. I recommend you build a small plastic cloche, over a seed tray with these seeds in it, inside the green house.. or wrap your seed tray in bubble wrap plastic

Temperate Forest Garden

• • Best time to establish orchard herbal ley from scratch or to renovate existing ley

• • Slug and snail control essential around newly grafted trees

• • Good time to chop and drop tagasaste, tree lupins in warmer areas, as they finish flowering

 

FIRST QUARTER 14th September

Garden

• • Sow any seeds you missed last week and take good care of all seedlings

• • Watch for slug and snail damage, may need to do some night patrols

• • Prick out all seedlings as they emerge; as soon as second leaves appear

• • Weekly feed seedlings in greenhouse to promote strong roots, healthy growth, and loads of microbial action, if they looks as though they need it. They will not if planted into amazing alive seed raising mix, commercial mixes, even organic ones don’t do it. Maybe add your own vermicast to them and seedling Innoculant

• • Preparation of garden beds very important – apply 2cm of compost to all beds just before planting, forked into top few centimetres, along with a good all-purpose organic, highly mineralised and microbially active fertiliser EF: Nature’s Garden is a good one.

Perennials

• • Plant your globe artichoke seed now

• • Plant asparagus seed now

• • Plant Welsh bunching onion seed now

• • Plant Alpine Strawberry seed now

• • Begin preparing your perennial beds now

Temperate Forest Garden

• • Make sure all citrus trees are well manured and mulched and you have a watering system in place for them

• • Foliar feed 3 days before full moon

• • Buds will break this month , energy of the trees is coming up into the tops

• • Good time to chop and drop tagasaste, tree lupins , as they finish flowering

• • Finish chipping all prunings and spread ramial wood chip around to feed fungi

FULL MOON 21st September

Garden

• • Foliar feed seedlings to promote strength

• • Sow beetroot, carrots,  parsnip, turnips 3 days after full moon
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  • Plant potatoes

• • Transplant the last of your onion sets

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• • Continue bed preparation and compost heap making

• • General tidy up weed, mulch

Temperate Forest Garden

• • Foliar feed any trees you think might need the extra strengthening, or health promotant

• • Finish mulching

• • Organize hoses and watering systems this month!

• • Finish chopping and dropping or making ramial with prunings to return to forest floor

 

LAST QUARTER 29th September

Garden

• • As your garden beds begin to dry enough to work in them, pull out compost crops, make compost heaps

• • Prepare beds by either double digging, U Barring or forking

• • Apply Biophos if no phosphate had gone on for several years or if a soil test recommends it

• • Build cloches ready for early veggies

• • Take good care of seedlings

• • Get slug and snails under control

• • Harvest and dry nettle

• • Prepare and plant new asparagus beds

• • Prepare kumara beds. They prefer shallow soils with a hard pan 20-30cm under the surface, so do not double dig these beds.

Temperate Forest Garden

• • Good time to plant citrus

• • Mulch all young trees before the grass is competing for moisture and nutrients

• • Divide and re-sow primroses in the orchard herbal ley (also polyanthus).

• • Plant support species now