October is probably one of the busiest months of the year for the garden especially towards the end of the month with Labour weekend being the great traditional NZ planting weekend. If you are into sowing seeds then most things can be sown this month provided you have a warm place to start off the more tender ones such as tomatoes etc.  As you sow your first lot of seeds, kick off your succession planting cycle by purchasing some punnets of well grown plants from your local garden centre or store and get them into the ground.   

Well – finally – a glimpse of spring is in the air!  The sap is starting to rise in the trees and the urge to grow, sow and plant is rising in the hearts of gardeners all over the country.   It is still a little early for a lot of vegetable plants but there are some we can start off sowing indoors in the hope that we can get a headstart on nature and get some early crops.  There will still be cold days and frosts but take advantage of the lovely days and at least make sure your beds are all ready for the new season of planting!

I often debate with myself about which is the most important of the 12 steps of the Tortoise Diet Method. I find it depends where I am in life at the time. So right now, my favourite step, and one which distinguished this Method from so many others is, Guideline Number 12. Which is to Stay in the Race.  

Late winter/early Spring is the time of year to get your potatoes in from Christmas and summer eating.

So lets take a look at our lives now. Who is overwhelmed by too many things, too much to do, too many projects begun but never finished, toxic people, feeling stretched too thin and never seeming to have enough oxygen to breathe into the sort of lives we really want.  That’s what an unpruned bush or tree is like and now is as good a time as any to put some thought into our changing that.  What do we want in our lives and what fruit are we looking for? This is an act of simplifying life.  Getting down to what is important to us in any branch of our life, cutting out what we no longer want, or what’s draining us, pruning back unnecessary stuff so our lives can spring forth into life, and we can start to see over time, the fruits of our labours rather than the round and round sameness of the lives many of us leave.

It’s still winter here in the south with the promise of more cold conditions to come - so don’t be fooled by the occasional warm springlike days we will get this month. They do get the sap rising in both gardener and garden alike however, so it is okay to get excited about the new season.  There’s always plenty to do, even if that may involved sitting in front of the fire planning, but planning is important to get the most our of ll the hard work we put into our gardens.

Tips for getting started on planning your new season vegetable garden.

June has arrived and with it the beginning of winter proper.  This is the month of the winter solstice where we experience the shortest day/night around the 21st of the month. We call it mid-winter but it’s really only the beginning of the 3 main winter months here in the southern part of the globe of June, July and August.  Of course if you live on the other side of the equator it is the summer months.