My Backyard: Labour Weekend Activities & The Moon Calendar

This weekend being Labour Weekend, many a keen New Zealand gardener will be seen busily working in their vegetable garden and the like.



Labour Weekend is the long weekend holiday that traditionally signals for many that it is time to finally plant out in the garden those tomato seedlings, and other frost tender seedlings, that up until now have been carefully nurtured indoors.

Some time spent outdoors over the last little while, has helped to harden off the tomato seedlings I was recently given by my mother. Over the next few days I will be aiming to finally plant them out in the garden beds I have been busily preparing.

A good supply of compost, a sprinkling of Blood and Bone, plus some comfrey leaves have already been added into a trench in one of the garden beds I have been preparing.

I am truly hoping the effort put into preparing the garden beds and soil will result in good plant growth and development over the next little while.

During the week further progress was also made towards having our own backyard chickens.

A visit from Jen and Grant Morris and their children mid week helped provide us with some extra help towards getting the chicken coop re-assembled here in our own backyard.

Grant helped my husband piece it all back together, and the assembled coop is now ready and waiting for it's future feathered residents.

It is so good to see more progress being made towards actually finally having our own backyard chickens!


Having spent time in the garden today getting the garden ready for planting out several lots of seedlings over this weekend, I noticed the fig tree is also starting to produce fruit. Isn't Spring great!


No doubt we will have to perhaps look at putting up bird netting on this and several of the other fruit trees soon, as the peach and plum trees I noticed all look they are are going to ample harvests of fruit this coming summer also!

We have also been harvesting copious amounts of Broad Beans lately, which we have thoroughly enjoyed. They are so nice when they are freshly picked and added pretty much straight away into a fresh salad mix. We will soon be using the actual plants to make more mulch for the garden also.


From today through until Tuesday 29th October, according to the Moon Calendar it is a great time for weeding, cultivating, pruning and harvesting those crops that are ready.

We plan to do quite a bit in the garden over the long weekend, including hopefully doing further mulching of various garden beds. Already we can see evidence in the garden that it may well be another dry summer, so every step towards pro-actively preparing can only be advantageous.


Root crops can be sown from Wednesday 30 October to Thursday 31 October.
I am particularly keen to look to put in a few more rows of carrots during this time.

From Friday 1 November through to Wednesday 6 November, it is again a good time to dig over garden beds and cultivate the soil ready for further late Spring crop sowing.

Overall the next week or so can be a very productive time for those keen to work in the garden. Enjoy.

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