Moon Calendar July-August 2025
Cosmic planting calendar
By Monique Macfarlane
July and August is a great time in the garden, as we have just passed the new year, the shortest day, and the preparation and groundwork for the summer abundance is underway. Now is the perfect time to change arrangements, be it infrastructure such as trellising, pathways, irrigation, or even move around existing garden beds and create new ones.
Feel into what you would like to eat and grow in the coming months, and make the preparations now for it to flow easefully. If sometimes it all gets too much, or feels unyielding at times, choose a focus or two. It might be leafy greens and herbs, it could be the fruiting crops such as tomatoes, eggplants, chillies. Maybe try your hand at potatoes this year, or growing your own kūmara tipu. It might be increasing microbial networks, bringing in bees, or encouraging birds.
As areas of the ground are resting, various cover crops are going through their cycles, the brassicas and cold winter crops come into their own. Keep feeding the soil, and nourishing yourselves too. Feel into the flow of the body, and rest when you need it.
Pruning is a priority this time of year for the stone fruit, pip fruit, and roses. Ensure that your tools are sharp, cuts precise, and your joy and thanks is shared with the trees.
Take time to reflect in your garden. Notice how the shorter, cooler days change the world around us and within us, see what is mirrored back to you. Follow your intuition, the little hits of knowing that arrive when you are present and heart-centred, for they are your greatest allies in the natural world.
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Monique Macfarlane is a holistic food systems facilitator, teaching biodynamics, planting by the moon, no-dig food growing and self-sufficiency. See www.natural-wisdom.net
Monique co-creates with organic, biodynamic, regenerative, no-till, and natural principles on eight hectares in Waihi that includes a small market garden, orchard, pastoral grazing, chickens and agroforestry.
Images: Arina-Ulyasheva, VeraPetruk
