Monique Macfarlane - planting by the moon in NZ.

Moon Calendar March-April 2026

Enjoy the seasonal bounty and prepare for spring

By Monique Macfarlane

Successful food and flower growing starts well before seedlings or seeds are planted in the ground. Planning, preparation, soil care, and nutrition are all endeavours undertaken in the seasons before.

As we pass through the most abundant time of year, as the fruiting crops hang from their vines and branches, as we preserve the bounty for the cooler times, it can be a time where we have given and taken so much from our gardens… but this is a very important time for preparation too.

The harvested stonefruit trees are setting up now for next year’s fruit; this is a crucial time to feed, replenish and take care. If you are struggling in high humidity, warm areas with fungal dis-eases, try pruning in late summer rather than winter, as often the trees do not go dormant. Spraying equisetum monthly at moon opposition Saturn suppresses the fungal bloom back down into the soil. If you are wanting to support overall tree health and nutrition, for all types of trees, biodynamic tree paste is a fantastic option.

Now is also a great time to get green crops sown to rest parts of your established garden through the autumn and winter months. Try a mix of mustard, lupins, oats, barley, phacelia, buckwheat and marigold. If you want to bring in new areas, or create multiple spaces for resilience, sow green crops  in these spaces now, to free up later for spring and summer. It’s also an opportunity for making compost to be ready for the spring, or for setting up a worm farm, but also taking the time to plant beneficial plants for tonics such as comfrey, nettle, dandelion, chickweed.

If you are looking to strengthen the resilience of your garden and nutrient density, autumn is also the perfect time to do a biodynamic preparation 500 stir and spread. This incredible method has a wealth of microbial activity, fungi, bacteria, and starts to bring the cosmos and mineral kingdom into balance, as well as being a foundational building block for a flourishing garden.

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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