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FOOD STORAGE
  • Establish a regular breadmaking routine even if just to suppliment your bought bread. Improve with each new loaf baked. Try tweaking the recipe. Mill your own whole meal flour from wheat. Try replacing one cup of wheat flour with rice flour or any other flour you choose. Add some seeds to the mix. Use a breadmaker if you have just 12 minutes a day to make a loaf. You can buy these second-hand for NZD $10 - $100.
KITCHEN GARDEN
  • Prepare your vegetable garden by digging in plenty of compost. Include herbivore or hen manure that has composted for a while.
  • For future garden manure, plan to build a hen-house for 3 hens next month. Budget for it and find out where you can buy three hens.
  • Make a pallet pallet compost bin if you do not already have a working composting system.
  • Sow seeds of carrots, parsnip, beetroot, silverbeet, peas, swede and turnips directly into the soil.
  • In a warm place, sow the seeds you have saved from last season. Sew lettuces, leeks, cabbage, tomato, capsicum, courgette, cucumber and eggplant ready for transplanting later.
  • Plan to cover brassicas with a light netting over hoops. This means you'll keep away the white butterfly without using sprays. It's a low-cost organic gardening solution that several people here use.
  • Transplant summer vege seedlings into the garden; lettuce, leeks, cabbage, onions and silverbeet. In warmest districts (Northland and under glass) early tomato, capsicum, courgette, cucumber, pumpkin and celery can be planted.
  • Protect seedlings from slugs and snails by growing them up off the ground on a pallet or table using a no-snail method from this website. Put sand around the legs and, a few pellets of Blitzem or Quash just to stop slugs from climbing the table legs.
  • Plant early-crop potatoes after sprouting.
    Plant herbs in pots or into the garden and sow herb seeds for summer harvest.
FRUIT TREES FOR FOOD PRODUCTION
  • Plant citrus and fruit trees. Feed existing trees with Palmers Citrus Fertiliser.
  • Prune Passionfruit vines and Feijoas to encourage new growth and fruiting - late September to early October, especially in colder climates.
  • If you use spray, then spray stone fruit trees to protect from leaf curl disease and Greenguard to prevent brown rot. Use something like Champ DP or Bravo.