Matariki, and the shortest day of the year

Well for us in NZ on Friday it was Matariki, the shortest day of the year, and the day of the year that I personally mark as the middle point of Winter. Partly because it is nice to think of every day after Matariki as moving one step further away from the coldest, darkest part of the year, and partly because I start to see budburst, and other tells…

It is also nice to see the bulbs popping up! Some are nearly done, already- some types of daffodils- but most are not quite on their way yet, which is great.

Dwarf daffodil ‘tete a tete’ growing through a kowhai dragon’s gold. This enables me to keep the kowhai really small, but also quite gappy and not as dense, because at the barest part of the year it still looks cute.

What I am obsessed with this week

Steve Solomon (my lord and saviour) released a book years ago called ‘The Intelligent Gardener.’ I have read all of his other books and I missed this one somehow. In this book he rejects most of what he has previously taught!

Really the end result is simply that you should make sure all of the minerals in the soil are in the appropriate/adequate quantities, something which we all know but rarely do. One of the interesting things for me (as someone who seems to garden either in hard clay or sand) is the balance between magnesium and calcium, and when the balance is out, the nutrients are locked up in the soil.

I knew this to some degree from working with clay, but I didn’t know that there is a substantial difference between using gypsum or lime (both being calcium carbonate, but they both seem to have different effects to the soil’s balance of magnesium/calcium).

Making changes to our practice to incorporate these teachings, requires a massive amount of research my end, I think I am going to get soil samples from 10 of our different properties, specifically our clay ones, and go against recommendations to try to create a clay soil fertiliser that we can use in any clay garden (and the same for sand). It is just too much to order soil samples for every single property and in reality we only need to where the client is struggling to grow the thing that they would like to grow!

The other thing I am obsessed with this week: Strawberries

To start, you should watch this video about a person who sells strawberries for hundreds of dollars per strawberry. Not because I have follow up information (maybe he has the right amount of magnesium, ha) but because it is fascinating.

I would really like to grow my strawberries in the very instagrammable way- using guttering on a fence- especially because I could use copper guttering (which repels slugs and snails), and because I always forget to check that the strawberries are ready!

But looking at the rootspace in these gutters, it would be very high maintenance! Strawberries need a lot of water, and these not only have no space for their roots (restricting their ability to get much water), the guttering itself would heat up and dry out the soil in the sun, so these strawberries would need to be on a dripper watering system and watered at least once a day (if put in full sun, which is what they need to create good strawberries). I would also need to get this exactly right somehow unless I made sure there was good drainage in the guttering. It’s complex, is what I’m saying!

I was undeterred and asked a plumber about copper guttering. He was concerned about using copper at all because he says it is toxic- fair play- it is toxic in high amounts in soil- but he also said that anytime anyone asked for copper guttering, the moment the quote came through they cancelled! You can get guttering which is designed to look like copper (but isn’t) however he said it looks pretty rubbish so not a lot of point.

I do think it is a nice idea, though, and I would only need about 6 metres, plus capping… plus a cobbled together watering system that didn’t immediately make the project look terrible because of all of the pipes… watch this space I suppose.

Have a good week folks. It is cold and also rainy, and we are all in the middle of it. I have been trying to channel the attitude of all of the clients who are returning from overseas holidays- relaxed, cheery, wondering why we all look like someone stood on us in the mud!