Pot Shots at Permaculture

Hi everyone! Firstly, I am so sorry about the garbled email everyone got on Friday. I had been showing someone how to schedule a post on Substack… made an example post… assumed I would have seen and deleted it before it went out. Which I did not.

Secondly, a few people have asked about their plants looking a bit miserable mid-week. It was so warm on Wednesday that many plants were sulking and wilting, because the heat evaporated some of their moisture faster than they could pull any out of the soil. As long as your plants have access to water in the soil they will be ok. If they are potted give them a water and maybe move them into semi shade when this happens.

This week we tidied Yannick’s property before he moves house, so I have peppered this week’s blog with photos of his pots.

The ones with holes are called Photofores- designed to hold a large candle- and I am obsessed with them.

What I'm obsessing over this week

Permaculture. I am at heart a permaculturalist but must emphasise I am not a capital P Permaculturalist. Permaculture, per Wikipedia, is-

Permaculture emphasizes patterns of landscape, function, and species assemblies. It determines where these elements should be placed so they can provide maximum benefit to the local environment…The aim is for the whole to become greater than the sum of its parts, minimizing waste, human labour, and energy input, and to and maximize benefits through synergy.

That’s great! I wish Permaculture conceptually stopped there. That is right up my alley! How could you ever argue against that!…

I have been reading, and listening to a critique of, RetroSuburbia by David Holmgren. I both want to emphasise that this man is not Permaculture; also this man is a very key founder of what we think of as Permaculture today. Holmgren advocates that we grow all of our own food personally, which requires land, time, and resources. Never fear- some easy Eugenics will control population growth, enabling us to each have enough land. This is not an old book- he wrote it in 2018, 6 years ago.

Here is a quote from me, please read with the full intensity with which I wrote it-

It is relatively easy, and not too time consuming, to grow a small amount of your own food.

It is not easy to grow a large amount of your own food. If you do not have consistent time, land, energy, resources and knowledge, it is less efficient to grow food than it is to purchase it. Growing individually, inefficiently, costs the planet more resources. You can make the best decision for you without feeling bad.

It is ok to be a person who does not grow a lot of their own food. It is ok to be learning about growing your own food, without being too successful yet. It is not ok to advocate for Eugenics.

Palate cleanser! It sure must be hard needing to move all of these beautiful pots… I think Yannick was right to look at planting citrus in them. Citrus is very forgiving with root space, so would live happily in here.

What staff learnt about this week

Our weekly focus was prepping for Spring. How are we going to make sure that everything we do now, has the best results this Summer. We are also about to stop planting in gardens that aren’t able to monitor their plants, because plants need a long time to bed in before their root systems are strong enough to find nutrients and water without being babied. We are frantically mulching anywhere which has bare dirt, to slow weeds.

Highlights: Discovering Piwakawaka plants in Masterton, who won’t usually deliver, but had great stock so I nagged a lot and am getting a delivery in August.

Lowlights: Some plants are not available at all for a little while. Azaleas haven’t rooted well this season so most are unavailable until late Sept. This means we thought we’d finish Deb’s garden this week but have to hold off till new plants arrive next week.

An interview with a gardening legend

I didn’t interview him, because he is moving house this week, but I tidied Yannick Fourbet’s garden this week and snapped some pics of what it is like to move house when you have an excess of beautiful pottery.

There he is! Photo pulled from the Domaine Rewa website

Yannick has a great set up- he makes and fires all of his pottery in a huge kiln at Domaine Rewa, the family vineyard in Central Otago, but he and his wife Phillipa generally live up here in Wellington.

Domaine Rewa is an organic, biodynamic vineyard in Central Otago. Their wines are spectacular (having consumed a number of them!) and the site is beautiful. Murmurs have been made about the future, providing some accommodation onsite so people can come for pottery and wine weekends, which would be absolute bliss. Watch this space.

Final pot-shot when I was doing the waterblasting. I’m looking forward to seeing these pots planted out soon.

Hopefully Yannick will have some time after the house move and I can hassle him with my many inane questions.

In the meantime I hope you have all enjoyed some of the beautiful sun this week! Have a great weekend everyone!