Another week of insanity over here

What I’m obsessing over this week

Chillies. I can’t eat them, but I am absolutely fantastic at growing them. I can’t imagine ripping out the plants given this is year 4 and they are going great guns. So I have been gifting chillies to anyone who stands still long enough. This particular fistful was just put on the staff table and disappeared by evening.

What’s my secret? To be honest, they are heavily neglected half of the time and I occasionally feel bad about mistreating them and give them worm tea. Afternoon sun, I think, is the winner here. They watch the sun set.

What staff learnt about this week

Our weekly focus was prioritising tasks, and what to do when you don’t have a heap of time. There are a few easy key things you can do to make a garden look much tidier- clean up the paths, mow the lawn, pick up leaves- but that’s not the same as improving a garden. Spotting weeds that will spread or self-seed everywhere and pulling them out first, weeding around the base of desireable plants, weeding invasive weeds fully and properly..

Highlights: I appreciated that the initial concern of some staff was to make sure they prioritised the bits the client would care about. I was also extremely happy that a client has mistakenly given us two full day tasks (forgetting she had asked for the first task, she gave us a second enormous task) and Alex somehow hustled and had both of them done by the end of the day.

Lowlights: With all of the rain and warmth, we are absolutely overrun with weeds again. After such a hot, dry summer we have been spoilt with a distinct lack of weeds and suddenly we’re inundated again!

Interesting events coming up

Sunday 5th May, 2-3:30pm

Wander down the stream at Otari Wilton’s bush to learn about how all of the restoration initiatives are going. More info here.

An interview with a gardening legend Wasps!

I’ve started interviewing one Famous To Me person a week, someone who either informs my gardening practice directly, or parasocially! If you know someone who you would like to see interviewed, get in touch by popping a comment in this post, or email wellington.gardener@gmail.com.

This week: Did Not Happen! For good reason. My daughter has covid, so I was RAT testing every morning, and terrified to impose myself on people every evening. But I do have a story for you.

Poor Mish was working away in Hataitai when he was absolutely bombarded by wasps. Stung all over- eyelid, they got into his clothes, in his gloves, it was really worst case scenario (and a bumper day for Hataitai Pharmacy, where we bought every antihistamine/sting related item on their shelves).

Greg’s wasp nest. 10/10 hive, Greg.

This brought about a lot of discussion around what we should do- the wasps are eating all of the aphids and thrip- they are in a part of the garden that is not particularly accessible (up a bank, that you look at a lot but do not climb)… Google was unhelpful, stating that wasp hives die down at this time of year, unfortunately this one was only getting bigger.

So, I thought, if the hive is still there in another month, maybe we will think more about it. But enter the I Love Karori facebook page, where someone named Mariana was asking if they could please be told where to find wasp nests (errr ok, well they are in luck, I suppose).

I contacted Mariana, who not only arrived the same day and removed the nest for free, but provided me with the following (she is a researcher at Victoria University)-

“The long-term idea is eradication. For now, we are interested in learning what nesting materials (plant species) they are using to build their nests, so we can provide those to hibernating queens to build their nests in captivity in our labs.

The project is to try and determine if a gene drive (a genetic modification of male-only genes) will propagate through the NZ population and the wasps could be eliminated or at least their numbers controlled.

It is a complex and long-term project but the first step is to being able to rear these wasps in captivity to have lab-ready colonies. This is where we are right now.”

Mariana writes, “We got the nest out this morning, it was a very big one and very active! There were nine layers of comb,” which I assume means “it was ok that you were stung, nature does not hate you.”

She also sent me some cool photos, and says that if you have a wasp nest, she would love to get her hands on it. Contact her at Mariana.Bulgarella@vuw.ac.nz

Thanks everyone! Have a good week and please do not get stung by a nest-full of wasps.