Category Archives: Abbie’s column

Abbie’s newspaper columns

The answer truly lies in the soil

005 (2)Who has never complained about the absence of flavour in supermarket tomatoes, particularly when out of season? Almost without exception we laud the merits of homegrown produce as being much more flavourful, even more so if crops have been grown from heritage varieties. Very hipster these days. Many people believe that the flavour has been sacrificed in commercial crops in the quest for high production.

Things are never that black and white. For some years, we have been pondering the triggers for flavour. I cite my experience with tomatoes in Southern Italy. A taste treat beyond compare, so full of flavour were they. But it was only the first week of June so it wasn’t a hot, dry summer that determined the quality of the taste. Nor, indeed, was it the variety. In recent years there has been an explosion of heirloom or heritage seed varieties becoming available in this country. We have tried growing a fair number of different ones and, to be ruthlessly honest, while better than the wishy washy supermarket ones, they all fall well short of those I ate in Italy. That leaves the soil as the key variable.

The answer may indeed lie in the soil. Unfortunately the solution is not as simple as scattering fertiliser with added trace elements, which is the usual recommended treatment. We have taken good care of our soils here and believed that we made good, balanced compost to nourish them. I use the past tense – believed. Summer reading here is “The Intelligent Gardener” by Steve Soloman. That is to say, Mark is reading it and sharing the highlights as he goes. While some of the book drives him nuts, the underlying premises make a lot of sense. Our soils are almost certainly nowhere near as good as we thought.
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The subtitle of the book is “Growing Nutrient-Dense Food”. Nutrient density has been hovering on the periphery of our lives ever since Kay Baxter started writing about it. It is the principle that you can have two apparently similar crops but one has a much higher nutritional value than the other. Kay Baxter is the leading light of the Koanga Institute and a true pioneer of organics and the preservation of heirloom and heritage varieties in this country. She advocates the use of Brix measures to determine nutrient density. Brix are commonly used in the wine industry to measure sugar content.

It may be something of a leap to link flavour to nutrient density, but it seems logical that there may well be such a link and certainly both go back to the nature of the soil.

As a country, New Zealand has some widely recognised soil deficiencies. Insufficient naturally-occurring iodine is why we have iodised salt in this country. Prior to that, goitre was very common in humans and indeed in animals. “Bush sickness” is a widely recognised problem attributable to cobalt deficiencies on pumice soils. Selenium is deficient. At the risk of treading on sensitive ground in the Waikato, I understand that the trace element fluorine is deficient in NZ which is a major contributor to why New Zealanders have long been renowned for poor teeth. According to my father, who was a medico in the British army in WW2, they could pick the NZ soldiers at time of autopsy because most had false teeth. Correspondingly, pre-dental bleaching, all those beaming white toothy smiles of many Americans were apparently attributable to higher levels of naturally occurring fluorine.

If you are really keen on running a closed system of food production with no external inputs, it matters a great deal that you understand the exact composition of your soils in considerable detail. Even then, it is not as simple as topping up a certain element because there are reactions and inhibitors which can affect the ability of soils to incorporate additions. But most of us get our food from a variety of sources, which means deficiencies don’t usually have dire effects on human health because there is a degree of balancing out which occurs.

Mark is planning to delve further into the exact compositions of our soils. We are interested to see whether better balanced soils will give us better flavoured food. We will be watching to see if the link between flavour and nutrient density is proven. Certainly, it is disconcerting to have our existing notions about the quality of our soil and compost turned upside down. But this is not a once over lightly project which will appeal to all gardeners.

If you want to know more, the Koanga website is: http://koanga.org.nz/ The book referred to is “The Intelligent Gardener” by Steve Soloman. (New Society Publishers; ISBN:978 0 86571 718 3). Elder daughter purchased it for her father from the bookshop of Canberra Botanic Gardens. In this country, you may need to order it, in which case the ISBN number is important.

First published in the Waikato Times and reprinted here with their permission.

New Year’s Gardening Resolutions for 2014

Plant food for the bees. Collectively, gardeners can make a difference

Plant food for the bees. Collectively, gardeners can make a difference

I failed on the Christmas-themed column. I am not big on poinsettias and I couldn’t think of anything new to say about Christmas trees. But New Year’s resolutions – these are different. If you are making garden resolutions, you may like to consider some of the following.

Lawns are a shocker when it comes to good environmental practice. There is nothing sustainable and healthy about most lawns but the vast majority of us have them for a variety of reasons. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that if you cut your lawn really short, it will mean you have to mow it less often. Not true. You stress the grass and open it up to weed invasions. Set the level on the lawnmower a little higher to keep a green sward. Good lawns invariably have longer grass.

Next time you buy a lawnmower, choose one that mulches the clippings. That way you don’t have to remove the clippings to get a tidy finish and if you are not removing the grass, then you don’t need to feed the lawn to keep it looking healthy. It reduces your inputs and therefore reduces both time and cost.

We are encouraging clover back into our lawns. It stays green, doesn't need mowing as often and feeds the bees

We are encouraging clover back into our lawns. It stays green, doesn’t need mowing as often and feeds the bees

Be cautious about lawn sprays and read the label information carefully. We are not fans of lawn sprays at all here. Year in and year out, we field enquiries about plant damage which is attributable to spray drift from lawn sprays. If you are using a spray which has a six month withholding period before it is safe to use on food crops (and that is common), you may want to think again about how environmentally sound is your gardening practice. Putting it through the compost process will not make the clippings safe for use. It might even be time to move on from the Chemical Ali generation. We are going back to encouraging the clover here. It used to be popular in days gone by and it has many merits.

Mulch. Mulch well, but only after the soil is wet through. If you lay mulch on top of dry soil, it stays drier longer. The rains this week may have been a reprieve for those who missed getting mulch laid in spring. If you lay the mulch on top of relatively weed-free soils, it will save you a lot of work later because it should suppress many of the germinating weed seeds that lurk in all our soils.

While on the subject of weeds, if they really worry you (and they do worry most of us even though, as the old saying goes, a weed is merely a plant in the wrong place), remember the old adage that one year’s seeding gives rise to seven year’s weeding. It is best to weed before the plant sets seed if you want to save yourself work down the track. If you weed with the push hoe, you need to remove seed heads that have formed already. You can leave the rest of the plant to wither in the sun but the seed heads will just continue to ripen and then germinate.

Single flowers with visible pollen and stamens feed the bees and indeed the butterflies

Single flowers with visible pollen and stamens feed the bees and indeed the butterflies

Grow plants with flowers for the bees. This means any flowers with visible stamens and pollen. We all know the bees are under deep stress, here in New Zealand as well as the rest of the world. We need the bees for pollination even more than honey. Every gardener’s contribution counts and collectively, we can make a difference to their food supplies. Fortunately, most of us have moved on from the austerity of the 1990s minimalist garden which contributed a big fat zero to the natural environment.

I am of the view that gardening should be two things above all else. It should be a pleasure. At its best, it can make your heart sing at the beauty. At a more mundane level, it can be quietly satisfying. If you get neither pleasure nor satisfaction from your garden, if it is all a great, big, tedious chore then review what you have and what you are doing.

If you really don’t enjoy gardening, then keep it very simple. It is much easier to maintain, especially if you can’t afford to pay someone to come and do it for you. If all you have to do is maintain edges, sweep paved areas, mow the lawns and do a seasonal round of tightly defined garden beds in order to keep it looking tidy, then it becomes more manageable for the reluctant gardener. Alternatively, move to an upper floor apartment.

Secondly, I think we should be gardening WITH nature, not in spite of it. Gardening shouldn’t be about imposing human will over nature, controlling and suppressing it, establishing dominance. Too much gardening practice is an imposition on the landscape, a battle with nature. Happy gardeners are often those who have managed to carve out a more constructive relationship with the natural world.

On which note, I wish readers a happy gardening year in 2014.

First published in the Waikato Times and reprinted here with their permission.

Toxic plants and natural remedies

Brunfelsia, or the Yesterday Today Tomorrow plant, is highly toxic to dogs but fortunately few dogs eat flowers.

Brunfelsia, or the Yesterday Today Tomorrow plant, is highly toxic to dogs but fortunately few dogs eat flowers.

My mention of the toxicity of oleander in Plant Collector last week yielded the following comment via Twitter:
“I remember seeing a photo as a kid of someone who had made a bonfire with oleander. Poor guy looked like he had been doused in acid. He inhaled some smoke and wound up in intensive care with lung damage.”

Before you rush out to dispose of your oleander – if you have one – you may like to ponder that if you are determined to rid your garden of all poisonous and therefore dangerous plants, you will have to remove all daphnes, laburnum, alocasias, rhus, karaka, brunfelsia, aroids, colchicums, tulips and a whole lot more. You will end up removing half your garden. There is a certain folly to thinking that you can make your garden safe for small children and dogs by only growing non-toxic plants. Goodness, even oak and yew can be toxic to dogs.

The plant kingdom is still the prime source for most of our pharmaceutical compounds and our poisons. Aspirin was derived from willows, morphine from poppies. When a natural compound to treat cancer was isolated in Taxus baccata, British gardeners were urged to deliver their yew clippings to depots for a few years so researchers could isolate the relevant chemical compound.

Fortunately for the plant kingdom, scientists then set about re-creating the desired plant sequence in laboratories to avoid the problems of depleting natural resources.

I am sure it was Agatha Christie who alerted her readers to the fact that laburnum seeds are highly toxic and can in fact be used to poison off one’s enemy. But there are so many other sources of poisons. Cyanide is a natural compound, found in peach and apricot kernels, cassava, even apple pips along with many other sources. Ricin, one of the deadliest natural toxins, is derived from the seed of the castor plant (Ricinus communis) – as indeed is castor oil. The castor plant is highly decorative and still found in some gardens and public plantings. It was ricin that was used to murder Bulgarian dissident, Georgi Markov, in London back in 1978. He was poked with an umbrella spike in the street which transferred the poison capsule into the back of his thigh. It took three days for him to die.

Most of the alocasias are toxic but this one particularly so. We are cautious handling it in the garden

Most of the alocasias are toxic but this one particularly so. We are cautious handling it in the garden

All this gives lie to the feel-good myth that “if it is natural, it must be good for us”. These can be powerful substances with unexpected side effects for the unwary. The potential for enthusiastic amateurs to get it wrong is just as great today as earlier.

The world has been grappling with the thin line between safety and danger in plants for over two millennia. It was the Ancient Greek Theophrastus, back before Christ was born, who is credited with first starting to try and sort out the plant kingdom into some comprehensible form, a task that was not completed until Carl Linnaeus in the 1700s. When humankind depended entirely on wild-gathered plant material for medicine, the potential for matters to go badly wrong was enormous. The majority of the populace has some difficulty in recognising different plants, even more so if they look similar. It is highly likely that there were a fair number of people out there a-diggin’ (for roots or bulbs), a-cuttin’ (for foliage or flowers) and a-gatherin’ (seeds) who subscribed to the “near enough is good enough” school of thought, especially when collecting for payment.

The pharmaceutical industry comes in for a huge amount of bad press but at least it has standardised product removed from the vagaries of human error. My elder daughter is a synthetic organic chemist who spent her later university years working on replicating a compound of great potential that had been identified in a plant native to Thailand. I was discussing herbal remedies with her recently and her comment was that, certainly when it came to ingesting a remedy, she’d rather buy it ready-made because then there is more certainty about the accuracy of the source plants and the dosage. For of course the time of the year when plant material is gathered can have a dramatic effect on the concentrations of a desired compound, let alone growing conditions. There will be much greater margin of error when it comes to home-prepared topical applications – in other words applied directly to the skin. But I would be very cautious and want certainty when it comes to swallowing or inhaling.

We are raised in this country to fear most mushrooms and toadstools. The dangers of misidentification can be fatal when it comes to eating them. That caution is not always extended to the plant world. Natural is not a synonym for safe and healthy. If you want wild gathered food skewers, use sticks of a rosemary bush not daphne or, as mentioned last week, oleander.

First published in the Waikato Times and reprinted here with their permission.

Ideas for very small gardens

Synthetic grass has come a long way in recent years and can look surprisingly like the real thing. In a few circumstances, it may even be a better option.

Synthetic grass has come a long way in recent years and can look surprisingly like the real thing. In a few circumstances, it may even be a better option.

Camera in hand, I was thinking of you, dear Readers, on my recent trip to Sydney and Canberra and I gathered up three examples of very small, urban garden spaces.

Artificial grass or synthetic turf is often a source of much derision. The common name of Astro Turf is in fact a brand name of one of the early pioneers of this product. Given that I live in a place where we have green grass all year round, I have been guilty of sniffing snootily at the mere thought and indeed the examples I have seen have been such luminous green as to shout, let alone the nasty, rough nylon texture which bears no resemblance to the real thing at all.

The front apartment next door to where I stayed in Coogee on Sydney’s eastern beaches had artificial grass. I knew it had to be artificial because it was a uniform green with no weeds in it and everywhere else was turning brown. But I had to touch it to confirm. And it made me think that this product has come a long way from the early days. I reviewed my blanket dismissal. I won’t be rushing out to buy any, but in this situation, it had a lot going for it. If you have lawn, you have to own machinery to mow it. If you have lawn on sandy soils, you have to water it just to keep it alive. Where space is small and accommodates an outdoor dining setting and barbecue, the furniture has to be moved to mow the grass and the sections subjected to shade or constant scuffing will suffer. If you lay pavers instead, the area will get hotter and that is not always desirable.

A little leaf and soil litter from the surrounding plants gave this synthetic lawn a far more natural look. I could see why the owners had made that choice and I thought it looked fine.

The gothic revival courtyard had a sense of romantic abandon at odds with its Coogee Beach location.

The gothic revival courtyard had a sense of romantic abandon at odds with its Coogee Beach location.

Further up the road was a front courtyard that had me entranced. Gothic revival, I decided. It wasn’t an area to live on. Nor was it tightly manicured for kerb appeal. It was a courtyard that could have come from a story book. Stone steps led down to a simple, geometric space which, despite its austerity and laissez faire maintenance, had an air of romantic abandon. It is hard to beat stone for long term landscaping. It ages so gracefully. Mind you I have a penchant for Gothic lines which I have to keep suppressed here because there is not a Gothic hint to build upon.

Note the very modern row of wheelie bins to the right. It is a bit of a shame about those but rows of wheelie bins are a fact of life in high density urban situations. The shared bins of apartment living may be necessary but they have the interesting side effect of absolving the residents from knowing how much waste they generate individually. We are so close to our household rubbish at home that I know exactly how much we generate when I carry the bag and the recycling out to the roadside each Sunday evening. Not these city dwellers. All they do is separate their recycling and load out to common bins with no investment in reducing their personal waste.

Simplicity, formality and immaculate presentation gave kerb appeal although there is little to appeal to the creative gardener

Simplicity, formality and immaculate presentation gave kerb appeal although there is little to appeal to the creative gardener

Up the road from my Canberra daughter’s home, I had to photograph a new property. It stood out on that street with its immaculate presentation. The roses were at their peak and there was a seductive simplicity to the scene. The standards are good old Iceberg. I don’t know what the shrub roses were – something similar to one I have here that is a low-growing, white single. There were only two rose varieties plus the clichéd standby of buxus hedging. It bore all the hallmarks of being professionally designed, installed (and I use that word deliberately) and maintained. I am pretty sure that road verge is irrigated and sprayed to keep it looking that good. On the day, I would have to give it full marks for kerb appeal though it was totally derivative. The problem is what it would look like when the roses are not in flower – dull as ditchwater, I suspect. This is not gardening for gardeners. It is gardening for property owners who place a high value on external presentation and there is nothing wrong with that.

This particular property confirmed my thinking that if you are not a keen gardener, opting for a formal layout and a very limited plant palette is a safe choice that, when maintained well, can look most effective.

I just preferred the Gothic revival courtyard but that is personal choice. On which note, I wish all readers a safe and happy festive season.

First published in the Waikato Times and reprinted here with their permission.

The call of gardening in less hospitable situations

Indubitably Australia

Indubitably Australia

I went to Australia last week – Sydney and Canberra. We have a daughter in each city and both are putting roots down across the ditch. Literally. It is very interesting watching one’s children become inspired by gardening.

Sydney daughter is the younger of the two and still in rental accommodation. But having lived in upper floor apartments before, she is now adamant that she needs outdoor space, be it ever so compact. Her current garden is not much larger than our dining room at home. I recall her growing huge and productive Sweet 100 tomatoes when she was a student at Waikato University. In an upper floor apartment in London, she acquired small window boxes to grow herbs. The current space, be it ever so modest, is palatial by comparison.

As the space also accommodates the accoutrements of modern life (outdoor dining table and chairs, barbecue and sun umbrella), her actual gardening space is limited to two narrow, raised beds along the perimeter and an assortment of pots. But she has made space for the two critical requirements for the hipster urban gardener – a worm farm and a covered compost box. She is limited to growing herbs and a few vegetables at this stage but I can see the makings of a lifelong gardener.

We could learn a thing or two from street trees in Australia - this pleasant leafy road is in in Canberra

We could learn a thing or two from street trees in Australia – this pleasant leafy road is in in Canberra

Elder daughter is now a proud home owner and that is an entirely different kettle of fish. She too started gardening as a student and is a reasonably competent vegetable gardener with over a decade of experience behind her. But now that she has some security and stability in her life, she is looking to expand beyond the quick turnaround of veg and herbs. She was after ideas to develop the ornamental garden.

Canberra is not the easiest of places to garden. Not at all. She commented it is not possible to put plants or seeds in with a reasonable expectation that they will grow and flourish. It takes hard work to get plants established. I walked around her pleasant, leafy suburb to get a feel for the place and it was clear that gardening was a challenge and it was the street trees that gave the area its appeal. We could learn a thing or two from street plantings in these Australian cities.

I realised, however, that this was not a place where that tenet of modern living applies – the indoor/outdoor lifestyle. That is because the winters are cold. I have visited in winter and I doubt that many people sit out in their gardens drinking their morning coffee, even on a fine winter’s day. The summers, on the other hand, are hot. Very hot, even as November became December. It was too hot to be outdoors after 10am and temperatures will rise considerably. So for a good six or maybe seven months of the year, it is an indoor lifestyle.

Then there is the dry. There has been a great deal more rain this spring than usual so the grass (one hesitates to call it lawn) is still green rather than dead. This is unusual.

There were clearly many who found the call of gardening too difficult so they just kept to a few trees and shrubs, mostly in hedges. Nandinas grow well, as do oleanders, crepe myrtles, camellias and pittosporums. The ornamental plum (a selection of Prunus cerisifera) is widely grown with its striking deep burgundy foliage which looked particular fetching with a white cockie feeding in it.

My advice to daughter was pragmatic. Because they have two small dogs (fur grandchildren, Mark and I call them), they only use the fenced back section, which now has a fine veg bed and a well organised compost alley. Concentrate her efforts there, I suggested, and indulge her interest in prairie gardening. It suits the climate.

What to do with a front yard which is merely access to the house?

What to do with a front yard which is merely access to the house?

The front can then become low maintenance window-dressing for kerb appeal. I suggested they get rid of all but one of the finicky garden beds and all the plant containers out the front. These need watering every day. What is more, the beds are raised which means they dry out even faster. Drop the level of the one remaining bed to ground level to reduce watering and the constant spillover of garden mulch. Plant that one remaining bed in easy care, shade tolerant plants – hydrangeas and hellebores – and retain the boundary hedges. Mow the rest. They only have to mow for four months of the year. I bought her my favourite tool for digging out the flat weeds. If you are stuck with fairly rough grasses, it looks much better without the flat weeds.

The same advice may well be applicable for people in coastal situations here. New Zealand lacks the extremes of temperature, but people gardening on sandy soils will experience similar problems. Emulating the lush growth more commonly prized in most gardens is fighting nature in such conditions. It is better to work with what you have.

Hydrangeas - easycare plants. They are all pink in Canberra.

Hydrangeas – easycare plants. They are all pink in Canberra.

First published in the Waikato Times and reprinted here with their permission.