Category Archives: Abbie’s column

Abbie’s newspaper columns

Welcome back to our resident gecko, Glenys

Gecko, probably Hoplodactylus pacificus.

Gecko, probably Hoplodactylus pacificus.

We are very pleased to see our resident gecko back sunning herself in the same spot as last year on the gnarly old pine tree trunk. As this is apparently the behaviour of a pregnant female, it means we have more than one gecko in residence. If she was successful in bearing her babies from last year and they survived all the predators which includes adult geckos, it may mean we have several. Given that spotting one gecko is a rare occurrence (last year’s event caused considerable excitement amongst local herpetologists), we are never going to know, but we are hopeful that Glenys’s behaviour may become an annual event. The sunbathing is apparently part of the incubation process of the young.

It takes an eagle eye to spot a sunbathing gecko. We may well have others in less prominent spots and we may have had them here all the time and just never spotted one before. It is likely that Glenys is a fine specimen of Hoplodactylus pacificus.

Earlier stories from last year:
1) Gecko update
2) The first story (and best photo) about our gecko, as well as the flocking kereru and monarch butterflies which were delighting us at the time – Wildlife in the Garden, New Zealand style.

No. We do not have a Mediterranean climate here

The romance of lavender - though it can be shortlived in our climate

The romance of lavender - though it can be shortlived in our climate

We were watching an interview with the head gardener at Tresco Abbey on the Scilly Islands just off the coast of Cornwall. The garden is notable for growing a whole range of plant material which is too tender for the mainland and the gardener claimed they had a Mediterranean climate. He then proceeded to elaborate and it could have been me describing our climate here.

“We never get very hot and we never get very cold,” I say. “In fact we are almost frost free and we get regular rains twelve months of the year along with high sunshine hours.” Is that a Mediterranean climate? I don’t think so. It is what we call a temperate, maritime climate. Wikipedia agrees with me. A Mediterranean climate is that which is experienced by all those countries ringing the Med – places like the south of France, Portugal, coastal Spain, Italy, Greece and down to the coastal areas of North Africa. It is also found in California, south and west Australia and parts of South Africa. These are places where they grow wonderful pistachios, luscious olives and grapes, where lavender, bourgainvillea and red geraniums flourish. Hot, dry summers and cool, damp winters are what characterise the Mediterranean climate.

Almost a signature plant for Mediterranean gardening

Almost a signature plant for Mediterranean gardening

Head inland from these coastal areas and you get to the classic continental climate – hotter, drier summers and much colder, dry winters. The closest thing we have to a Mediterranean climate in NZ is probably Hawkes Bay while only Central Otago could be said to have a continental climate. There are reasons why they are the cherry and apricot bowls of New Zealand. The rest of us fall pretty much into the aforementioned temperate, maritime class with the upper reaches of Northland leaning to the subtropical end of the spectrum.

No amount of wishful thinking and attempting to redefine our climatic definitions (we have seen wild claims that the North Island is subtropical) is going to alter the actual temperatures and rainfall distribution we have. Most of us would like to be a degree or two warmer all year round and a little drier – or at least have the rain fall at night and please make it warm rain. But we are not a sub tropical Pacific island and we have to understand what we have in terms of climate and garden within that.

This is not to say that we can’t grow some of those Med plants. We can and we do but they are not always long lived. Many of those plants are the grey foliaged ones – whether the aforementioned lavender, cistus (rock rose), oleander, even artemisia (the wormwoods), rosemary and succulent sempervivums. In areas of higher rainfall, the one critical issue to growing these types of plants is superb drainage. Most of them also need full sun. In New Zealand, they are often recommended for coastal conditions where sandy soils give sharp drainage and dry out quickly in summer.

The same is true of many of the Australian native plants which have adapted to drier conditions. Some put on terrific floral displays – the grevilleas, some of the wattles, anigozanthus, even the fragrant boronias which many of us have tried and lost. It is usually the wetter climate and fertile soils that are the death knell of these plants, as indeed with most of the showy proteas from South Africa.

It is not all bad. We do have quite a bit of success with some of the Australian plants from their subtropical forest areas. These plants are used to higher humidity and heavy rainfall while tolerating the cooler conditions we have. Plants like the doryanthes (spear lily), the subtropical cordylines, the aromatic myrtles such as Backhousia anisata and citriodora will all thrive in our climate if given reasonably protected conditions.

Gardening styles and plants have evolved for very different conditions in the Med - this is Portugal

Gardening styles and plants have evolved for very different conditions in the Med - this is Portugal

The problems often come with the desire to recreate the romance of a holiday. For many New Zealanders, the Mediterranean areas with their long history, their breathtakingly quaint villages contrasting with the grandest architecture imaginable, crowned by a blue as blue sky (most of us visit in summer) are the pinnacle of sophisticated style. If it is sophisticated there, it must be sophisticated at home, right? Wrong. Mediterranean gardens and plants have evolved for Mediterranean conditions. They are more likely to look contrived, verging even on the pretentious, when set in this green and verdant environment of ours.

Experienced gardeners often like to push the boundaries of what can be grown in their conditions. It is enormously satisfying to look at a thriving plant which would generally turn up its toes and die in such an alien location. But experienced gardeners rarely try and create an entire garden using a genre from a foreign land and an incompatible climate. Nothing shouts novice louder.

If you want that Med look, it may be easier to move. What we do have in the centre and north of the North Island is one of most benign climates imaginable and the result is lots of lush growth which is the envy of those from harsher climes. We are better to start with what we have rather than to try and recreate an inappropriate fantasy from foreign shores.

There is a certain folly in trying to recreate the romance of a Greek island holiday back home

There is a certain folly in trying to recreate the romance of a Greek island holiday back home

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

Of matters related to social class and social conscience

Cardoon - the next trendy crop for basil sophisticates?

Cardoon - the next trendy crop for basil sophisticates?

I have fun with Twitter, the social networking stream where you have be very brief and succinct and most interaction takes place with strangers. Not that gardening tweeps (the lingo says a participant is a tweep, not a twit or twitterer) are generally inspiring, witty or memorable. But Twitter delivered me two gems this week of a horticultural bent.

The first tweet linked me through to a column from the Dominion Post discussing baby names – which has nothing whatever to do with gardening unless you draw the long bow and comment on the growing popularity of flower names such as Lily and Poppy. Goodness, maybe Daphne is due for a recall. Mark suggested when our daughters were born that we could go for Astelia or Aciphylla – the latter being a spiky native plant and his favoured option, even more so if we chose the botanical reference Dieffenbachii as the poor wee mite’s middle name. But I digress. That column by Dave Armstrong referred to the “basil growing classes”. I laughed out loud. As a definition of middle class, urban, somewhat leftwing New Zealand, the basil growing classes seemed wonderfully apt. There is a limit to how versatile basil is and there is only so much pesto one can eat. Salads of sweet tomatoes, sliced fresh mozzarella and basil leaves are equally delightful but the price of mozzarella (the white stuff cocooned in water, not the nasty long life stuff) limits how often this appears in our household. I can remember that there was indeed Life Before Basil in this country – a time when only those who had backpacked through Italy had been introduced to the seductive fragrance of freshly picked basil leaves. Now it is a defining herb of the middle classes here and to grow your own makes you trendier.

Cardoon flowers are showier than basil flowers

Cardoon flowers are showier than basil flowers

So, if your children bear names like Oliver, Samuel and Amelia, you probably drive an urban SUV but your husband bikes to work, you have tomatoes in a grow bag, a worm farm and pots of basil growing, consider yourself one of the basil growing social class. In which case I have a hot tip – cardoon is my prediction for the new basil. It is sufficiently obscure to be interesting. It is extremely decorative in the garden. It is edible. We have eaten it. To be honest, we weren’t blown away by it (not like Florence fennel) but it is fine. In case you want to know more, instructions for growing it are below.

But I was ever so slightly crushed this week when Mark asked me to Google burdock. He was debating about what to do with the small plants he had growing after being enticed to buy seed from Kings Seed Catalogue. In fact we decided on balance that burdock is probably not worth the garden space, has dangerous weed potential, does not sound particularly tasty at all and has a very low yield to space required. But there, amongst the burdock information was the one line: Burdock: peeled leaf stalks are parboiled and used as a substitute for cardoon.

Wow. Some have never even heard of cardoon. Some don’t know that cardoon is edible. Some are still at the experimental stage of determining how edible it is. It is not yet showing up in any cookbooks I have seen, even though I receive review copies of many of the latest publications. But it is already such a staple in some people’s diets that they have found a substitute for it? I am amazed. My advice is to not delay if you wish to catch the wave of cardoon as a fashion crop. I will try and be earlier with my next prediction.

The second tweet was not so much as a source of amusement as vindicating a stance we have been taking here for some time. An American tweep, @InkandPenstemon, posted the comment: “The static monoculture of a lawn is never more unattractive than when it is exposed in the winter.”

We prefer to talk about grass rather than lawns these days

We prefer to talk about grass rather than lawns these days

It has felt a little lonely at times, standing on our high horse bemoaning the obsession with the perfect lawn. At last I am seeing more talk challenging the high value we place on completely unsustainable and environmentally unfriendly lawn maintenance. There is a column in the latest NZ Gardener by Steve Wratten on this very topic. The author just happens to be Professor of Ecology at Lincoln University. He goes further than we do in that he eschews the motor mower in favour of an electric mower. I will own up to the fact that we use a pretty damn fancy lawnmower and we use it extensively. Because we have an open garden, there are standards we feel obliged to maintain and mowing large areas of grass is part of that. Perhaps we could offset that against the fact that our car usually gets to leave the garage only once or twice a week?

I make no apology for continuing a public crusade. We should not be embracing gardening values which are environmentally damaging and the worst one of all is the perfect lawn. A smooth monoculture of a single species of grass is a completely unnatural state of affairs which can only be maintained with chemical intervention. If you insist on killing off the earthworms as well (as some do to avoid the surface being pocked by worm casts and tilled by birds), your crimes against nature are compounded exponentially. It is time we questioned this particular gardening value.

The irony is that it is probably the very same basil growing classes who are likely to wise up to this situation and act upon it in the first wave of concern. Clearly there is a lot to be said for basil as a defining social measure.

Earlier articles on lawn care here include “What does your lawn say about you?” from 2011 and “The lawn as a political statement” from 2006.

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

Tikorangi – the new Texas?

Next door - not quite the Tikorangi locals signed up for when they settled here

Next door - not quite the Tikorangi locals signed up for when they settled here

I can’t honestly say we are thrilled to learn of the deal between Todd Energy and Methanex which will see up to 25 wells drilled to frack the sub strata of the area where we live. Tikorangi isn’t very big and the first three wells are next door to us, with more scheduled to follow on the same site.

But we are pretty much alone in that. Industry thinks it is wonderful. Most Taranaki locals think it is wonderful because it brings jobs and money. The mayor thinks it’s wonderful. Somewhat disturbingly, the CEO of the regional council thinks it is wonderful (I say disturbingly because that is the body tasked with regulating and monitoring the industry’s activities and it is clear that they are very kindly disposed to the key players). The editor of the local paper thinks it is wonderful – which indicates that the paper will maintain its position of being the PR mouthpiece for the energy industry.

The bottom line is that the oil and gas industry may well be good for the national economy. It is certainly very good for the regional economy and means we have a superior class of cafe and restaurant in New Plymouth.

An increasingly common sight in our landscape

An increasingly common sight in our landscape

But there ain’t nuthin’ good for the locals who live by the sites. Nothing. At. All. They are ugly, industrial sites in the middle of rolling, green countryside. Drilling is noisy. The increase in traffic, especially heavy transport, has been major over the years. Flaring is abominable – flaring being the exercise of cleaning up the wells and testing the flows by igniting the gas. Considering there is nothing good for the environment in drilling either, I am somewhat surprised that the industry continues to get away with flaring. Don’t even try and tell me that anything I can do to reduce carbon emissions will help the planet – not when I live in an area where flaring takes place.

Over the years we have seen changes and some for the better. The first well drilled next door to us, maybe three years ago, was flared for many weeks on end. It was so bright, we could see the glow as we drove out of New Plymouth, 25km away. It lit our house all night. But worse was the noise – the constant, unabated, low grade roar which meant that living here was like living on the flight path to Heathrow, but this was 24/7. When you have lived for years in the relative silence and total darkness of the country, flaring has a huge impact on quality of life.

Flaring was greatly reduced for the second well on the same site and I am hopeful that the third currently being drilled (we can hear the rig grinding away in the quiet of the night and the morn), may see flaring reduced further.

Less high handed bullying from the companies is another change. We are lucky. We are dealing with Todd Energy who appear to be one of the better companies to deal with. I had thought the divisive bully-boy tactics of the petrochemical cowboys were in the past now (though only the relatively recent past) until I saw the media statements coming from another company on another site.

But we have also seen changes in the way the councils handle consents and the winding back on the definitions of affected parties. It is very difficult to convince councils that you are an affected party now and if you acquiesce and sign the agreement for one well, essentially you have signed away all rights to object in the future.

I have met with successive mayors and councils over about fifteen years, pleading with them to be more proactive in planning to mitigate the negative effects. They are terribly concerned and sympathetic and nothing happens. Planning, such as it is, remains completely reactive.

I have tried to get District Council to require, as part of the consents process, that sites be screened from public view by planting. I think they should only be visible from the air. High security industrial sites have no place in a rural landscape. Nothing has happened.

Today’s newspaper, where both District and Regional Council hail all the positive benefits of the economic boom gives me no confidence at all that any negative aspects will be even be acknowledged, let alone addressed.

I try not to look but in this case, it is both sides of the road. They should be screened from view.

I try not to look but in this case, it is both sides of the road. They should be screened from view.

So the gentle area where we live, a soft rural landscape with reasonably high density population and a solid core of very longstanding families, both Maori and Pakeha, will just roll with the changes as we have for the past decades. We will be the guinea pigs for fracking here. We will let you know if it does cause earthquakes or contaminate our water supplies. The ground below us is about to be fracked in every direction. We will adapt to the increase in traffic though we probably all hope that the ridiculous practice of laying gas pipelines down our roads and verges won’t happen again (how to cause maximum disruption to the largest number possible and completely without apology!) We will grit our teeth and only complain when the noise incidents get beyond the pale. And some of us will wait.

I think it likely that in a decade or two, all the viable reserves of oil and gas beneath us will be gone. The companies will pull out. The multitudes of small industrial sites I try not to look at will be reclaimed by long grass and then by other vegetation. Processing plants will be mothballed. The traffic will reduce and peace will return. I have to take the long view because the juggernaut that is the petrochemical industry rolls on unchecked in Taranaki in the short term.

The adjacent house is, I understand, still occupied by a very long term Tikorangi resident

The adjacent house is, I understand, still occupied by a very long term Tikorangi resident

The Weird and Wonderful World of Show Vegetables

We are never going to get show vegetables out of our garden

We are never going to get show vegetables out of our garden

There is something wonderfully compelling about the bizarre, the obsessive and the freaky which may explain why even our daughter joined us on the sofa to shriek with laughter at the programme on the Living Channel last Sunday. It was all about growing and showing vegetables in the United Kingdom. Before any readers get defensive, I hasten to add that we have the utmost respect for the skills required and the proud tradition of competing for prizes in various vegetable classes. It is just a tradition which has largely bypassed us in New Zealand so we are bound to find the proud woman holder of the title of World’s Best Potato Grower faintly amusing.

Growing vegetables for show does not have a lot to do with eating them. In fact eating them was never mentioned. Growing 900 onions in the quest for the best sets of five perfectly matched specimens, each weighing 250 grams, does leave one with a rather eyewateringly large excess of produce for ahome grower. And what exactly are you going to do with the other 85 heads of celery which did not make the cut when you selected the best five to show? These are celery plants which have been grown entirely under cover, nursed, mollycoddled, blanched and fussed over until they can reach a massive 150 cm high or even more. They are hardly going to fit in the fridge. But once you have seen them being lovingly washed in a large bath of soapy water and gently groomed with a soft toothbrush, you realise this has nothing to do with home vegetable gardening. It is more akin the vegetable equivalent of the prestigious Crufts Dog Show but without the social pretensions.

There are rigid rules as to what is acceptable and what is not. Immaculate, matched onions are presented with a neat tie of raffia to hold the trimmed top tidily (which sparked a comment from the show host along the lines of: “Nothing finishes a perfect onion like a sheaf of raffia,”) but woe betide anybody who steps over the line to flamboyance. A modest knot may be required, a bow is enough to get you disqualified – or so the husband tells me from another show he watched.

Carrots and parsnips are popular crops but growing them takes special techniques and even then you may not get specimens with precision tapering, let alone perfectly matched sets of three identical specimens. Don’t be thinking that you can win with garden specimens grown in soils. These are grown in drums. First these drums are packed with coarse sand. A tube is then used to extract a perfectly straight column in the sand which is filled with the highest quality, fine garden mix. It has to be sieved garden mix because any untoward chunks could cause the plant’s roots to kink or bend. This is a serious business where timing, technique and crop management is critical. Carrots should have a nicely rounded base and are exhibited without their roots. Parsnips should be perfectly tapered and are measured and exhibited with the long tap root attached in its entirety.

We were riveted, as only holiday-makers on a bleak and windy summer Sunday afternoon can be, to learn that in order to clean and present your carrots or parsnips, you have to gently sponge them in a circular motion. If you rub them up and down, you will scratch the outer skin and cause blemishes. That is a piece of new information which just may or may not be useful at some point in my life.

Presumably it is the exhibitionists who grow the freaks. There was an earlier series on growing extreme vegetables – the parsnip, I was told, grew in a length of downpipe which ran three stories high. In this country, the giant pumpkin growing competitions are relatively common and most of us realise that said competitive pumpkins are not destined for the dining table, being of value only as stock food. Size and weight are everything in the freak classes. Beauty, uniformity and perfection count for nought.

Prize money does not count either. It is fame, glory and recognition. Most of the vegetable competitions in the UK (and there are legions of them) carry prizes of a few pounds only. The costs of competing are hugely greater than any financial reward – best grade seed only, packets of potting mix, washed sand, peat, special fertilisers and sprays and that is just for starters. Mark was a little put out to see that the competitive celery grower had a state of the art glasshouse which left anything we have here completely in the shade despite the fact that we have been professional growers of plants for the last few decades.

This is not to say that we don’t have competitions here. Mark recalls judging the vegetables at some gathering in Otorohanga where he was a guest speaker some years ago. I am sure I must have done it for the local Country Women’s Institute here at some stage. Maybe we are just of more pragmatic stock in this country. I am pretty sure that the vegetables I have seen exhibited here were actually edible and were grown in gardens. This is a very different kettle of fish to show vegetables.

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