Mataraki Planting

It’s Matariki this week, traditionally a time for remembrance, celebration and fertility for Maori people. Among other things the appearance of the Matariki stars helped them decide when to plant their spring crops:

“The coming season’s crops were planted according to the portents read in the Matariki star cluster. If the stars were clear and bright, it was a sign that a favourable and productive season lay ahead, and planting would begin in September. If the stars appeared hazy and closely bunched together, a cold winter was in store and planting was put off until October.”

We’ll need to get up extra early this week to see what the stars look like, and figure out when in spring to plant our new crops!

Meanwhile to celebrate Matariki we did some planting. Some of us added two more citrus trees to the orchard. Our guys are pretty experienced at tree planting now and did a great job. We look forward to many years of crops from these trees.

A second group planted garlic in pots. We broke the bulbs into cloves – it was fun to see whose clove had the most bulbs, the record was 12 – then planted the cloves into pots, being careful to point them the right way up. The cloves of the elephant garlic were about ten times bigger than the other type! Elephant garlic is actually a type of leek, and although it’s cloves are much larger they are milder tasting. 

It takes half a year for garlic to grow, so we won’t be harvesting these until next summer.