A blank slate for a new garden–10 cubic metres of compost ready to be added to the soil.

Another solstice has passed and we can look forward to more sunlight each day. We celebrated Matariki—the Māori new year—last week, too, so it’s well and truly time to start thinking about the garden for this coming summer.

This year, my garden decisions are more difficult than they’ve been recently. This year we will be moving house mid-summer, assuming all goes as planned with our new build.

We have already marked out and tilled the garden at the new property, and we’ve planted it in green manure crops for the winter, even though the foundation of the house hasn’t even been laid yet. 

But moving mid-summer, it’s hard to know where to plant all the crops. Late-season vegetables like pumpkins and dry beans are easy—they’ll go in the new garden. Early crops like broccoli and radishes are also easy—they’ll go in the old garden.

Unfortunately, a huge number of crops will come on before we move and still be going strong afterwards. I’ll want them at both houses. But the prospect of maintaining two full gardens forty-five minutes apart from one another is daunting.

Add to the challenge the fact that the soil at the new garden is hard clay generously studded with rocks. It will easily take a decade of soil improvements to make the new garden as productive as the old, and it will always be rocky, no matter how much organic material I can build up.

So in my garden planning and calculating this year, I have to lower my expectations. I have had such a glorious garden, with excellent soil, for many years. It will be a challenge to start over, rehabilitating a compacted paddock scarred by years of commercial agriculture and not naturally blessed with loamy soil.

It will mean finding new varieties that thrive in different conditions, pulling out all the tricks I know for improving soil conditions, and learning new ways of working with the soil. I am prepared for disappointment, and excited by the challenge.

Stay tuned …