Beginnings – the early days
![In this post we thought we’d take you back to the early days of our lavender journey.
We first planted lavender on the steepest and driest paddock on the property. This paddock which contained over 1,000 plants has now, some seventeen years later, been allowed to revert back to native bush.
Seven years ago we started developing a new area for lavender. […] Read more…](https://www.akaroaorganics.co.nz/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/IMAG0019-663x497.jpg "IMAG0019")
In this post we thought we’d take you back to the early days of our lavender journey.
We first planted lavender on the steepest and driest paddock on the property. This paddock which contained over 1,000 plants has now, some seventeen years later, been allowed to revert back to native bush.
Seven years ago we started developing a new area for lavender. This paddock was flat, easily accessed and damper! The original lavender paddock was planted into black plastic as a weed preventative. We sought a more environmentally alternative and settled on recycled glass as a mulch.
The glass originated from Christchurch and can be easily walked on. It also added additional colour to the lavender fields.
Crushed glass as a mulch has been used in vineyards for a number of years. A recent PHD study showed different varieties of crushed glass had various impacts on scent and reflectivity. You can read more here and the owners philosophy here
Our causal (unscientific)observations on these early days suggest the following results:
- glass mulched young plants grew faster than unmulched
- glass mulched young plants produced more flowers
- our glass had to be applied by hand and transport to site was expensive
- our glass mulch needed to be thicker, seven years on and much of it has been absorbed into the soil.
Happy recycling!
Ka kite ano
