<&>Wellington Corpus of Spoken New Zealand English Version One <&>Copyright 1998 School of Linguistics & Applied Language Studies <&>Victoria University of Wellington <&>side one <&>0:15 can you tell us a little about how <,> tut the early settlers fertilised their ground when they were gardening well it depends on who you mean by early settlers the er of course the first settlers in new zealand were the maori people <.>a they were fantastic gardeners but they believed that gardens were sacred for much of the time the crops were growing and so er because of the tapu nature of the gardens they didn't use any form of er manure er the fertiliser that they would have had would have been the ash derived from burning off the vegetation of course when the missionaries arrived um they i don't think fully appreciated the um extent of maori gardening practices or the nature <&>1:00 of them and er they were very upset that the maoris wouldn't use animal excrement um or dung um er <.>they i don't think they really realised it was because the gardens were tapu but of course the europeans had <.>ha a very long tradition of using um manure and it wasn't just the animal manure it was all their household sweepings um it was the water from washing people and food and vegetables and so on plus what they called the night soil which was the er the HUMAN excrement and all of this tended to be er collected up in big pits or in heaps and er they'd er probably sprinkle ash over it to er sort of deodorise it somewhat and then when it had broken down they had no problem at all they put it straight into the gardens including flower gardens why does it have to be broken down why do you have to put it in a holding area <&>2:00 first well there are some problems with the um the most rich um excrements that they can BURN plants and i think they realised that if you for example put on human excrement on your plants straight away you could <.>ek um get burnt leaves or the plant might die i think there would be an odour problem as well there kathryn just to go back to the maori what effect did it have the fact that they didn't use er dung on their gardens well they had to um move their gardens er <.>qu quite regular intervals for a long time they were limited to quite light sandy soils because they didn't have steel er spades or anything like that to cultivate with and they used um quite hard wood er digging sticks this meant that from a labouring point of view you were best to grow things like your kumara and your taro tut in coastal soils or the lighter er <&>3:00 valley bottom soils um tut and <,> the nutrients in these would be quite quickly exhausted probably they'd get three seasons cropping and then <.>the the yields would fall off and er they would need to clear a new area and in the clearing with the burning off of the vegetation for that patch they would er release er you know ash and that would feed the crop for a short period and they were aware of that they were using it as as a fertilising mechanism were they i'm sure they were aware that the the first season after you'd cleared the patch when the ash was there er that that was probably feeding the crop in some way you hear about um the maori being market gardeners to the european settlers up round hamilton and auckland um you know <.>i in the middle of last century yes there there was an enormous gardening renaissance when the european crops arrived maoris had been er stuck with <&>4:00 about five crops for you know just on a thousand years and needless to say there were a few difficulties with some of these probably virus in the sweet potato was causing very small yields and small tubers and as soon as the europeans introduced THEIR range of garden crops the maoris took these up made them their own so to speak and um reproduced them brilliantly i mean they were feeding the um early settlements in in auckland and to some extent wellington as well um and this was before the chinese market gardening um started become important from about the eighteen sixties on so were they doing this market gardening without manures without fertilisers as we'd know them well the missionary colenso said that he couldn't persuade them to use er manure and this was as late as the fifties <,> we can't be totally sure <.>th it could that they were able with new tools to break in <&>5:00 new land and therefore they were taking advantage of things like the old forest floor leaf litter in in the new areas they were developing cos of course the european crops weren't as as er um hard to grow <.>in especially in the south island as the kumara and the taro had been i mean they were limited basically to as far south as banks peninsula and nothing much further so things like the potato and the maize um they could be grown in other areas <,> and the <.>s potato became a real staple for the south island and maoris grew hundreds and hundreds of hectares of that given that you know the land grab and the fights over land between the two races were happening at this time and given that the maori were having to use increasing amounts of land because they weren't fertilise it you could see that that system had to come to an end couldn't you tut yes i <.>thi i think it HAD a a definite time limit um <,> tut however <,> there are OTHER ways of you can use <&>6:00 seaweed that that's a help um you can bring IN vegetation that you've cut and you've you can burn that without having to use <.>the the other forms of manure but i think probably by the seventies and eighties they were using um animal manure because the the old systems <.>were were changing to some extent now when the european settlers came out <.>th they brought with them quite a tradition of cottage gardening and and using manures and making special beds for special plants didn't they yes they they had some very elaborate technology and and partly this was the response to the the british climate um they were very used to making hot beds and and of course hot beds are wonderfully exciting things to make because they can go wrong <.>i i've tried with er a few heaps of er compost and with a bit of animal manure thrown in and you can generate enormous heat well er the er skills of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century gardeners in britain was that you had to harness this heat <&>7:00 without allowing it to destroy your crop so in in late winter they would get in fresh cartloads of stable manure that was one of the best and they'd mix it with er sometimes um the bark used in tanning pits or with leaves um or <.>fo straw and turn it over and and leave it about a couple of weeks for the first sort of excess of heat to disperse and then they would er put a thin layer of soil over the top of it and big heavy glass frames over that which they called lights and and then they would start the um <,> tut very often it was things like er melons um cucumbers in the soil on top of that great um decomposing mass in underneath and they'd er test for the heat er at regular intervals and open and shut the frames and so on so it was a very elaborate thing now it must have been wonderful to come to new zealand <&>8:00 because in most parts of new zealand you didn't need these great big hot beds but <.>th the skills they had developed over the years in in in making these um <.>we you know really quite interesting at THIS stage what did they know about the components of of fertiliser and <.>wha what gardens needed well the <,> midnineteenth century view was that if you took carbonaceous material from the soil in the form of crops you had to return it <,> um <,> tut they had a very good knowledge of all the different properties of manures i mean for example horse manure they considered to be hot therefore you would apply it to cold wet soils um it was probably hot because it was dryer than the other manures er pig manure is is er a cold manure and it's it's wet but quite nutritious as far as as plants go um sheep manure they liked um they had quite <&>9:00 a lot of pigeon manure because of course there were pigeon lofts yes and er that's really one of the reasons why they got so keen on guano when it first became um er an export from the islands off south america <{><[>cos of course <[>oh did we import guano did we er yes we did to some extent but it was more often sent to europe um it was based on er almost slave labour had a terrible impact on some of the pacific peoples but <.>i it became the basis of a real boom in in BRITISH horticulture and agriculture <,> tut the er <,> the COLD manures which were the the sheep and and the pig and the cow manures er they thought were best for the the light sandy soils um tut they all had their own recipes for composts and manure heaps and so on and and they realised that if you didn't cover manure heaps as they rotted you'd <&>10:00 lose a lot of the nitrogen um in the form of ammonia tut so they began to find out about the chemicals but one of the big breakthroughs came when they realised how they could use bone dust on er soils that weren't acid um this goes actually back to the to the late eighteenth century er when it was found that if you put ground up bone on er quite acid soils it acted as a very good fertiliser how did they find that out i'm not actually sure kathryn um it was an agricultural discovery and that it's supposed to have been about er seventeen seventy or so but it didn't work on the nonacid soils but <.>w er for the for the areas that COULD use it it er it set in motion a a a pretty terrible episode in which um the <.>britain british people were using ground up bones from um catacombs in sicily and apparently from <&>11:00 battlefields on the crimea and waterloo and so on i mean human reMAINS were being brought back the bones were being brought back to be ground up well then about eighteen forty um er someone invented the superphosphate process which meant that you could treat the bone er or um some form of calcium phosphate with sulphuric acid and THAT meant that you could apply it to all sorts of soils so <.>tha that superphosphate actually goes right back to about eighteen forty two and of course that's played a a major part in our <{><[>agriculture hasn't it <[>indeed yes yes they they also had a um a strong respect for lime and and er i can recall er you know even in my own childhood people limed their gardens very very vigorously i mean you'd see this great white covering all over the soil er er you know during the winter digging over and er i always sort of assumed it was something you had to put on every year um <&>12:00 when i started my own gardening i realised that only some crops really need it and er you know i i i just apply it normally now for the particular crop that needs lime and i don't just spread it everywhere for those of us who actually don't understand fertiliser at all what ARE the basic components and what do they do well <,> you know the the way it's presented is that you need <,> nitrogen for leafy growth and er er potassium is useful for root growth and er phosphate for fruit so um you need various mixtures concentrating more on one than the other for the type of crop you're growing but to be quite honest i think you can make real mistakes in taking that line and i mean that's the line i grew up with but i prefer to make a good well balanced compost and supplement it with a little bit of inorganic general fertiliser <&>13:00 well how do you know what's well balanced i mean i hear people talking about different recipes for their compost heaps er you <.>know do <.>y <{><[>er can <[>i i'm afraid mine is disorganised i just put everything i can from the household into it um even including some paper um <,> tut i try and add some animal manure just to speed it up a bit i'm afraid my compost is rather a slow one it's <.>not not an ideal one but er twice a year i i manage to spread a really good dark brown sweet smelling stuff onto the soil and i supplement that with um a commercial fertiliser <&>13:35