Made To: Grow. Lavender Grosso, a Love Story
One of the many things I love about being alive is, there is always a chance to learn something new, or start over again. There are infinite number of things one could make or get "into". I have an odd capacity for curiosity and often fall into new hobbies and interests, or even lines of work by mere accident. To be honest, I'm pleased when it happens to me as, despite having a very calm and "normal" existence, it makes me feel as if I'm flying around life's corners on the seat of my britches and making exciting decisions left and right. I become obsessed with learning about my new niches and dive as deeply as possible, down rabbit holes, and spelunking in information caves about special kinds of this or that. My latest personal craze is farming, and more specifically, farming lavender.
When we walked onto our farm property the first time, there was a jungle of trees, wisteria, weeds, and what seemed like a century of leaves piled up at front 5 meters or so of the property.
I bought the cutest little tree trimmer, with some insane inclination that I might be able to cut it all down myself, but after one day I realised it really wasn't possible without some power tools, and noting the proximity to the power lines, my neighbors begged us to get some help. Despite being japanese now, I still have a lot of american optimism running through my veins, but I knew the neighbors were right.
We hired some men with chainsaws and proper certificates, and had them take it all down. What lay underneath was a bit of a surprise as I couldn't see any of it from the beginning. It was a pile of beautifully arranged, large decorative...boulders? Stones? Very large rocks that without some very serious equipment and a lot of money, will be in this particular arrangement until the end of time.
As I looked at the desolate mountain, littered with stumps of various things we'd extracted, I had no idea what to do. In fact, I felt almost desperate for an answer, and a way to give the garden back it's dignity. As I dug around in the soil, fishing out various wisteria roots, figuring out where the water supply used to run toward, and also brushing the dirt around like an archaeologist to figure out where i could or could not plant things, I outlined the beds and figured out where the koi pond used to be. It was just at about that time I'd bumped into a really lovely man at the famers market in Aoyama who grew lavender. I showed him this pile of sad, cold rocks and he said "Hey, your drainage is probably excellent, it's a perfect place for some lavender grosso!
I took his word for it and began planting as soon as it was warm enough to. I bought 30 plants from the joyful honda, another 10 from Komeri (the local home centers) and another 25 from a nursery somewhere in shizuoka that I cannot really recommend. We bought the same variety each time in order to not have any weird curveballs when it came to zones and hardiness. I planted my last group of 25 in June, just as the rains were starting and they went from little, twiggy 9cm pots to the size of a bushel basket in just one summer.
My rocks don't look so sad anymore.
So, with one relatively successful season of lavender cultivation under my belt, and 65 large bushes in my care, a person might wonder, what is next?
I feel like the next step is plain. Propagation!
According to most sources, this is a relatively easy feat, with a bit of rooting hormone, a few clippings, and a bit of humidity and sunshine. I would like to take about 20 cuttings from my 8 largest plants. The cuttings don't have to be large, so the bushes won't be any worse for the wear after the hair cut. We're just borrowing.
We take a cutting about 10 cm tall just from the portion of the stem that is about to turn woody, but still is quite soft. Strip the leaves except for the top few sets.
Fill a tray of your favorite pots for growing stuff with rooting compound mix. It seems the jury is out on this one, some of my sources wanted pearlite and peet, some wanted grit, sand and a mix of potting soil, I wasn't really sure what to do so I'm going to mix some soil from my garden which is naturally sandy, with some potting mix. My container setup has 24 pots per tray, and I will be doing 8 trays for a total of 192 new babies.
After stripping the leaves, dip the lower, nakey stem into the rooting hormone, and put into the pre-made hole in order to keep the rooting hormone from slipping off the stem.
I have a hard time remembering to water things, so I'm hoping I do not screw this up. According to... everyone.... these plants absolutely hate having "wet feet" so at most they should be watered roughly once every 3 days. I will write this into my calendar and pray to the gods of flowering plants that I have at LEAST a 50% success rate. 80 new plants, and practice at doing a new something is an excellent outcome.
I will check back with these in a month and see where we're at!
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