Ata mārie e te whānau, ranger Glenn here.
I've just been for a little bit
of a hīkoi around my garden, and I found these really cool plants.
We get asked this question a lot.
How can I tell the difference between kānuka and mānuka?
Some of you may have heard, kānuka has got kind
soft leaves, and mānuka has got quite hard leaves.
Here's another way of doing this.
So this is kānuka grows quite a bit taller than mānuka.
Have a look at that.
Can you see that?
Just right over here.
We've got some mānuka.
So a good way of telling the difference.
If you have a look up closely on this mānuka
can you see these, all these amazing little seeds on there?
If you look really, really closely,
they actually look like hot cross buns.
So what I thought today, because this is an amazing
time to be doing some seed collection and propagation.
A lot of our Rangers in the Botanic Gardens,
this is the time of year around April that they go and start to collect
these seeds. So yesterday
I popped
out and I collected quite a few of these seeds.
Then what I did is headed back
and I put them all in my little paper
bag and I put that in the hot water cupboard.
So now is the secret little bit.
So we did a little harvesting.
It might take one day.
It might take a couple of days. Depends.
So what I'd love to do is just share with you
how we can create our own little native backyard nursery.
Sound cool. So here we go.
So I've got those little seeds and a few things I need.
I've got some potting mix here that I put into a little container.
This is like a little seed raising mix,
and I've got another container to push that down.
I've got some water, and I'll grab the sieve.
So what I've done is I've put all the seeds in my little bag
and you see what I've got there.
Let me pull this up a little bit closer so you can see what I'm doing.
So these have been in the hot water cupboard
and what I'm doing is I'm just going to sprinkle them
in my little sieve and I'm going to shake that out.
Like, so this is going to blow you away.
How big do you think these seeds are?
Well, they are really only really, really tiny.
So if you have a look here, check that out.
Can you see those beautiful red seeds?
They are all amazing seeds.
So now that I've got my amazing seeds
and I'm just going to pop that over there.
Here we go.
I've got my potting mix and I'm going to push that down to the potting mix.
It's nice and firm And now I'm going to shake my seeds in there
so you can see how many I've got is hundreds of them.
So I'm just going to shape them over the top there.
I'm not going to plant too many because that could be a real worry.
I'm going to do some more.
So I've got those in there.
Can you see if I put them up close?
Can you see those seeds in there?
Here is so many seeds.
This is a great first plant for you to start to create your own
native nursery your backyard, native nurseries.
I've got those there.
Now all I'm going to do, I've got a little bit of water.
I'm not even going to put any soil on top.
I'm just going to give these a nice little water like so,
there we go like that looks awesome.
And then I'm going to pop those somewhere a little bit shady.
It's really important.
I keep an eye on them every day.
I want to go out and check on them and give them a little water
and let's hope that in maybe two weeks, maybe a month,
we're going to be growing our own mānuka in our own backyard.
What do you reckon? Cool idea.
So join in for more.
I'm going to go on a little hunt later on today and see what other seeds
I can find to add to my little native backyard nursery.
So thanks very much for joining us team.
This is really cool. Let's get out there.
Let's start growing some natives
to help attract more birds and wildlife into our backyards.
So, kia ora, from all the team here at Auckland Parks.
Enjoy it. Grow it.
Keep yourself safe. Kia ora!