[permaculture-oceania] Arrowroot, tomatoes and tools

[jedd]

 Mike, Rosa,  thanks for the insights here.

 I suspect there's some drought resistance from simply being better
 able to use deep-watering as soon as they're planted.  And as long
 as they don't get annoyed from being buried beneath their previous
 soil line .. that's good enough for me.  We get pretty strong winds,
 but foolishly hadn't yet considered that benefit.

 Rosa - last year (minus a day or two) it was revealed that, in Sydney
 at least, we'd had our warmest winter on record (19.something avg
 maximum).  Without batting an eyelid they revealed that this broke
 the previous record (of 19.somethingelse) set .. the year before.  I'm
 anticipating a comparable observation the day after tomorrow.  The
 massive hail storm we had here a fortnight ago was also considered
 to be about 2-3 weeks early.

 Post-hole shovels .. the ones I've seen have been too wide a blade,
 as I really only want a hole about 8-10cm diameter - something like
 a yabby pump, maybe, might work.  <ponders>  I'd be flooding the
 soil during the planting process anyway.  Hmmm.

 Mike - I've been wondering about the permutations of experiments
 that I need to do wrt density of planting, in order to work out the
 optimum placement for my soil.  Wind damage/support, ground-
 shading, symbiosis/stimulation, forcing downward root growth - the
 list now gets sun protection for the fruit added to it.  Have you seen
 a correlation between plant height and ideal distance between them?

 Cheers,
 Jedd.