FAQs

We are fortunate in Taranaki to be able to grow a wide range of fruit and nut trees due to the unique mountain to sea topography, which creates a variety of pocket microclimates and habitats.  At Greenbridge we group productive trees with similar needs together ie Mediterranean, sub-tropical, citrus and temperate, all of which can grow well here, if matched to the right habitat.  You will need either an experienced gardener, Greenbridge ecological landscape designer or become familiar yourself with various fruit tree species in order to know the habitat of your garden and select the right fruit trees for it.  Kay Baxter’s ‘Design your own Orchard is a great place to start.  Also see Greenbridge’s Blog: ‘Matching your Fruit Tree to the Right Spot’

Vegetables require six hours of full sun in order to photosynthesise so siting you’re veg beds where they receive this amount of winter sun is essential to your gardening success. Also essential is the closer to your kitchen the better ie ‘out of site, out of mind’ applies to veggie gardening too!  Other considerations for the ideal spot are; North facing, a slightly sloped area so that cold can drain away and prevent frost pockets from forming and good shelter from predominant winds.  See our Greenbridge Blog: ‘Smart Planning for an Edible Garden’

There are many types of veggie beds; lasagna, no dig, bio-intensive, raised, in situ and more! There is no ‘right way’ to grow vegetables its more about matching your gardening style, time available and site conditions to the best type of vegetable bed system for you. The ideal scenario is; bio-intensive, insitue beds (veggies grown directly in the ground, double dug to a depth of 300mm +) and orientated North-South, on contour. This can be a tall order! Deep, well aerated beds allow vegetable roots to penetrate deep, accessing nutrients and water easily, and therefore requiring less watering and accelerating growth – which overall increases the resilience of your gardening system and means less work for you.

Small: 5-10sqm. Herbs and pick-again veg only

Medium: 20-40sqm. Average family, most veggies, incl. small perennial bed

Large: 100sqm per person. For all veg, grains, carbon crops for compost and perennial veg (a regenerative system)

This is a big topic, so here we go in a nutshell; plants need a high level of humus to grow well and be nutrient dense and this can be added in the form of compost, which contains biologically active carbon.  In bio-intensive gardening, a quarter to a half of all veggie bed area is dedicated to growing this carbon, often in the form of grains and woody plants like corn, quinoa  lambs quarters etc (which can also provide food for the table).  Humus is part of the picture of getting the balance of minerals right in the soil so that microbial life can flourish, in particular enough calcium to stimulate soil processes, and that the plants can then uptake these minerals, and increase their nutrient density.  In order to assess the nutrient density of a plant, a refractometer is used to measure the ‘brix’ levels, which represent the plants sugar sap content and is a good indicator of nutrient density.  A brix level of 12 or above is essential for healthy pest free plants and humans!  It is estimated we are currently getting only 25% of the minerals found in traditional diets and this mineral deficiency is directly linked to the high increase in western disease and immune disfunction.  Whether food is nutrient dense or not, has huge impact on our health and the health of our planet.  Find out more at: www.westonapricefoundation.org  or Kay Baxter’s book “Growing Nutrient Dense Food”

There are many compost types; with structures, tumblers or bins – they are all relevant but free style is the easiest and cheapest!  For a hot compost (free style or contained in some type of structure) you will need a minimum of 1m x 1m x 1m squared in order to get the heat up to a temperature to kill weed seeds and stimulate microbes.   The compost can be either in a designated spot (and if so site it higher than your veg beds so that they benefit from any nutrient seep) or directly where you are going to need them ie on the veggie bed – super simple.  Use whatever garden waste you have (no pernicious weeds though), keeping a rough ratio of 1:30 nitrogen: carbon.  Nitrogen is the green waste and carbon is the brown stuff like leaves and woody stems.  Break the pieces into 10-20cm sizes, layer up and sprinkle an activator in between like manure or comfrey tea.  Water well and ideally cover to protect from the elements.

Carbon or Straw-yards are an important cog in a nutrient dense gardening system, producing lots of compost and eggs, while keeping the chooks busy and healthy.  A carbon-yard is a deep litter bed made up of carbon (could be leaves, mulch, twigs, corn, cut up woody stems etc) that the hens poop on and turn, as is their natural behaviour to do.  It is important to keep topping up the carbon so the system doesn’t become anaerobic and smelly.  Additionally the deep litter also produces microbial and fungal life to supplement the hens diet (done well the straw yard could provide the bulk of the birds protein).  Hens will also need lots of greens and scraps such as meat (hens are high protein eaters having evolved from jungle fowl, so ironically not so much grain eaters).  With 6-8 hens and a rooster, you will have ample compost (and eggs for an average size family) to annually spread over a family sized (50sqm +) vegetable beds.  Our clients receive a regnerative Info-Sheet: ‘How to Set Up a Carbon Yard for Healthy Chooks, Eggs and Compost’

Yes!  There are lots of ‘waste’ products from everyday living that can be cycled back into the system – for the benefit of the environment and your health.  Most scraps can fed to chooks as first priority, as they give you eggs (and perhaps meat too).  Bones can be burnt for their calcium and sprinkled into the top ten centre metres of your garden bed.  Garden waste can be used to make high quality compost, saving the landfill from producing toxic methane, produced when the green waste breaks down.  Pot ash from the fire can be used anywhere you need to raise the alkalinity of your soil.  Black water from the toilet and kitchen sink can be diverted to an environmental system or wormarator to breakdown waste to be applied at the base of fruit trees.  Grey water is a precious resource, that when integrated into your garden raises fertility and reduces watering.  

The time taken to maintain an eco-garden will depend on its size, your gardening style and how much time you have available.  Starting small, building confidence and knowledge is a sensible approach.  Start in zone one (the area directly around the house) and move outward as you have your systems become well established and successful.  We find an average veg plot takes 2-4 hours per-week  which is ideally spread out over the week – little and often gets the best results, as you can quickly get on-top of pests and diseases before they get out of hand.  The more you put in the more you get out. Concentrating on building biologically active soils and diverse plantings, ensures greater health of the system and resilience – minimising the work for you.  The time ‘cost’ of producing your own food is far less than the cost to your health and the planet from not doing it.  “We think we are nurturing our garden, of course it’s the garden that is nurturing us”  Jenny Uglow