A whanau that was really dependent on food parcels, now finding joy and success in gardening

Day started with a follow up visit to Nic. Her Dad, who is also keen to grow, met with us too. Both are lovely and they have extended from the one bed we put in, finding soil from somewhere and adding in bought bags of compost to enrich it.

I’ve sent Nic some info on making compost as this might be good timing. 

Another raised bed they had lifted up onto legs to make tending it easier, is now also planted up and doing really well with lots of spinach and lettuce in it. It had actually collapsed around the flood time with all the rain, but they have a plan to jack it up with the car jack. She also showed me she had added a longer handle onto the niwashi I had given her at the beginning to make weeding easier. I love this ingenuity where they are extending beds and making things work. Nic told me the school where she helps out with lunches she is now helping out with the school garden but wasn’t sure what to plant & when. I was able to give her a seasonal planting guide, seeds, gdn gloves and also a NZ Gardener April magazine I had, explaining it’s not this years’, but all the April info is relevant to growing in April. This is a real success to me for a whanau that was really dependent on food parcels, now finding joy and success in gardening. 

From here I met with Tamati. Super friendly and lovely guy. It turned out two of his girls had attended the Pt England school workshop with me and he was very proud to show me the planted up lettuce and pea seedlings from the workshop, which had come through and were doing well. Said she was very proud of them and would be super excited to see the garden planted up. This was nice to hear. He was sooo happy to start this journey for his whanau. He is working part time now partly to be there more for his girls. Said he wished he started this years ago. It was going to be good! He was blown away learning about the bokashi bin and how he can save them money. They may have a cat problem so he’s going to try the upside down forks and let me know how it goes. 

From here I went to Souran who I was looking forward to doing a follow up with as they were very keen and capable gardeners. Souran’s husband came home and said it was the worst year for their garden ever. Too much water and lots of things rotted or washed away. She said they usually only plant in spring and summer so we talked about crops to plant now.

Talk soon.