NEWSLETTERS |
NEWS FROM THE KOANGA INSTITUTE MAY 08
The most exciting thing for me this month has been working with Grant from Environmental Fertilisers to come up with a step by step plan for growing our own Nutrient Dense Food. It’s almost ready to be unveiled, just a little more tweaking. You will find it in the next Institute catalogue due out early July, but I can tell you now that I think the most important and first thing that home gardeners are often not doing, that will make the greatest difference is putting on the lime. I have discovered that one should rarely use Dolomite, because of the fact that it contains high levels of magnesium and the first critical factor for growing nutrient dense food is to have your pH correct (6.5) and your calcium /magnesium ratio at 7:1. Almost all of us have far too low levels of available calcium so adding magnesium not only makes the problem worse but for every kilo of magnesium you add you take 1 kilo of nitrogen away from your plants. This was what was causing most of my problems in the past—not addressing the pH factor (it was too low) and adding dolomite rather than ordinary lime or even better Bio lime, which meant I was always having to add nitrogen, and the Brix way too low.
Now is the time to lime your garden…. 4-6 handfuls per square metre worked deep into the soil….. It is recommended by the experts to apply your phosphate first, (we are using EF Nature’s Garden which has Bio Lime in it but if your pH is les than 6.2 you need to add extra lime anyway) then lime then add any manure you have as well. Doing that now will help you achieve high Brix veges and fruit next season. I have taken my Brix levels from 1 up to 10 in a period of 6 weeks in a new garden I am creating in pure subsoil to begin with. I still have 2 points to go to get to levels where I know I’m eating food that is capable of nourishing me but it’s great to see the levels going up steadily, when following the process I’ve worked out.
We’ve also made our first
Crushed bone and shell ready for the compost heap Gail and I are putting the next catalogue together now and it will be a record catalogue in terms of new “old seeds” listed, which is very exciting. New lines include Garden Peach, Margaret Curtain, Small Sweet Orange, Yellow Cropper, Yellow Pear and Tigerella Tomatoes with many others in the main Seed List and as Preservation Packs.
Keifer pears from a 100 year old tree in Whitianga Bay. This tree bears huge regular crops and they are delicious! The garden here is all in for the winter, compost crops looking good, and winter vege coming away. It’s time to turn our energy to the orchard planting, and time out. Bob and I are going away for a three weeks of hot pools and writing the new cook book Change of Heart which will be out in November. The focus for the book is around how to prepare nutrient dense food, the kind of food our ancestors ate, the food our human bodies co- evolved with, and the food that is critical for healthy cells which are capable of behaving normally. After that we'll be up at Koanga for week and then back down here to the Permaculture Design Course at the Marae next door….we’ve grown the food for this design course, the potatoes, kumara, pumpkins, tomatoes for soup and sauce etc, sweet corn for soup etc and flour corn for porridge, as well as all the salad vege and other fresh vege. Cooking for around 60 people using the new cookbook will be a load of fun. Trish Allen from Rainbow Valley Farm and myself are doing the cooking!
Strawberry popcorn, an old variety from the Eastern Bay of Plenty brought to me by a local Kuia with their old sorghum which they grew and ate as sugar cane Our membership is climbing steeply at present which is great for us. There are a lot of people out there seriously wanting to put gardens in again. This has only happened in such a strong way twice before in the history of the Institute. Firstly during the Royal Commission on Genetic Engineering, and secondly over Y2K. Perhaps there is a general feeling again of a need to be putting in gardens. Admin costs do not go up significantly with extra members but the money available to use for actually growing the seed only becomes available over a certain threshold. Our aim this season is to get our membership back up to over 1500. 1500 members will enable us to pay a full time gardener. Although Gail has as a priority co-ordinating seed growers all over the place, there are a great many lines of seed that will only be saved if we grow them in the Koanga gardens with our own gardener for one reason or another. Sometimes it is because the process of keeping the seed alive is way beyond the scope and ability of most of us (e.g. brassicas where it is a three year process needing lots of space and hundreds of plants). Other times it is because the plant is very rare and few people right now are interested in it, it will only survive because we keep it alive until someone is interested in it. Comparative trials are also only possible if we have a garden ourselves to do these trials.
The latest edition of Design Your Own Orchard is hot off the press. I’m really happy with the shape of that book now. Apart from having all the information updated I have added new chapters on growing berry fruit, pruning your fruit trees, and a large introduction with the stories of many of the old people and places who passed their Taonga to us to hold for all people.
Arohanui Kay KING GEORGE BEANS
Green stage Shellout stage Dried stage
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We’re beginning to plan this winters plant material collection trips around the north, and I’m planning my next trip up to Koanga to teach the Propagation workshop, attend the Growing Nutrient Dense food seminar with Grant, and generally catch up with the Koanga team!
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