Our Philosophy

As growers we try to nurture the earth, to build the soil, create diversity and support the plants to grow themselves. We try to minimise inputs and use natural inputs we can harvest or create ourselves. Our approach to pest control is to grow healthy soil that grows healthy plants and then pest control largely looks after itself. We companion plant with plants that are known to support each other and we believe strongly in creating abundance and diversity in our gardens so that there is balance. Our assumption is that if we have diversity then there will be a healthy environment even if we don’t understand the details of all of the relationships. If we do have pest or disease problems then our approach is to look for the underlying causes and we are very slow to reach for a spray and, if we do, only use things allowable under organic certification.

At Kohatu Toa we were certified organic but are unlikely to certify our new property. Although we understand the importance of organic certification as a standard when growers and consumers don’t connect we hope to have a more personal relationship with people who buy our products either locally or through Koanga Institute. We will continue to garden in the same way as we already do under certification and to make sure that we are not using practices or products that are harmful.

The main thing though is that we love gardening and plants and seeds and flowers and trees. We still get such a buzz from cooking and eating our own food that we’ve grown. Gardening and working on the land is a joyful experience – our focus is on food but other plants are really important too and many of them are there because they are companions for us as people, food for the soul really.