My life is a journey towards understanding the 'patterns of nature' and working with them as I can.

My gardens, whether for seed or food, are part of that journey. I’m learning to grow highly mineralised, microbially active soils that will produce high Brix food... in the most sustainable and simple way possible.

My teachers and mentors right now are Grant Paton, Ardern Anderson, AF Beddoe (Nourishment Home Grown) and Harold Willis (Principles of Natural Farming)...

We have two gardens, the smaller more intensively gardened one is totally managed by hand 500sq m, using Bio-Intensive methods which includes making sure 60% of the garden over the period of the whole year is growing carbon crops.We make many cubic metres of aerobic compost with our carbon crops (corn stalks, lupins, etc. etc.), manure, weeds, crushed shells, fish waste and seaweed, and we will add various forms of rock phosphate and lime until we achieve high Brix status... we are constantly measuring. At that point we will reduce inputs to a level that we can maintain sustainably from our local Bioregion.

Our larger garden is gardened using a tractor, discs and a rota-tiller. Carbon crops are disced into the soil in Autumn and Spring,  Rock Phosphate and then lime are applied and left for two weeks to bond then, after discing again and a further two weeks we rota-till before planting.

We apply foliar sprays if it  brings up the Brix of the crops. As our Brix levels rise, the higher quality inputs our own manures, weeds and carbon crops become, and the system becomes more and more sustainable.

I’m loving the learning... enjoy the seeds!