Kath Irvine

Vegetables

How to Grow Potatoes

Spuds are so easy that you can accidently leave a tuber in ground and grow a whole new crop. Rogue potato seedlings turn up all over the place - I leave these where they are by the way. Every extra kilo of delicious homegrown potatoes is most welcome in my

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How to Grow Kumara Shoots

The journey to a boomer crop of kumara begins with shoots or tipu. Start them growing now, in early spring. Shoots are grown on a kumara, and this kumara is so special its called the mother. Choose your mother with care. Select a firm, organically grown kumara with no rots.

Vegetables

Homemade Seed Raising Mix

Knowing how to make your own seed raising mix is super handy when you run out and don't want to drive to buy more, or your fav organic mix is no longer in stock or you are sick of buying stuff in plastic bags! That being said, I

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Biological Fungicides

Cankers, oozing sap, fruit scab, fruit rot, leaf spots or leaf curl, and are all signs that pathogenic fungi/ bacteria are out competing beneficial fungi/ bacteria, on your fruit trees. It's a numbers game. Simple as that. Whoever owns the space, rules the day. Your job is to

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How (+ When) to Prune Citrus

Citrus are my favourite trees to prune. Especially thick, thorny, over grown ones - they restore so quickly and beautifully when you use mainly thinning cuts. What a difference when you give up heading cuts and get thinning! Because citrus fruit on new seasons wood, this style of pruning keeps

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Notching: A Cool Pruning Trick

Notching is a simple, old school trick that stimulates a branch to grow. Use it while training young (2 - 4 year old), deciduous fruit trees to fill any empty spaces that would ideally, be fruitfully filled with a branch. * Choose a lovely fat bud in the locale of the

Permaculture Design

A Simple Drainage Test

Winter is a telling time in your soil health journey – from now through early spring you get to see your drainage in action. Those of you at the basemap phase of gathering info and learning your land – perk your ears on up! How wet are your soils? Drainage is absolutely

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How to Grow Peas

Peas prefer mild, cool weather - not too hot, not too cold. Here in Horowhenua, I can sow them Autumn through Spring. When temperatures rise, peas stop/ reduce flower production. Find your own perfect pea moment by trying all the timings. Regular sowings of peas throughout, brings a steady supply

Monthly gardening advice

What to Plant in Your Vegie Patch in Winter

A journalist once asked me "Whats the best time of year to plant a garden?, and I said "Anytime!" There is not one food growing season, there are four!" As long as your garden isn't under snow - you can continue to plant and

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A DIY Greencrop Seed Mix

Greencrops (also called greenmanures) are awesome! Diversity, homegrown fertility + living mulch all in one. * Use them to restore soils after a heavy feeder - you use less compost this way * Sow them beneath/ beside bigger crops like broccoli, pumpkin or beans, as a life giving, living mulch * Use them for

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How to Choose Your Fruit Trees Well

Your goal, in choosing your fruit trees, is to match them to your environment - both the rootstock (bottom) and scion (tops). When well matched, your trees thrive with very little inputs from you - easy orcharding awaits! To do this well, you need to understand: 1. your environment, including

Monthly gardening advice

How to Plant + Prune Deciduous Fruit Trees

Fruit trees perform better by far when grown in native soil - ie soil that's original to your site. Deciduous fruit trees don't need compost + fert around their roots - the original soil is perfect especially if you've matched your rootstocks to it. What

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My Favourite Perennial Companions

Perennials are the backbone of our garden because they stay put, unlike annuals who pop in and out - even in a no dig garden, every day is moving day - pull a carrot, lever out a leek... In the quiet, undisturbed space beneath perennials, soil life set up home

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Delicious Dried Apples

Dried apples are one of the most useful (and easy) of winter preserves. Its the way to go for apples that are damaged in anyway and wont store well - bird pecks/ bruises/ black spot/ no stalks. Use them up while they're still good. Our home dried apples

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How To Harvest, Cure + Store Kumara

Kumara loves the warmth - all the way through the growing process, from the shoots through planting to storage. Steer clear of cold, and keep warm in the forefront of your mind and you wont go wrong. Those of you on light, free draining soil are on a win -

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Make a Frost Shelter for Young Citrus + Avo's

Autumn is the time of year to think about tucking your young citrus and tender subtropicals (eg: tamarillo, banana, passionfruit + avocado) in a cosy house to protect them from the bitter cold of winter and spring. Where night temps drop below 10 °C for extended periods of time, I'

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My 2 Ingredient Biological Liquid Feed

Liquid feed is awesome tonic support for the food garden, and this 2 ingredient biological brew in particular, because its alive! It's a brilliant one size fits all that has a gently transformative effect on citrus, vegies, roses, berries, fruit trees, the chook yard, pasture, even compost piles.

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How to Grow A Living Soil

The health of all life above ground - you, me and our crops included, rests on the shoulders of trillions of tiny organisms - bacteria, fungi, protozoa, nematodes et all. Though you cannot see them, you see their handiwork in the health of your soil, your crops + ultimately - your

Monthly gardening advice

Be Cabbage White Butterfly Free!

Summer of '22, I grew brassicas out in the open without any insect mesh, from seedling to finish. I was feeling confident in my parasitic wasp population, and they didn't disappoint. What a turn around! For most of my garden life I haven't bothered growing

Harvest

Break The Pest Cycle

Pests are part of a gardening life - especially when your vegie patch is full of all their favourite food. Add to that a bit of stress like drought for instance, and immunity and pest resistance are lowered, fanning the flames and increasing the likelihood of high numbers of sap

Animals

Save Your Chooks From Red Mites

Red mites are tiny 1mm bird parasites, that proliferate in the heat. They live in cracks in the walls of the chookhouse by day, and come out at night to feed on your chooks. Poor girls - no rest for them when mites are in the house. Because they are

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The Bio-fungicide Advantage

The first signs of summer disease are making themselves known - potential is high after our mild, wet spring. Cool your heels before rushing out to buy a big hitting fungicide and have a read about the bio-fungicide advantage. Bio-fungicides are a gentle, natural solution to disease - they do

Harvest

How to Grow Sweetcorn

Corn is extra effort to grow, but to my mind, it's easily worth it! Not only is corn a heavy feeder - meaning good soil prep is required, but its also best to stagger the sowings and plantings so as to drip feed the kitchen and eating corn

Soil health

How to Make Fermented Nettle Tea

Stinging nettle is the food gardeners, best mate. Loaded to the brim with minerals and vitamins, at service to the plant kingdom entire, and you and I also - a little wilted nettle with a fried egg is a fine spring breakfast. Amazing at anytime in its cycle for foliar

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Don't Mow - Let It Grow!

Once the kids have gone and cricket games are no longer, you may wish to pause and ponder the usefulness of your lawn. If no compelling reason other than tidiness comes to mind, let me suggest you plant it up or let it go. Either way you're adding