Here are all my favourite products, made by people I trust enough to recommend to you.
Seaweed, Fish, Biofungicide + Neem
Agrisea High quality, slow ferment, NZ seaweed for larger gardens.
Botryzen Natural, biological (living) fungal control without harm. Apply as first shoots appear in spring. Use to prevent garlic rust, brown rot, leaf curl – bearing in mind a biological product thrives in a biological garden!
BT (Dipel) Organic insecticide for the control of caterpillars. Use judiciously! inline with smart pest prevention strategies.
EM garden concentrate The magic liquid jamming with beneficial micro organisms – just what your garden needs! Mix with liquid seaweed or liquid comfrey or molasses or hydrolysed fish for a primo monthly garden spray. Its not cheap, but you only use 1ml per litre and can easily expand it out to 20 times to make it go further. The Hortex sprayer they sell, clips to the end of your hose and makes regular sprays super easy.
Hydrolysed Fish Fertiliser Choose your liquid fish with care. Most brands are simply the leftover liquid once the oil is removed for health products and the pulp for pet products (these bits are the best bits!) Hydrolysed fish fert has it all in together boys and no heat applied for full retention of nutrition. Add to EM for a monthly garden tonic par excellence – pasture, orchards and vegetables.
Neem I appreciate its kindness, ease and efficacy. Because not all Neem is created equal, let me introduce your one and only – Naturally Neem.
Oceans Organics The best quality seaweed feed in NZ. Slow ferment for full nutrient capture = strong gardens. 100% NZ seaweed. An excellent alternative to liquid fish – add to EM for your monthly liquid feed for strong cells.
Fruit Trees
The trick with fruit trees, is to choose the right variety + rootstock for your location. Find this information at your local fruit tree nursery, preferably an organic one, specialising in heritage varieties. They’ll see you right.
Edible Garden For the lower north island bio region, grown with love by Sarah and her team.
Forgotten Fruits For Northland.
Habitate For Otago and Southland. Not only a nursery, but permaculture design and consults too. Jason has produced an epically useful harvest calendar – he’s basically done all the work for you. Not only is it useful, its gorgeous too.
Neville Chun For Wellington
Seeds + Plants
Heritage Food Crops For heritage orange tomatoes, Montys Surprise apples and 1000 heritage beans! Where Mark and his team explore the healing power of heirloom food.
Kahikatea Farm Finally a nursery with useful plants! Medicinal, companion, nitrogen fixing, edible and groundcover plants – permaculture practitioner heaven.
Kings Seeds A great range of seeds (flowers + herbs + vegies + greencrops) with a growing organic/ open pollinated/ heritage collection. Top notch germination.
Sentinel Seeds A Cantebury based group of seed collectors and growers
Setha’s Seeds Setha and Roddy grow and sell high quality, heritage garlic, flower, potato, yam and vegetable seeds from their organic farm in Hawkes Bay.
Trees for bees Plants for bees + friends!
Tools + Accessories
Crafty Gatherer Broadforks, forkstas, compost tea kit, wooden seedling trays, top bar beehives, tool belts, harvest aprons and more.
Evergrow orchard – Evergrow bags for small fruit trees. Great for small gardens or containing exuberant trees like figs and cherries.
Growing Things – Cloche Hoops
Red Path – Greenhouses, hoop houses, greenhouse accessories.
The Garden Tool Store – Hula hoes, scythes, beautiful bronze tools, niwashis and then some
Zing Bokashi – simple bokashi bucket systems for recycling foodscraps at home or in schools.
Birdnet, Insect Mesh + Felt Mats
Advance Landscape systems Biodegradable mulch mats, quality nets/ cloth and rabbit protection.
Biogrow Felt mats for mulching on slopes, hard to get to areas and large areas where woody mulch isn’t practical.
Cosio Industries, Permathene, Redpath quality birdnet, frost cloth, wind cloth – all the fabric!
Wondermesh – top quality, long lasting insect mesh to protect crops from psyllids, carrot fly, cabbage whites, guava moth et all.
Soil Tests
Integrity Soils Helping lifestyle blocks and farmers regenerate land, reduce/ eliminate chemical inputs and turn weed burdens around using mineral balance and holistic thinking.
Nelson Bay Mycorrhizas Soil test, land management, practical help and gardening advice
Soil Food Web Lab Test the biology in your soil – they are the lynch pin on which all garden health rests! If you are adding heaps to your gardens in order to crop well, chances are the biology is awry – off balance. For land small and large – this soil test is always step one in my garden recovery plan.
Soil Safe Aotearoa Free soil contamination tests. Really important in the beginning to help you choose where not to locate your vegetable and fruit growing gardens.
Online Resources
Gourmet Garlic NZ’s best garlic growing resource
South Coast Environment The Guyton-led food forest revolution. Loads of great info and networks
Treecroppers A mine of NZ info – join your local group! Connect with knowledge relevant to your garden and choose the best suited varieties.
My Gurus + Fav Books
Carol Deppe “The Resilient Gardener: Food Production and Resilience in Uncertain Times”
Charles Dowdling UK The father of no dig market gardening and my gardening soul mate. Loads of useful knowledge here for you… a real gem! I’ve learned so much from him over the years esp multi sowing and pruning + harvesting aubergines. Heaps of great free videos on You Tube.
David Holmgren – Melliodora, Australia Co founder of permaculture. A wise, thoughtful guy. I always enjoy reading his latest. Retrosuburbia is a must read for all food gardeners, and any searching for how to live more equittably on our planet.
Dr Zach Bush. After working in the field of cancer for many years he began wondering why all the cancer? Those wonderings have taken him on a journey of discovery from which he founded Farmers Footprint https://farmersfootprint.us/, a non-profit coalition of farmers, educators, doctors, scientists, and business leaders to educate about impacts of chemical farming and offer a path forward.
Eliot Coleman “Four Seasons Harvest” A classic, and a pivotal book for me that led me to realise I could growing all our food.
Gene Logsdon “Holy Shit! ” and “Letter to a Young Farmer: How to Live Richly without Wealth on the New Garden Farm”
Geoff Lawton – Zaytuna Farm, Australia Loads of useful free video and writings to support you. A must watch if you need help organising your water.
Isabella Tree “Wilding: The Return of Nature to a New England Farm”
Jacob de Ruiter “Creating a Natural Garden”. An oldie but a real NZ goodie, especially if you live somewhere windy. Super practical. I think it shoud be reprinted!
Jenny Allen “Smart Permaculture Design”
Jerome Ostenowski “The Forest Garden Greenhouse”
Linda Woodrow “The Permaculture Home Garden”
Mansanobu Fukuoka “The One Straw Revolution”
Micheal Phillips ” The Holistic Orchard” Micheal Phillips knows fruit trees like no other author and is the major influence on my fruit tree husbandry.
Merlin Sheldrake “Entangled Life” develop your feelers for the importance of whats going on below ground.
Nicole Masters “For The Love of Soil” Well worth a read if you are keen to learn about the thrilling complexity that is unfolding below the mulch. Learn all about the weeds and what they tell you about your soil. You’ll see soil in a whole new light.
Organic NZ For expert, kiwi advice on the organic life + lots of handy networks.
Paul Stamets “Mycelium Running”. Go below ground for a glimpse of the world at the very heart of life on earth.
Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird “The Secret Life of Plants” Every gardener should read this. It’ll blow your mind. Connected to our plants … are we ever!
Rosemary Morrow “Earth Users Guide to Permaculture”
Sue Stuart Smith “The Well Gardened Mind”
Suzanne Simard ” Finding the Mother Tree” A book that should be in schools – the science that takes us into the heart of nature and shows us how deeply connected we are.
Toby Hemingway “Gaias Garden” Another pivotal read for me – I think I’ve owned 4 copies now, keep giving them away….
Vandana Shiva “Making Peace with the Earth”
Will Bonsall “Will Bonsalls Essential Guide to Radical, Self Reliant Gardening”
