Free Food New Zealand

I recently had the pleasure of attending a two day Dirt Doctor workshop at the beautiful Houghton Valley School in Wellington. I will start by saying it was incredibly inspiring, and anyone who gets the chance should attend one.

Jim O’Gorman, aka. The Dirt Doctor, is a living example of what is possible with some imagination and hard work. He lives in Kakanui in Otago, he has a 1/2 acre of land which he has been working for 17 years. When he got the property it was a former daffodil farm, and as such was HEAVILY sprayed with herbicides and pesticides, the residues of which he still has trouble with. Using nothing but inventive hand tools, good composting methods,  trial and error and good science, Jim has turned once dead land into healthy, living soil.  He grows in around 1km of food (in the total combined length of his garden beds), which he sells to local restaurants and markets. He uses no fertilizer, no electricity and no machines. His approach is constantly being refined through observation and scientific measurement, and is aimed at the developing world, where resources other than hand tools and human labour are scarce, and where the benefits of such productivity are greatly in need.

He is essentially, a legend.

The workshops covered his approach to growing food, which is all hand tool based, and designed to look after the soil fertility, because without healthy soil, you don’t get healthy plants. It covered how to deal with weeds, which is essentiall to cut them below the soil and to leave the roots to retain soil structure and critters. It also covered in depth, the ways in which the microorganisms in the soil interact with each other, and their roles in soil and plant health, such as nutrient cycling and the prevention of disease. The lesson which was hammered home was one of diversity. The goal was not to present his work as the gospel by which all others should follow, but an illustration of an effective set of principles which are proven to work, and can be adapted to an individual’s own approach.

Also speaking at the workshop was Carl Pickens, Landscape Architect, One Earth Matters, who is a gold and silver winner at the Ellerslie International Flower Show. He discussed his work and his design process, which I found particularly interesting. He discussed his interest in permaculture and sustainable design, showing some examples of his work. His interest in sacred geometry and its affect on consciousness and his use of stone circles was of personal interest to me as I also find them fascinating. He presented a number of good ideas, including a fern wall which he designed for his gold winning garden, which could just as easily be used for strawberries.

Jim passionately put his case forward, presenting a lot of relevant information about how chemical fertilizers and pesticides and herbicides and fungicides and other -cides are killing the soil. He discussed the dairy industry’s impact on New Zealand soils and rivers, which is both staggering and disgusting. He also discussed their denial of their effects, unwillingness to change, and unwillingness to look into biological alternatives. The fallout from which is pretty full on. I think it was 80% (but don’t quote me) of lowland New Zealand rivers are now unsafe for human CONTACT, let alone consumption. Thanks dairy farmers…

After all, most civilizations that have ever collapsed have done so due to the destruction of their landbase, and most of our farming is doing that on a massive scale right now. Quite a motivating factor to get working on solutions!

It was a great experience, and the group who attended added a lot to the discussion, as ideas bounced around, allowing for a lot of clarification of the ideas and principles presented. There was also a really good pot luck lunch.

There was also the opportunity to purchase at a discount Jim’s fantastic chipping tool for dealing with weeds, and there were some nice and FREE heritage seeds for broad beans, butter beans, celery and chard. Which should make a nice addition to Kai o Te Aro and Innermost Gardens, as well as my father’s garden.

By the end of the weekend, my mind was abuzz with ideas and information. I felt inspired, empowered and uplifted, and more determined than ever to do something to help heal the earth and make food happen.

Thanks to Jim O’Gorman, Carl Pickens, Jacob Perkins and Hana Miller from Dirt Doctor, as well as Dave McArthur, the caretaker of Houghten Valley School. It was an excellent weekend. I highly recommend their upcoming seminars for those in the Wellington area.

Bring on Spring.

Over the coming weeks this website will have an upgrade and probably a new look, as well as better usability and synchronisation with the facebook page, (not group) which has become my main avenue of internet posting currently. As a result this website has suffered a lack of attention.  I will work to reorganize this site and make it both easier for me to update and easier for you to navigate and find the relevant information and content that you need.

There is so much good information on the internet which can work towards the provision of Free Food. I will do my best to point you to it.

For those who are interested. The presentation of the petition to get the council to plant more fruit and food bearing plants and trees in public space will be presented to the council on WEDNESDAY the 28th of April at 5:30.

Those wishing to attend or have their say are encouraged to arrive by 5:25. The petition will be early in the agenda of the meeting.

Address:

Council Chamber
First Floor, Town Hall
Wakefield Street
Wellington

Thanks to everyone who signed the e-petition to the Wellington City Council. The next step is TBA, but will involve presenting it to the council. In the mean time, go and plant more trees.

Without good soil, you won’t have happy plants.

In order for plants to be their healthiest and most productive, their surroundings must provide all the right growth factors. These of course are different depending on what kind of plants you are growing, cacti need different soil from tomatoes for example.

With a healthy soil, plants are provided with nutrients, ample water, and are supported by beneficial organisms, such as fungi and bacteria which provide protection from disease, and promote root growth resulting in stronger plants. Soil is a sophisticated system of interconnected parts, but luckily it’s easy to build.

There are three basic parts:

First, and largest is the mineral part, which is the sand, silt, clay and trace elements, this is your main inorganic structure, the bones of the soil. The more balanced this soil structure is in general, the more fertile your soil will be. If your soil is unfit consider using garden boxes at first, or sheet mulching areas to build up fertility.

Second there is the organic matter. This is the decaying plant material and compost, this is the source of the nutrients your plants will feed on, it also helps retain water and feed the other organisms within the soil. The sources of this can be compost, green manure, decaying leaves or manure.

Thirdly there is the living part of the soil, these are all the beneficial organisms both big and small which make the whole thing work for you. In healthy soil you will find an abundance and diversity of lifeforms besides the plants you’ve put in.

There are fungi which help structure the soil and cycle nutrients and water through their mycelial networks, as well as help protect plants from disease and promote root growth. Bacteria help to ferment, decompose and make available nutrients from the decaying organic matter to the plants as well as provide disease resistance. Worms and insects which help to break down, aerate, mix and fertilize the soil. They also keep pests and parasites at bay. All of these living organisms work together to help regulate and balance the environment within the soil so that you don’t have to.

There are more and more people providing beneficial microorganism cultures for sale. You add them to your soil and they quickly spread throughout, the plants which are planted quickly form symbiotic relationships which aid in growth and disease resistance. This greatly improves the productivity and size of the plants. An example of such a thing is MycoGrow by Fungi Perfecti, which is the brainchild of Paul Stamets, the world renowned mycologist.

Different plants will require, or thrive better in different soils,  so it might take a bit of homework to figure out what’s right for you.

Some things you can do to help make your soil the best it can be:

MULCH – Not enough can be said about mulching, it makes the soil. It reduces manpower and increases fertility. You can sheet mulch large areas into usability very easily. See Ruth Stout’s System and No Dig Gardening for more information.

Get a compost heap – The tried and true compost heap, used for millennia to provide nice black soil for gardens.

Get a worm farm – Worms are great composters, they will provide you with rich compost for your garden. The farms are available at most hardware or garden stores, see the resources page for where to find worms.

Get a Bokashi compost system - This is a bench-top compost system which uses a combination of aerobic and anaerobic bacteria to ferment and break down kitchen waste. This system is currently subsidised and supported by the Christchurch City Council, who have made an online pdf for Bokashi found here. Also check out the homepage of Bokashi in New Zealand.

Add beneficial microbes from a packet – Many more companies are jumping on the spore culture bandwagon, though not widespread yet, this method can be extremely beneficial in improving soil structure and fertility, as well as in the right conditions, producing mushrooms. See fungi.com.
The MycoGrow tablets sold there could be useful for guerrilla gardeners wanting to plant their plants with a bit of a leg up, especially in urban soils where pollution could be an issue.

Add some seaweed – This is becoming increasingly popular,  and it’s understandable. Seaweed provides a great number of nutrients, minerals and beneficial enzymes to the soil. It is one of the best soil conditioners around, however it’s very important to make sure you have a sustainable source for your seaweed, as stripping beaches is not cool. Industrial and personal over-harvesting has led to the decimation of many large kelp forests worldwide, which has reduced food and habitat available to fish and other life forms, which in turn reduces their number. Also, worms don’t like seaweed because of the salt, so don’t feed it to them.

Add coffee grounds – They’re high in nitrogen, which plants need, as well as other beneficial trace elements and can be used in a number of ways.

Test the pH – If your plants aren’t doing so well they could be struggling with too basic or too acidic soil. Test it against what your plant thrives in and adjust accordingly.

Grow green mulch and Companion Plants – Add in plants that grow quickly and can be trimmed and mulched, this adds a lot of nutrients into the soil, as well as reduces water loss. Try to practice companion planting with your plants to promote further fertility. These plants can either work to fertilize the soil, or can be used to repel insects, or attract bees and other beneficial insects too (or to attract predators away from food crops).
There are some lists of companion species available on wikipedia: list of companion species, list of repellent species, list of beneficial weeds. These lists are not comprehensive, but they are a good place to start. Not all of the advice has been verified scientifically though there are well known uses, such as onions repelling pests.

Companion planting has been used traditionally for thousands of years. The Native Americans used a grouping of maize, beans and squash, which is known as the Three Sisters: Corn seeds are placed in the middle of a mound of earth 50cm in diameter and 30cm high. When the corn is 15 cm high, plant the beans in a row around the centre, one week later plant the squash seeds in a final row. When everything’s growing, trim it back to 2 or 3 corn stalks, each with no more than 2 beans growing up, you will have to aid the beans in the beginning. The corn acts as a pole for the beans to climb, the beans provide nitrogen to fertilize the corn and the squash leaves provide a microclimate reducing water evaporation, they suppress weed growth and provide a living mulch too. In some cultures a Fourth Sister was added, by way of a flowering plant to attract bees.

Get reading! – There’s a lot of information out there if you can find it, visit the resources page for more information and links. If you’re looking for more on soil, companion planting, organics or permaculture, the best places to start are google, wikipedia and your public library. Learning is part of the game, it pays to get a notebook.

Remember, soil is a living system, applying too many chemical fertilizers, pesticides and fungicides will have short term gains perhaps, but may kill as many beneficial organisms as they do bad ones and will degrade your soil with repeated use.

By letting nature take its course and merely giving it a boost here and there, you can get a lot more fertility out of soil, it gets deeper and finer over time if properly cared for, it gains more ability to let life flourish. As opposed to chemical fertilizers and poisons, which will eventually degrade soil down to powder. Not only do you get better soil, better food and better health, you get to create and foster life, and that’s one of the coolest things you can do.

Guerrilla Gardening has become increasingly popular over the last few years as those within the city become more environmentally conscious. The wasted concrete and asphalt spaces and empty verges found within so many of our cities instead of being an eyesore, devoid of all but the simplest life, become a blank canvases for budding guerrilla gardeners to turn into beautiful, vibrant green spaces. Taking the environment into your own hands can be an empowering way to give back to the world, and other city dwellers. While it’s technically not lawful to do as you please to public spaces, many councils and local governments are supportive, or at least turn a blind eye to such acts of positive vandalism as they add to the public well-being.

If you’re interested in this form of positive activism then you might want to think about your approach. There are many different ways of attacking these spaces, depending on the nature of the space, greening an asphalted area requires a different approach from putting in a garden on a bare patch of land for example.
Location dictates a lot, it’s always easiest to work as local as possible, so if you live next door to somewhere that you could improve, it’s easier to target that than traipsing halfway across town with all your stuff.

Will you do it by yourself, or will you have a group for backup? By day or under the cover of darkness? These are things to consider, because the approach is different in each case.

If you’re really serious, consider investing in some equipment that will help you in your quest.
Some invaluable items for guerrilla gardening include a PH/Moisture meter for testing soil conditions, it’s no use planting a beautiful new garden if it’s just going to wither and die because the soil is not right. You can get these from The Metshop on Swan Lane in Wellington, or online at their website.

Also, you’ll need to dig, so you’ll need a shovel that’s portable, I suggest getting your hands on a military fold-up shovel, they can be found at Comrades Army Surplus in the James Smith Markets in Wellington, (or any other good Army Surplus store). They fold up small enough to fit in a backpack and are big enough to dig big holes without too much hassle. If you’re working on a small scale, or don’t mind smaller tools then gardening trowels and forks will work too of course.

If you want to go all the way and be really hardcore, you could invest in an orange vest and some road cones or colourful plastic tape and put across the appearance of a legitimate gardening project, (despite not having permission of course). This approach has worked numerous times for graffiti artists not wanting to be caught doing something illegal. If you look legit, then people are more inclined to believe you’re legit.

In all cases though, if you’re asked or confronted by someone wanting to know what you’re doing, there’s no point in lying, it just makes you look deceitful and noone likes that. Instead be honest and up-front about your intentions and what you’re trying to create. Noone is really going to fault you for doing something that is beneficial.

For more tips and information, click here

Well the annual solstice gift giving and feasting festival is over now. I hope that many fruit trees have found a loving new home. Because they really are the gift that keeps on giving.

I’d like to wish you all a happy holidays, merry christmas, sunny solstice or whatever well wishes you would like to receive for this particular part of the year.

The new year is only a few days away and I’d like to take this opportunity to say, if you’re going to make your new years resolutions, why not make one of those resolutions getting in touch with what you eat, either by eating locally produced food, or planting your own garden.

It’s much more satisfying than supermarket food I assure you.

Best wishes from everyone at Free Food New Zealand.

Due to widespread deforestation and conversion of land into monoculture agriculture, combined with increased temperatures, many areas of the world are undergoing the process of desertification, where once fertile land, or forest is now sand, devoid of all but the simplest and hardiest life, where there is no water.

Luckily, this problem is easily solved.

I have a poorly drawn diagram:

Dig some swale dams along the contour of the land, landscape the land to maximize the capture of water. Cover the swales in organic mulch to help capture water and provide nutrients. Any rainfall that occurs will be captured and soak down into the soil downhill. Along the top bank of the dam, plant leguminous trees to provide nutrients and shade (thereby reducing evaporation), cover the swale banks in a ground cover, which provides more shelter to the soil, retaining moisture. Over time you can expand down the slope, planting fruit trees and companion plants, with smaller edible shrubs and ground plants. As more water is captured and stored in plants and the ground water table, there is more evaporation, which in addition to other products of plantlife, help to form clouds, which will increase rainfall in the area. The system, when widespread enough, becomes self-sustaining and self-regulating. Not to mention the ridiculous amount of food an ecosystem like this would produce.

We can reduce the spread of deserts by creating green zones such as these on their edge, and moving inward.

Combined with earthship housing and this amazing bio-technology it would be a relatively easy task to achieve, and a worthwhile project to give funding to, if one had enough wealth to spare.

Why do this?  Easy, work to rebalance the global ecosystem, create a new food bearing rainforest for people to live in, improve local environments, provide work to thousands of people, improve the living conditions of millions, provide food for millions. This is all possible. With simple tools.

Imagine, instead of the multi-million dollar dam projects that the world bank funds, the funding of a project to create widespread food forests, and earthship housing, eliminating desertification, housing millions  and re-balancing the global ecosystem, creating a healthy world where everyone has abundant food.

There is a better way of development for the developing world than the example that western capitalism has given us all. It is about creating abundance, not just of money, because that’s just something we invented a long time ago, but abundance of the things that make life beautiful. Food, community, love, a healthy, lush environment, healthy drinking water.

Let’s evolve.

Let’s all build something better.

It’ll be a lot of fun.

Ok, so the world is in a spot of bother, to put it mildly. We are taxing the system more than it can handle and a change is needed. There are so many problems:

Climate change, food and water shortages, declining fish stocks, acid rain, air and water pollution, deforestation, desertification, economic recession, disconnected and disenfranchised populations, peak oil.

I have some solutions. They may sound too simple, but that’s because we live in a climate of over-engineered solutions. For example, instead of reducing the amount we use our cars, we just tear up more land and build wider roads. The solutions to climate change, and all the problems listed above are pretty simple. As I’ve said before, it comes down to a change of approach.

The first problem I’m going to solve for you is the recession and it’s accompanying food price rises and shortages.

My solution is a nationwide public works project. John Key has his cycleway idea, which is pretty good, it’s a tourist attraction, it’s promoting healthy lifestyles and nature. But it’s fairly limited in its scope.

My idea is to build a nationwide network of edible landscaping. Raising and planting fruit trees, nut trees, public orchards, lining streets, creating community gardens etc. You can employ thousands of people in this endeavour, and what you have in the end is a country that is head to toe covered in freely available food. Talk about a tourist attraction.

This idea would help employ people in areas where they can learn important skills, such as how to grow food, how to care for plants and their environment. This idea would bring nature, and food production back into cities. It would promote a healthier connection with the environment, healthier lifestyles and a healthy relationship between the government and the people, where they actually work to help everyone on a fundamental level.

In the end you would have: A vibrant, green country actually in line with its “clean green” image, a large amount of people with exportable skills, a large number of people employed to maintain and care for the trees, a massive tourist attraction, a strong example to the rest of the world of what is possible to create, and most importantly a massive amount of freely available food for everyone to enjoy and partake of, leading to a better quality of life.

It’s about creating healthy abundance. I really don’t see any reason why this cannot become a reality within my lifetime.

We’re all ushered into looking at the world as it is, instead of imagining how it could be.

We are all creative entities, capable of bringing about amazing things, how about creating something beautiful and amazing for the benefit of everyone? It’s as simple as imagining that it’s possible, it all flows on from there.

Next problem to solve? Desertification. Stay tuned.

I attended the 350 festival in Wellington on Saturday. I was there helping my friends hand out cookies. They baked, and I helped ice 350 cookies of varying sorts, numbered 1 to 350 to help promote the activities at the Waterfront. We were giving them out for free to get people to go there. We set up shop in the middle of Civic Square and proceeded trying to get people to eat our free delicious cookies and coax them across the bridge. People just don’t seem to believe people when they’re offering free food with no catch. All our catches were purely optional, we sent them in the direction of 350, and my petition was on display.

It was a great opportunity to promote the petition to the Wellingon City Council to get them to plant more food bearing plants and trees in public space. People came in for the cookie, saw the petition and signed. It worked pretty well, it received over one hundred in the space of just a couple of hours. Since it was the first outing of the paper petition, it bodes well for its widespread release. I also managed to hand out quite a few flyers promoting the website and general point of view. It seems the idea is getting a pretty good reception with people. If you’ve come here from seeing my flyer, welcome, check out the various pages and entries, you might just find something useful.

All in all it was a great day. Well done to everyone involved with the 350 festival.

—–to change subject—–

Recently I heard from Tara from Motueka, who has been involved in planting two public orchards there.  She tells me they are planted on council lan, using volunteers to plant the trees. The council then looks after them. The trees are paid for by the local health board. It seems like a really good way of getting things done. The full story of that can be found here. I’m very interested in hearing more about this, as well as similar projects,  if anyone has any more information to share please do so.