The Garden of Goodness - Season Three
By Carl Muir
Last year, things got real!
I purchased my dream north facing section, with 360 degree views of the Pacific Ocean, Aldermen Islands, and the Coromandel ranges. Together with my partner Tia, we will be building our dream Coromandel home over the next few years, and writing about the process here.
The plan is to make the property as self sufficient as possible, and going from a 800 sqm section to 3500 sqm, means lots more room for planting. You simply can’t beat wandering to the garden each day, deciding what to pick for dinner that night. And with the way the world has gone this year, bypassing the supermarket, has become super attractive!
It was nice to pass on my old garden from season 1 and season 2 , complete with kick arse passionfruit vine and other goodies, to its new owners, and it was time to get to work planning my new garden!
While we aren’t building for at least another year, I got stuck in straight away establishing some good veges gardens and planting fruit trees, with some good advice from Greg at the Garden Shed.
First things first was choosing some good protected sunny spots, boxing up some gardens and getting some good soil in the ground. Most of the north facing hills are clay soil with mix of gorse that had to be taken out, weeds and a bit of grass.
MACROCARPA RAISED GARDEN
My first project was building a nice macrocarpa garden box on one of the NW sloping ridges> I sourced some macrocarpa beams from Bunnings in Whangamata, and got to work!
This was filled with two trailer loads of Daltons Garden Mix goodness! The first crop planted in July was Broccoli, Cauliflower, Spring Onion, Cos Lettuce, Spinach and Leek, sourced from The Garden Shed, Aeroview Garden Centre and Bunnings.
With lots of sun, good soil, lots of winter and spring rain, and keeping pests at bay, things flourished!
Once the broccoli and cauli’s were harvested, tomatoes went in for summer (they don’t go well together)
I also found a really cool raised garden bed product from Bunnings by the Organic Garden Co , at $148 is was plenty cheaper than my first macrocarpa box!
And then, gardens locations started popping up everywhere. The developers had felled a lot of pine trees, and several hundred branches lay decomposting in the bush, so one by one, I dragged them up the hilliside and boxing up more gardens of goodness!
As Tia and myself largely eat paleo and ketogenic we try and replace potatoes with kumara as much as possible. I’ve always wanted to have a kumara patch, and so last October I planted a 50 odd kumara shoots, half I purchased from Aeroview Garden Centre, and half I sprouted myself from bought kumara. I boxed up a big square area with pallets and manuka for the vines to grow up, and provide shelfter. It worked an absolute treat and we achieved a bumper crop!
This spring summer and autumn would have to be the most satisfying in terms of feasting on good healthy kai I have grown myself, and I am thoroughly looking forward to seeing our Azimuth property evolve in the next few years!
