With food price inflation the highest it’s been in decades, growing your own vegetables has never been more appealing.
But if you're not sure where to start, or think your outdoor area isn't big enough, gardener Leah Evans is here to help.
She's been growing her own food for nearly 25 years, including on a tiny patio garden.
She is full of advice for how to get started with the basics, like creating good soil and compost, how to grow from seed, and even how to grow vegetables in pots.
She joined Nine to Noon to talk about how to grow garden staples, such as beetroot, broccoli, carrots, pumpkin and zucchini, from her book Hands in the Dirt: Grow your own kai with Mrs Evans, as well as answering listener questions.
Photo: Supplied / Lottie Hedley
Listen to the full conversation
Her vege patch in Rotorua isn’t huge, but is productive, she says.
“It's not like market garden size. And yet we've got five adults here that I need to feed and keeping vegetables all year round. And we manage to do that.
“It's a mix of herbs, vegetables, a lot of flowers to attract pollinators. I also just love the look of flowers in and amongst the vegetables.”
Even in mid-winter her patch is producing kai, she says.
“The main things that I would be harvesting the most regularly would be leafy greens, so lettuce, silver beet, spinach, I've got heaps of other stuff on the go.
“I've got little successions of carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbages. I've got heaps of garlic in already because you have to start about now. I started mine in about April or May.”
She’s a great believer in using containers, including things that might end up in the recycling, she says.
“I will attempt to grow anything in tubs, and I do, from anything from the size of two-litre plastic bottle upwards. , and my biggest visa would be a 50 litre tub.
“Those are the vessels that I would put things like potatoes, or yams or leeks into, and actually, carrots. I grow so many carrots in tubs, that's my main way probably to grow carrots so that it frees up the bed space."
“But little wee vessels, you can grow things that are shallow rooted, so your cut-and-come-away again lettuces, even spring onions, you could actually grow a cucumber, or tomato in a vessel like that, you've just got to make sure that it's well fed and watered.”
For good soil, you need good compost, she says.
“Homemade compost is probably the gold standard, because you're adding so many different things to it.
“So, at home here, I'm adding egg shells, I'm adding loads of different sources of carbon, so leaves and just all sorts of goodies.”
Variety introduces different trace elements to the compost, she says.
“Which enriches and makes it more robust. You know, you can't grow nutrient-dense vegetables if your soil is not nutrient-dense.”
Growing seedlings from seed is the cheapest way to go, but she has a warning.
“One of the biggest mistakes with growing from seed is that people bury the seed too deeply. My general rule of thumb is whatever the seed size is, just double that in terms of what you're covering it with.
“A carrot seed, or even a brassica seed, like broccoli, they're really quite teeny tiny. So, you're only going to want to just cover that seed.”
A good way to get started with growing from seed is with lettuce, she says.
“I always think lettuce is really easy; cut-and-come-away-again lettuce. I literally just sprinkle that [seed] in a tub. And just lightly cover it. And at this time of the year, I might put a cover over that, a clear cover but a breathable cover just to help it germinate.”
Listener questions
Tanya in Nelson: how to protect lettuces from frost?
“I actually don't, I know that's probably a bit contrary to what people might hear. But I don't cover mine. I choose varieties that are a bit tougher. So once again, your cut-and-come-away or your loose-leaf lettuces are much hardier than a heading lettuce.
“In fact, here, I wouldn't attempt to grow a heading lettuce until spring.”
Frost cloth is another option, she says.
“You can actually buy it by the metre at most garden centres or hardware stores and just make up a little frame with some sticks or some pegs.”
Another listener's trees are being plagued by fruit moth.
“This is becoming an increasingly big problem in New Zealand with our fruit, and we never used to have a problem down here.
“Now they come up from the ground. So, they're going to live in the ground as a grub over the winter.
“You can use you could try to use garlic; plant garlic around the base of the tree, and see whether that deters them... that didn't work so well for me.
“Encouraging as many birds into your garden as possible will help because they will obviously feed on those bugs.
“If you've got chickens, let them scratch around under the trees over the winter, they will eat the bugs.”
Wayne: does covering vegetables with a mesh cover inhibit growth?
“If the cover is too tight, it may do. I would be more inclined to question how closely things are packed into that bed. I would also just say, make sure that cover is just raised a bit, so it's not actually touching the vegetables at all.
“Vegetables can be a bit fussy about their environment, and they have their own sort of intelligence about the growth space.”
John: do you have to clean eggshells before putting him in the compost heap?
"No, absolutely not. Nope.
“So, your compost has these four main ingredients to a good compost. You've got to have nitrogen source, carbon source, it's got to have the aerators and it's got to have water or moisture. And if you can keep those things happening at an even level, then you're going to be able to build a very sound compost.”
Can you put dog poo in compost?
"I wouldn't because most dogs are carnivorous. Right? I know there are some people that feed their dogs a vegan diet, but they do have a lot of bacteria, like we do, in their faeces. I wouldn't recommend that at all."
How do I get rid of rust in soil?
“You could try spraying the surface of the soil with copper. Now I would keep away from any blossoming you know once a blossom comes out on a vegetable or a fruit tree, just because bees it's actually quite toxic to bees.
“So, you want to get in and start treating the soil now.”
Maria from Collingwood: What is the best way to condition and break down a non-draining soil?
“Gypsum is the thing that I would probably recommend. You can buy that at any hardware store or plant or garden centre.
“I would really encourage the use of compost, because compost encourages microbial activity, which is all of the life in the soil, and they aerate that soil for you.
“But you've got to make it attractive for them, give them a reason to want to live there.”