Jess’ Top Tips for Adding More Plants to Your Diet

Jess’ Top Tips for Adding More Plants to Your Diet

by | May 19, 2022 | All blog posts, Kitchen

Jess’ Top Tips for Adding More Plants to Your Diet

At times, the world can seem so chaotic and be really exhausting.

Hearing about the impacts of the climate crisis, food costs increasing … it can all seem very daunting.

But what if I told you, just by changing the way you eat, can change the world AND save money!

I’ve been plant based/vegan for nearly a year now and it has completely changed my perspective on cooking, eating, and pretty much food in general.
You might think going plant based would be way too hard though. Vegetarian, yes may be doable. But vegan? Can’t imagine!
To be honest, I thought exactly the same thing. But the truth is, once you learn the basics (like riding a bike), it’s much easier than it seems.
So whether you want to incorporate more plants into your diet to improve the quality of your life, or to improve the health of the world around us, I’ll give you some easy tips on how to get started:
R

Choose your favourite meal and veganise it.

For example, if you love butter chicken, use chickpeas instead of chicken. If you love nachos, use lentils and beans instead of mince.

R

Using spices is super important!

Some plants, although they are really good for you, are just really bland. Adding spices when you cook them really helps to boost the flavour and will make you love eating plants! My favourite spice is cumin and I literally add it to everything!

R

An easy swap is changing milk for plant based milk

These are available in supermarkets, but are also very simple and cheap to make. I make my own oat milk and it only takes 5 minutes!

R

Check out cookbooks at your local library, recipes on Instagram accounts and online.

My favourite are the @tworawsisters , @plasticfreeherbivore , and @naturallynina . These have helped me develop my cooking skills and helped me get creative in the kitchen

Plant based cooking is also a lot more fun than general cooking. I’ve found that cooking with plants has helped me be more creative in the kitchen which has definitely saved me money! Once you get on the plant based journey, you’ll notice that you can cook meals with a lot more ease and not have to keep referring back to a recipe.

Eating more plants also has huge environmental benefits such as less land needing to be used for agriculture, reduces greenhouse gas emissions, reduces water consumption, protects oceans, and saves animal lives. Since less land will needed to be used to grow food, it means that more land can be regenerated into their natural landscape which increases biodiversity and protects nature.

So what are you waiting for?

You don’t have to be vegan or vegetarian to include more plants in your diet. There’s a lot of scientific evidence out there that shows that incorporating more plants into your diet will reduce your risk of cancer, make you happier, and overall live a happier and healthier life.
If you want to know more, you can follow me on Instagram at @plantbasedecowarrior where I share recipes and facts about plant based eating.

Words & Images: Jess

How to Make Your Own Compost

How to Make Your Own Compost

by | Apr 18, 2022 | All blog posts, Gardening

How to Make Your Own Compost

What you’ve got is not waste!

Have you ever seen living and breathing compost? It almost looks like brownie right. Sometimes it smells and looks so good I just want to eat it. Of course I don’t. The plants need it more than I do.

I have talked with so many people and lots of them say they want to compost, but have absolutely no idea where to start. It stinks. It’s gross. Or they don’t have enough space.

But don’t get worried, just get wormy, because I am here to help you compost!

Photo Credit: UC Photographer.

How to start your own compost

First of all you have to decide on what method of composting you are going to do, and what type of compost bin.

Are you going to Bokashi, have a contained worm farm, an in-ground worm farm, have a black compost bin, a wooden pallet compost bin, or do you have no space and instead are going to share your scraps on the app ShareWaste?

Location

No, your compost bin doesn’t need full sunlight and it can be in partial shade. Just put it wherever works for you. Ideally close to your house so that you’re not walking miles to empty your food scraps, as well as making sure it is on grass/soil NOT on concrete.

Next step is to have a closed-lid container in your kitchen

This is where you can separate your food scraps from your trash. An ice cream container will do.

Once your container is full, it’s time to empty it.

First add a few handfuls of sticks to the bottom, as this creates air flow. Then add a layer of dead leaves (heaps around now being Autumn) or ripped up paper/cardboard.

Then you can add your food scraps. Continue to layer your compost bin like this with dead leaves/ paper and then food scraps.

Finally, like making a cake, a compost ‘cake’ has 4 important ingredients.

Air, moisture, browns and greens.

You create the air through aeration, by using a garden fork or compost aerator. The moisture, through watering your compost when it’s too dry. Your brown materials are your non-smelly, ‘dead’ materials, such as dead leaves, paper, cardboard, toilet rolls, sticks… And your green materials are the smelly, ‘living’ materials, such as coffee grounds, food scraps, fresh lawn clippings, fresh garden clippings…

You don’t need to know everything before you start composting, because that will NEVER happen! The point is diverting your food scraps from landfill, and making glorious compost which can be used to increase the health of your plants and the soil.

I am from Rotorua, but I am studying Environmental Science at UC. I have been running compost workshops for one year and when I started, I definitely did not know as much as I do now. It’s about failure, and experimenting, as that is how you learn.

Follow me on Instagram @kaitlyngrowz where I share tips on how to compost – I also run a business called Kai Compost, where I do compost consulting.

Happy Composting!

Kaitlyn

Photo Credit: Rotorua Lakes Council.

Words: Kaitlyn Lamb

Kaitlyn is studying Environmental Science at UC and runs compost workshops and consulting.

Follow me on Instagram @kaitlyngrowz and Kai Compost.

Strawberry Maintenance as Winter Approaches

Strawberry Maintenance as Winter Approaches

by | Apr 8, 2022 | All blog posts, Gardening

Strawberry Maintenance as Winter Approaches

I take my strawberries very seriously, like over 300 plants seriously! 

The past year I harvested over 40 kilograms of strawberries from my patch, that’s not including all that were gobbled along the way, which was many.

As Winter approaches and garden jobs tend to ease off, now is the perfect time for the scraggly strawberry patch to get some much needed attention from me.

Firstly I lift all the plants, seperate the runners aka baby plants, and soak in a wheelbarrow or bucket full of seaweed tonic or homemade fertiliser (like comfrey or nettle tea) for as little as 2hrs to a much as 48hrs, depending on how speedy I am at prepping the bed to replant them.

I’ll prepare the strawberry beds, always located in full sun, with what resources I have, which are alpaca manure & dried willow leaves mixed into the existing soil and topped with pine needles for mulching. Any aged manure and fallen leaves will do (not walnut), alternatively a top up of compost if you have some handy, and a mulch with pea straw would work equally as well.

Then time to get those well hydrated and fed strawberry plants back into the soil, nice and tucked up with mulch. That’s it for Winter.

Come Spring I’ll give them a feed of seaweed tonic, and again a couple more feeds during Summer to keep them flowering and fruiting into Autumn.

Biggest tip, bird netting from early Spring! They will find and devour them, and invite all their mates to the party.

I frequently share tips on strawberries and various other vegetable garden related topics on my Instagram page @nzgardener, I love sharing my North Canterbury 1000m  garden, harvests, flowers, alpacas and sunken glasshouse (walipini) on there, so feel free to hop on over and take a look.

Happy garden days!

Candy

Words and pictures: Candice Harris

Follow Candy on Instagram

How to create your own Food Forest

How to create your own Food Forest

by | Apr 5, 2022 | All blog posts, Food forests, Gardening

How to create your own Food Forest

Have a small backyard? Want to grow your own food but don’t think it’s possible because you don’t have much room? Consider creating your own food forest, one can be started in less than 6 square metres – Brent Cairns from Kaiapoi Food Forest explains how:

 

Food forest layers all fill a potential growing space, including vertical spaces, which allows you to grow far more in any given area than you could in a traditional garden. A food forest is less work as you will mainly be growing perennials which produce fruit each year, saving you loads of money

How to get started:

Kill the grass and build soil

Lay thick layers of cardboard or newspaper (not glossy as its toxic) then apply a thick layer (at least 300mm) of mulch ideally sourced from trees that have been mulched inclusive of leaf litter (leaf litter will assist with speed of breakdown of the mulch). To start you can’t plant directly into the mulch, it’s there to build soil, breakdown and feed the surrounding plants and trees, which will retain moisture. It will be at least a season or two before your mulch will be broken down enough to plant anything into it. Until then all plants should be planted through the mulch and into the soil below.

First/Canopy layer

The canopy layer is either a fruit or a nut tree, choose a fruit that you like, apple, pears, apricots, plums, peaches etc and plant the tree in the centre of where you want to create your food forest. Either plant the main fruit tree first or dig through the mulch and plant into soil, make sure you keep mulch 300mm away from tree trunks and ensure grafts are not covered. Otherwise the mulch will rot the tree trunk killing it.

Second layer

Choose a smaller fruit tree (semi dwarf apricot or nectarine etc) or a citrus tree (lemon, mandarin, lemonade etc), or even a small nut tree like a hazelnut. Depending on your space and amount of light you could choose 3-5 types of smaller tree to go in this layer. We also plant kowhai and kakabeaks in this layer to provide nitrogen to the other trees and plants.

Third layer

Choosing what berries you like, currants (red, black or even white), raspberries (red and golden) golden raspberries are so yummy, the birds don’t know they are ripe as it’s not until they turn orange that they are ready to pop straight in your mouth. Again space dependent you could have a multitude of different berry types at this layer.

Fourth layer

Choose perennial vegetables/herbs (asparagus, rhubarb, globe artichokes, chives, coriander), flowers that will attract bees and are edible, i.e. nasturtiums, rosemary, borage etc. We plant then chop and drop comfrey which has a long tap root which goes down and brings to the surface an abundance of nutrients for the other plants.

Fifth layer

Choose wild and normal strawberries (white and red), incredibly strawberries don’t mind a bit of walking over. At this layer you can include pumpkins, kamokamo, squash etc. The idea is to cover the garden with an abundance of plants, if you don’t do it, nature will with weeds.

However many weeds are edible and very nutritious i.e. cleavers, yes that sticky velcro plant can be eaten and even dried as a coffee substitute.

Sixth layer

The root crop layer. You don’t want to dig up and disturb the soil/mulch, so root crops are isolated too turnips, carrots, parsnips, beetroots etc. Pop your potatoes and kumara in a separate area to your food forest.

Seventh layer

Climbing plants, beans and peas, even hops. The plants will climb up the trees or you can install frames. Peas and beans are not only food, they are plants that will provide nitrogen to the other plants.

Gaps in your food forest add in annuals like lettuces, which don’t need lots of light to grow well so can be planted on the shady side of the food forest. If you wish, include brassicas like cauliflower, Brussel sprouts etc,… brassica flowers are so yummy to throw into salads.

We plant garlic and onions as food but also they ward away pests. We plant tomatoes and purposely don’t stake them as many varieties grow well by just letting them go bush.

In time you will find that in your mulch layer will start growing mushrooms, a sign that your soil is healthy and alive (do not be tempted to eat the mushrooms they may be poisonous) you may want to inoculate areas of mulch with suitable edible mushroom spores.

Food Forests are a far easier way of growing food, the only time you dig is to plant something, if you fill it with abundance you won’t have to weed as there isn’t room for weeds.

You won’t have to use sprays as the mixture and balance of different plants will keep the bugs away.

A food forest will provide you with such an abundance of fresh nutritious food.

I have described above a single food forest guild, if you have room, you can plant at a spacing of 5-10 metres a multitude of different canopy trees. The more guilds of course will give you a wider selection of food to eat.

Learn more at kai.net.nz or visit the Kaiapoi Food Forest on Cass Street, Kaiapoi.
We have volunteer time each Wednesday after 4pm, a time for maintenance and learning.

Words: Brent Cairns