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In your Backyard: Urban Harvest: Online extra resources


In Your Backyard: Urban Harvest, is a guide to growing fruit and vegetables in small gardens. We’ve compiled extra materials and videos here to help further your understanding of this exciting topic.

Video stories

Watch our collection of videos for additional garden tips and inspiration.

Video: How Kate Coughlan’s inner city courtyard garden became a 100% edible oasis

When NZ Life & Leisure editor Kate Coughlan left behind her vast veggie beds at the Rocket Ranch for city life she felt starved. She called in the experts to create a small courtyard garden with 100% edibles.

READ MORE 

Video: Take a tour of Rory Harding’s George Street Orchard in Dunedin

An inventive landscape gardener has transformed a dull inner-city garden into an overflowing food forest.

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Video: Dr Compost Ben Elms recipe for a good life and tips for top compost

As a champion of the health and happiness benefits of rich, rotting compost, nothing makes Ben Elms more content than the multitude of microscopic critters squirming in his soil.

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The buzz on Kelli Walker’s burgeoning business, Forage & Ferment

Kelli Walker felt a business was brewing inside her, and found one that can’t stop bubbling, burbling and babbling about itself.

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Chapter 1 Crop Guide

ThisNZlife contains a vast amount of information on growing veggies. Find further information on popular vegetables and herbs in the list below.

Basil

Beetroot

Broccoli

Chervil

Chives and alliums

Cherry tomatoes

Cucumber

Kale

Komatsuna

Mizuna

Pumpkin

Salad Greens

Turnips


Chapter 2 Get a plan

Garden design ideas.

3 inspiring New Zealand food forests

We take a guided tour through three very different food forests at different stages in their lifecycle.

READ THE STORY HERE 

More stories you might like:
Why the feed you’re giving your livestock matters

 

How to build a chicken coop with a living roof

A DIY guide to creating a green chicken coop.

READ MORE HERE

The Christchurch couple living self-sufficient dream in their half-acre urban garden

Meg and John Christie are living their self-sufficient dream on a half acre block, but they haven’t had to leave the city to do it.

READ THE STORY HERE 


Chapter 3 Garden Care

Tips on growing healthy plants.

Dr Compost Ben Elms’ recipe for a good life and tips for top compost

As temperatures tumble, the process of composting slows down, but it doesn’t stop altogether. The outside layers of your compost heap may be cool, but the inside layers will continue to decompose if the right materials are added.

READ MORE HERE

10 tried and tested mulches

Which mulch is your best ally in the war against weeds?

READ MORE HERE

Organic methods to control codling moth

Bugs are a part of nature but when they invade an entire apple crop, its time to declare war and this is the month to get started.

READ MORE HERE

Plant phacelia to attract beneficial insects to your garden

Under the cover of the right plants lurk good guys who are weapons of mass destruction.

READ MORE HERE

 

Permaculture systems in the home orchard

Ben Gaia shares tips to get you growing more food using fewer chemicals.

READ MORE HERE 


Chapter 4 Indoors

Grow vegetables inside in the cooler months.

How to grow microgreens (it’s easier than you think)

Easy to grow and  nutritious, microgreens are a winter garden goer.

More stories you might like:
Keyhole gardens: How this 1990s garden design is helping farmers combat extreme weather and climate change in the Pacific

READ MORE HERE

8 must-try microgreens

There isn’t anything else you could grow this easily or this quickly that tastes this good and is so nutritious.

READ MORE HERE

The Growroom project aims to encourage urban agriculture with free construction

Architects are collaborating on innovative solutions for food production in increasingly urbanised areas.

READ MORE


Chapter 5 Urban Orchard

ThisNZlife contains a vast amount of information on growing fruit. Find further information on popular fruit trees and berries in the list below.

Alpine Strawberries

Damson Plums

Gooseberries

Limes

Meyer Lemons

Passionfruit

Pomegranate 

Raspberries

 

6 ways to clean up sorry-looking citrus

How to rejuvenate an unhealthy citrus tree.

READ MORE 

 

All about Meyer lemons and how to make lemon ice cream

The Meyer is not a true lemon but it is as good as it gets for most of us. 

READ THE STORY HERE

12 tips for good tree pruning

Got trees that need to be trimmed this winter? Here are 12 tips on how to get it right.

READ THE STORY HERE

4 steps to pruning an apple tree

Haven’t pruned your fruit tree in years? Here’s where to begin.

READ THE STORY HERE 

How to grow great passionfruit

Passionfruit is a warm-climate plant, but with protection from wind and cold, plants can be grown in cooler areas too. Overseas they’re often grown as indoor plants, but a warm greenhouse will do the trick too.

READ THE STORY HERE 


Chapter 6 The Harvest

Additional vegetable based vegetables from thisNZlife.

Recipe: Ruth Pretty’s 20-Vegetable Salad with Cucumber Dressing

This is based on a salad I loved eating in Tokyo. Change the veggies depending on what is in your fridge or the garden.

READ THE RECIPE HERE

Recipe: Spiced Roast Potatoes and Cauliflower

This is a simple roast potato and cauliflower dish with a Goan twist.

READ THE RECIPE HERE

Recipe: Market Vegetables with Buttermilk Ranch & Bagna Càuda

Get the barbecue started with these delicious grilled veggies with ranch dressing and bagna càuda, an Italian anchovy dip. 

READ THE RECIPE HERE

Recipe: Barbecued Bourbon Peach Cobbler

Use a cast-iron skillet to cook this delicious dessert directly on the barbecue.

READ THE RECIPE HERE

More stories you might like:
The ultimate spring garden guide: All the vegetables to plant to kickstart your garden

Chapter 7 Foraging

Familiarise yourself with common foraged foods.

A beginner’s guide to foraging in New Zealand

Foraging for wild food is fun and satisfying, but when you stumble across mysterious morsels on your own land, it’s even more satisfying.

READ THE STORY HERE

A beginner’s guide to foraging in New Zealand

There are plenty of edible wild plant foods in the NZ countryside, if you know where to look and what to look for.

READ THE STORY HERE

Additional forage food recipes from In Your Backyard: Urban Harvest

Additional foraging recipes from our special edition In Your Backyard: Urban Harvest.

READ THE RECIPES HERE

 In Your Backyard: Urban Harvest, our new special edition, features everything New Zealanders need to know to grow food in the city. It is packed with expert advice on how to start a productive veggie garden, the best crops to grow and how to create awesome soil.

PLUS: space-saving ideas for vertical growing, container gardening, hydroponics, microgreens, espalier  trees and edible hedges  – even how to forage.

ORDER ONLINE HERE

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