The Organic Gardening Guide, published by the Soil & Health Association, is an excellent introduction to the principles and practise of organic gardening.
The book is recommended by experienced tutors and practitioners in the field of organic growing. It doesn’t tell you specifically how to grow your lettuce or tomatoes, but it does tell you about the fundamentals of organic growing.
The Organic Gardening booklet is currently out of print but we hope to make it available again for purchase at a future date.
The Soil & Health Association has made the booklet available for members here in digital form to assist you in your organic gardening endeavours.
The links below will take you to the sections of the Organic Gardening Guide. Each of the sections have the same links so that you can navigate onwards without having to return here.
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Home gardener Michelle Coenradi has four worm farms on the go. Here she outlines the benefits, and offers some tips from her experience.
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I am passionate about my worms. There are so many benefits to worm farming, and it’s something you can do almost anywhere, even on a balcony. Worm farms produce two types of fertiliser: a liquid (sometimes called tea or juice) and a more solid one (vermicast). I leave the siphon open and sit a bucket underneath to collect the liquid.
Benefits of worm juice and vermicast
Enhances soil fertility.
Promotes plant growth.
Deters pests and diseases.
Improves soil structure – contains microorganisms and enzymes that improve soil aeration and water retention, leading to better root development.
Rich in readily available nutrients like nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium, as well as trace elements.
Improved aeration and drainage results in reduced soil compaction
Enhances the activity of beneficial microbes which are essential for nutrient cycling and overall soil health.
Cost-effective fertiliser that you can make yourself.
Vermicast is pH neutral.
ABOVE: Inside one of Michelle’s worm farms (Photos: Michelle Conraedi)
A healthy home for your worms
Worms need a dark, moist and well aerated environment and a temperature between 15–25ºC. You can put in shredded paper for them to live and breed in, or a worm mat which can be purchased at hardware stores.
Worms love anything curved or round to nest in and keep themselves warm, especially avocado and watermelon skins, and pumpkin is a hit as well.
What do they like to eat?
70% nitrogen-rich ‘green waste’ like fruit and vege scraps, eggshells, coffee grounds and tea bags (make sure they’re compostable ones). Avoid citrus fruit and the onion family.
30% carbon ‘brown waste’, like newspaper and cardboard.
You can feed them daily but I tend to feed weekly.
When I put scraps in I sprinkle Tumbleweed worm compost conditioner over the top. This keeps the pH balanced – you can tell if the worms are struggling with an alkaline imbalance because they lose their colour and start turning white. You can also use garden lime sparingly.
The vermicast is referred to as black gold, indicating its value in the garden. I find worms are hardy and easy care; you really can’t go wrong with a worm farm and they are so rewarding.
ABOVE: Michelle’s vegetable garden flourishes with the addition of vermicast and liquid from her worm farms.
More information
There is lots more information about worm farming online, such as these tips from the Compost Collective.
Sheryl Stivens grew up on a mixed farm in Winchmore, Ashburton. Her family were fourth generation New Zealand farmers growing a variety of crops as well as breeding stud sheep. An experience when she was a young adult set her firmly on the organic path.
Mercedes Walkham traces the life of this Soil & Health member who embodies the motto of ‘healthy soil, healthy food, healthy people’.
Hunting and gathering
When Sheryl Stivens was 19 years old she moved to Australia, and met her husband Hal several years later in the Northern Territory.
“In those days we were young hunters and gatherers catching abundant fish and game in the Australian outback and sleeping under the stars,” Sheryl recalls.
“It was when we moved to Wagga Wagga (New South Wales) that Hal and I bought 30 acres of land, discovered the joys of growing your own food started to garden,” said Sheryl.
A turning point came for them with the realisation that there were no freshwater yabbies or other creatures in the billabongs on their land, due to the chemical fertilisers used to grow grain on the surrounding farms. They had both grown up with families using superphosphate and like many thought it was a “bird-poo type of product that came from Nauru Island” and never considered it to be toxic.
This realisation made them re-evaluate all their belief systems and from that moment on they vowed that they would not use anything that would poison the soil. “It became an unwritten law in our lives,” Sheryl says.
ABOVE: Hal and Sheryl Stivens
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Author: Mercedes Walkham is part of a collective organic garden based in Ashburton. She is pictured here with Sheryl.
Paige Murray explores how we can work with weeds as organic gardeners and growers.
Growing organically, as you well know, is not without its challenges: weeds in abundance, certain insects wreaking havoc out in the fields, not to mention the constant soil remediation and conditioning.
While these obstacles may be at times overwhelming, there are ways to manage them – and let’s be brutally honest here: if you’re taking the leap and growing without synthetic chemicals, it’s unlikely you’ll achieve completely weed- and pest-free crops.
Yellow Admiral butterfly on Scotch thistle
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Paige Murray lives near Christchurch and loves any excuse to get outdoors. Passionate about organic and regenerative agriculture, she works for Quorum Sense and Streamside Organics, and spends most of her free time gardening, making cheese and preserves, or climbing up rocks.
https://organicnz.org.nz/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/11/IMG_20241120_080942.jpg14261080Staff Writerhttps://organicnz.org.nz/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/OrganicNZ-2024-Masthead.pngStaff Writer2024-11-25 11:56:302025-07-04 16:45:41Stop, look and listen to the weeds
