Katrina's Kitchen Garden

15/03/2018

Rudolf Steiner's Calendar of the Soul is a beautiful collection of seasonal meditative verses. I find it is a good way to travel through the seasons of the year, in tune with my garden and the rhythms of nature in the larger sense.

I'm working with the 'American Translation' this year, thanks to Tom Mellett's versions of Steiner's verses available on the website http://www.calendarofthesoul.net/retro.htm

I would love to connect with people doing this work with their own artwork accompanying the verses - please get in touch if this is something you can help me with.

-Katrina

14/03/2018

ECOMATTERS QUIZ CHALLENGE – EcoMatters

Anyone keen to gather a table of six for this event?
EcoMatters is a great organisation, and I’m sure this will be heaps of fun!
$15 per ticket, $90 per table.
PM me, or text on 022-410-4988
🌱Katrina🌱

ECOMATTERS QUIZ CHALLENGE Start: Thu, 5 Apr 7:00pm End: Thu, 5 Apr 10:00pm Blockhouse Bay Community CentreBlockhouse Bay Road, Auckland, New Zealand Price: $15 per person/ $90 for table of six BUY TICKETS Calling all green geeks and nature-loving nerds, it’s time to get competitive for a good caus...

13/03/2018

Young Urban Farmers

Young Urban Farmers

I am pleased to announce that our new Board has approved The Trust Deeds and we can now apply for Charitable status. We are looking for six dynamic young people to join our after school programme in term 2.
We will grow food organically and take part in other environmental action. "Be the change you want to see in the world.
First come basis.
Phone Steve 027 273 8091

13/03/2018

Thanks Kevin Gill, for the trailer load of palm fronds.
We love this going into the compost piles or hugelbeds, LAingholm beach gets a cleanup, and the City Council clean up crew is spared time, petrol, truck space, mulch time....
Are there more community answers to community problems?

10/03/2018

Katrina & The Waves - Walking On Sunshine

Absolutely walking on sunshine with today's news. Thanks to Claire Tran we have our first garden in Glen Eden to use. It is a beautiful garden with a beautiful family. This means that I can now take names for term 2. I am looking to hold our registrations to 6 young people for that term and consider growing further in term 3.
Contact me on 027 273 8091 or Steve at [email protected].
I'm envisioning students enrolling for the term at $19 a day.

Official video of Katrina & The Waves performing Walking On Sunshine from the album Walking On Sunshine. Buy It Here: http://smarturl.it/9mm4h2 The video pro...

10/03/2018

When the moon is descending…

Two gatherings planned for this descending moon phase - come and say hello, and participate in our growth.

http://katrinaskitchengarden.com/2018/03/11/when-the-moon-is-descending/

Descending moon events at the Landing Road Urban Farm: BD500 stir on Tuesday 13th March 4:30pm, and compost making on Friday 16th March from 9am. We’d love to see you there!

10/03/2018

What's On

For anyone interested in gardening in Auckland tomorrow, here are two opportunities....

1) Kelmarna Autumn Festival, 11-3.
Kelmarna Gardens are my absolute favourite gardens in Auckland, and I go there to reconnect with how I want my own urban farm to look one day...
They have their festival from 11am-3pm, and there are a whole bunch of great workshops and other events.

2) For those who would rather stay out in Titirangi, we are welcoming some new volunteers at Katrina's Kitchen Garden, and more help is always welcome. Tasks for tomorrow may include finishing a chicken coop, transplanting seedlings, harvesting seeds from the summer annuals, creating new pathways, building a keyhole garden, and extending the fruit tree guilds in the orchard. I have a new garden advisor who has given me strict instructions to focus on maintenance, and would love to impress her with some progress towards a more 'Kelmarna' looking farm.
Time: 1pm-5pm - get in touch if you need the address.

For the ambitious: Get to both these events!

Have a great weekend.
~Katrina~

http://www.kelmarnagardens.nz/whats-on.html

What's On ​

10/03/2018

News from Steve McCarthy: Announcing the launch of YOUNG URBAN FARMERS. Steve is creating a charity that aims to grow an army of young gardeners growing food in Auckland and beyond. Come join us.
We need gardens, we need passionate young people, we could use some more equipment and we need volunteer Directors.
Our first project will be in Glen Eden in the area that surrounds the Intermediate School where Steve has been teaching.
Phone Steve on 027 273 8091 and let's grow this

09/03/2018

09/03/2018

Following the success of the Summer Holiday Programme Steve McCarthy is now looking to expand from Titirangi into Glen Eden. He is looking for householders and families that want to recreate the Landing Road success into the area around Glen Eden Intermediate.
Firstly we need people to let us grow food instead of lawn in their garden. Six gardens make up the Landing Rd Urban Farm that supports Oaklynn Special School. Now we want to teach students from around Kaurilands Road, Atkinson Road and Captain Scott Road how to grow organic food and minimise organic waste. If you have a sunny garden in the streets around that area please contact Steve.
Secondly, if you have young environmentalists living in your house, we want to teach them how to grow their own food. As soon as we get our first garden in this area we will start an After-School Programme. Steve teaches at Glen Eden Intermediate, he will meet students there, at 3.30 and walk to the gardens we are working with.
Some After-School Programmes are little more than baby sitting options. Steve wants to build a new Urban Farm together with young people who want to be the change they want to see in the world; together with homeowners that share that dream. Steve is pretty sure he will never be rich. We have no intention of packing the students in. We want young people who want to do this. We intend the cost to be similar to the big barn alternative and want to talk to anyone for whom cost might be an issue.
Please text or phone Steve out of school hours on 027 273 8091.

08/03/2018

ShareWaste

Countdown to March 28th: 18 days to go.

Here's my daily dose of input to my submission for the Auckland Waste Management and Minimisation Plan review:

ShareWaste & Compost Collective
ShareWaste is a fabulous initiative, and this model could easily be extended into households helping not just other households, but also helping businesses to reduce organic waste.
The Compost Collective is collaborating with ShareWaste, and getting their message out there even stronger, even better. This is Community Led Development, a method that Auckland Council supports.
I worry that implementing a large scale efficient food waste collection system will inhibit communities from working towards local solutions to local problems.
ShareWaste: https://www.sharewaste.org.nz
Compost Collective: https://compostcollective.org.nz

-Katrina

Tired of filling up yet another garbage bag with scraps? Sign up for ShareWaste and give your waste a second chance!

07/03/2018

We all lose our connection with our gardens from time to time. Tuning in to the changing season through creative meditation in time with our surrounding natural world is one way to better sense what is happening week to week. Here is week 23 of Rudolf Steiner's 'Calendar of the Soul' - which is a series of meditations for the cycle of the year. Here at Katrina's Kitchen Garden we are in the Southern Hemisphere, and so this is a picture of the change from summer to autumn.
Are you feeling like preparing your garden for winter crops? Do you want to spend some time in the garden, feeling into what you want to plant for eating in a few months, and get your hands in the soil, and reconnect with nature?
Enjoy your space by being in it more.
Also, if you wish to be part of our CLUB Farming movement, do get in touch. The next descending moon phase already has a 500 stir and a compost making session booked, and we'd love more participants.
-Katrina

07/03/2018

Auckland Waste Management & Minimisation Plan - Review Submission March 2018

Countdown to March 28th: 19 days to go.

Here at Katrina's Kitchen Garden we are driven by the model of CLUB Farming - Closed Loop Urban Biodynamics.

Imagine if no organic waste left your street, but was managed by a number of gardeners in home-scale composting systems? And imagine if the compost made from your organic waste was used to grow food you could harvest locally? Even if you weren't a gardener yourself, you could participate in a local food economy.

We'd like to see this option promoted within this round of Auckland City Council review of the Waste Management Plan.

To this end, I have begun a submission statement, which will grow day by day, week by week, until the close-off time of 8pm on March 28th.

Please, put your views forward on this topic, whether or not you are a resident of Auckland City. Tourists, travellers, and future sightseers to this beautiful city are also welcome to have a say.

If there's anything I've written that resonates with you, please copy and paste into your own submission.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dpfq2ybWgRIGTDLQDlxbz_8ALbW6-iI-byWEAkZBW50/edit?usp=sharing

Let's make our voices heard - there are better ways to stop organic matter ending up in landfill.

The website for online submissions:
https://www.aucklandcouncil.govt.nz/have-your-say/topics-you-can-have-your-say-on/waste-minimisation-management-plan/Pages/default.aspx

~Katrina~

This is the submission I, Katrina Wolff, will be putting in to the City Council this month. If there is anything here that you feel resonates with your perspective, by all means copy it. The more people who speak up, the better. Community Composting Small composting venues handling compost...

06/03/2018

Juliet Arnott: waste and re-use

It's March 7th, and there are 21 days left till submissions close on the Draft Auckland Waste Management and Minimisation Plan.

There are so many areas that need public feedback in the form of submissions. It's a pet topic of mine, and there is an awful lot to say.

For now, please consider listening to one of my waste minimisation heroes - Juliet Arnott, talking with Kim Hill in October 2016. She discusses many of the issues surrounding commercial waste in New Zealand, and the need for our society to become more resourceful. While some of the interview is no longer current, the perspective Juliet brings most certainly is what is needed right now.

At Katrina's Kitchen Garden we are doing our best to do our bit, and welcome more households to join us via ShareWaste - we can take more food scraps for our chickens & compost bins, and use this to make biodynamic compost that will help grow food on this little urban farm in Titirangi.

-Katrina

Kim Hill talks to occupational therapist Juliet Arnott, who is the founder and director of Christchurch reuse business Rekindle. She is currently driving the Design for Reuse - Resource: Rise Again project in Wellington, Auckland and Whangarei, and is the organiser of the Design.Craft.Enable.Value.....

06/03/2018

60 Second Docs Presents

And it’s this easy - just start growing food at the age of 7, and you’ll be an expert by the time you get to nine years old.

I love seeing not just the younger generation, but KIDS get into growing food, I suspect this is the future of food.

Do you support a local grower?

9-year-old mushroom farmer.

02/03/2018

February 2018 Biodynamic Compost

We spent a day making this biodynamic compost pile not long ago - here's the video of the end result. This is a hot compost method, with thin layers packed down to stay compact. The biodynamic preparations are added at the end, and so the pile should really be built all in one go.
Here at Katrina's Kitchen Garden, we need many of these on the go, to develop the soil we want to grow our crops. Each month, we'll do one in the descending phase of the moon, and if you'd like us to come and host a compost building workshop in your garden, just get in touch, we'd love to share this practice with gardeners everywhere!
Next descending moon is: March 12-24, 2018.
We'll be building a pile on Friday March 16th, and extra help is always welcome.
Katrina

27/02/2018

About the Draft Waste Management and Minimisation Plan 2018

Hot off the press: https://www.aucklandcouncil.govt.nz/have-your-say/topics-you-can-have-your-say-on/waste-minimisation-management-plan/Pages/default.aspx

I encourage everyone to look at this, not just Aucklanders.

There's a one month submission period: Feb 28 - March 28.

The Draft Auckland Waste Management and Minimisation Plan 2018 sets out how we propose to have zero waste to landfill by 2040.

24/02/2018

It’s Market day!!

24/02/2018

We've got a new product to offer today - the Worm Tower Hugel Pot. This is a self-fertilising planter with built-in water retention technology (hügelkultr). Perfect for a balcony garden, or courtyard setting. Also great for some herbs right outside your kitchen door. Bonus: it'll help reduce a little food waste by absorbing food & garden scraps to feed worms.

Come and see one today at the Titirangi Village Market, or visit our urban farm in Titirangi.

We'll have instructions for building one of these up on our website soon, and can also offer kits or full installation.

Keen to know more? Send us a message.
Why not expand your garden a little this weekend...

22/02/2018

For the Love of Food

We all need food. Fact. Nutritionists and magazine editorials explain in detail the nature of our relationship with food. Yet one element of the nature of food seems absent from what is written about it . . . we don't talk about love. We do talk about loving chocolate or some other favourite food. But we don't talk about food grown with love. [ 788 more words ]

http://katrinaskitchengarden.com/2018/02/22/for-the-love-of-food/

We all need food. Fact. Nutritionists and magazine editorials explain in detail the nature of our relationship with food. Yet one element of the nature of food seems absent from what is written abo…

20/02/2018

A lesson for all of us in a single word.

Last year 200 new words were added to the Maori language to describe mental health, addiction and disability issues.

The words were chosen not only to fill gaps in the Maori language, but also to ensure they were non-judgemental.

For autism they chose "Takiwātanga" which means "in his/her own time and space"

Beautiful ❤️

20/02/2018

Neighbours Supporting Local Food Production

Heard of CSA? I'm curious about not just Community Supported Agriculture, but Agriculture Supported Community.

http://katrinaskitchengarden.com/2018/02/20/neighbours-supporting-local-food-production/

  Five of the near neighbours of Katrina’s Kitchen Garden in Titirangi have allowed our Social Enterprise to use their gardens to grow food biodynamically. Their generosity of spirit see…

18/02/2018

Looking for chilli fans!
Anyone who can name 1-6 of these plants, or even a couple of them, is welcome to come and take part in a chilli seed collecting & labelling party at my place.

Chillis courtesy of Luke Burnet, who I hereby declare to be West Auckland's 'Man with chilli know-how.'

I have a lot to learn about growing any of these, but am excited about hot food this time next year.

Comments with numbers 1-6 below if you'd like some seeds....

16/02/2018

Waste Minimisation or an Opportunity Missed

Auckland's Draft Waste Minimisation Plan (DWWP) has to be applauded for its laudable goals. If we always waited for the absolutely perfect plan we would never move forward. What follows should not be taken as a criticism of the Council. More a consideration of the next step. Who are the winners and losers in this plan? Is there an elephant in the room that takes the shape of Commercial Waste? [ 616 more words ]

http://katrinaskitchengarden.com/2018/02/16/waste-minimisation-or-an-opportunity-missed/

Auckland’s Draft Waste Minimisation Plan (DWWP) has to be applauded for its laudable goals. If we always waited for the absolutely perfect plan we would never move forward. What follows shoul…

15/02/2018

Here at Katrina's Kitchen Garden we grow food. And we teach people to grow food and make great compost. And we really, really want people to eat food grown locally.

Our CLUB Farming model (Closed Loop Urban Biodynamics) has the ability to actualise the phrase below. The farmer would connect with many households, and the householder perhaps offers a bit of time, a bit of land, a bit of organic waste for the compost...

We can all eat more local. And help each other. And if you look at the photo below, there isn't a single plastic bag needed in this exchange.

You could have a CLUB farm in your street too! Ask us how.

14/02/2018

How Much Room Do You Need To Grow Food. . . Not much.

Growing food within a few steps of your kitchen isn't lazy. It's revolutionary or back to the future. Let's teach our children something that came natural to our grandparents.

http://katrinaskitchengarden.com/2018/02/14/how-much-room-do-you-need-to-grow-food-not-much/

  How much room do you need to grow food? Maybe as little as a balcony or small yard. In Auckland the Unitary Plan is allowing for more high density housing. At Katrina’s Kitchen Garden …

11/02/2018

Worm Farm with Vertical Hugelkultr experiment

Here's my latest gardening experiment - it's a worm tower in a container garden, but with the added bonus of vertical hugelkultr. We'd love to test this set-up in an indoor setting, or see pictures of how other people have tried this combination.
Please share your ideas, suggestions, and adaptations.

10/02/2018

Frankie Magazine

I’m feeling a bit of ‘black bin’ envy watching this.
What would it take for cafes around Auckland and New Zealand to not only send their old coffee to people like us for composting, but to do this without single use plastic bags?

feeling a bit guilty about your coffee addiction? never fear, Reground is here! ninna and kaitlin from the melbourne-based enterprise talk us through the process of turning waste into a resource.

read more in issue 78 – on sale now: http://bit.ly/2shLBFe

10/02/2018

The discussion today at a biodynamic plant study meeting revolved around the moon's different cycles, and how these affect biodynamic planting, pruning, and gardening activities.
The commonly known moon cycle of the full moon to new moon (waxing and waning) is 29.5 days. There is another cycle, where the moon ascends and descends, getting higher in the sky (when seen from the earth), and then lower. This ascending and descending rhythm affects many biodynamic activities, and is a 27.3 day cycle.

These two cycles do not align month to month, which is a great reason to use a biodynamic calendar. Want to know more? Come to one of our biodynamic workshops, or find a local biodynamic group in your area.

At Katrina's Kitchen Garden we are spending a whole day on composting next weekend: Sunday February 18th, ending the day with a BD500 stir from 4pm. We'd love to send this garden tonic home with people, and share this knowledge with other gardeners. RSVP to Katrina.

09/02/2018

Volunteerism: An essential element in sustainability

If you are up for a tough challenge, , , try to list your top three of these goals. If we could only achieve 3 then what 3 would you choose?

http://katrinaskitchengarden.com/2018/02/10/volunteerism-an-essential-element-in-sustainability/

By Steve McCarthy In our own small way Katrina’s Kitchen Garden want to throw whatever weight we have behind the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. We salute our volunteers and tho…

08/02/2018

This month’s experiment: a combination worm tower (worm farm) and container hugelkultr.

In theory, this little container will:
- retain moisture
- feed your plants
- turn food scraps into soil
- grow plants

I’d love to try some of these in an indoor or balcony setting.

Looking for guinea pigs!!

Please comment below if you’d like to try it out, we can help you set it up, and would love to hear how it works in different settings.

04/02/2018

We are getting things sorted for our stall at the Karamatura Heritage Farm Open Day this Tuesday. Plenty of hands on activities for kids to experience some of the Urban Farm Training experiences you'd see in our after school programme, or the next holiday programme.

28/01/2018

Introducing Katrina & Steve of Katrina’s Kitchen Garden

Introducing Steve and Katrina, the dual founders of Katrina's Kitchen Garden. Sharing a mission, vision and values, but speaking from different perspectives.

http://katrinaskitchengarden.com/2018/01/28/introducing-katrina-steve-of-katrinas-kitchen-garden/

Katrina’s Kitchen Garden is the result of a collaboration between Katrina Wolff and Steve McCarthy. We are both passionate about the mission of this Social Enterprise, which is to (a) create …

27/01/2018

Some mushroom making here, from our school holiday programme last week. The fungi innoculated dowels are hammered into the logs (which we first measured, marked and drilled holes into), and then they have to be sealed in with melted beeswax.

We are now planning term one's afterschool programme - if you'd like information, please join our mailing list.

27/01/2018

We heard of a swan plant shortage, and in the school holiday programme spent some time potting up the self-seeded babies through the garden.
Anybody want one?