How much can you grow on 0.8ha?
For one Rotorua family, it's a backyard supermarket.
Claire and Greg Flynn and their three children are growing their own groceries organically, with a large vege garden, and "food forest/wild orchard", with more productive trees in their paddocks, which, for many, is the Kiwi dream.
Their little slice of paradise includes 50-plus heritage fruit and nut trees; various types of berries; support species and native trees, shrubs, flowers; and a few sheep and
chickens.
Having shifted from Auckland five and a half years ago when they had their first child, their aim was to go somewhere with less traffic, and an outdoor lifestyle.
"We wanted a property with space for our children to run and play, and space to grow our own food, being a bit more self-sufficient appealed to us - vege, fruit, eggs and a bit of meat (lamb)," Claire says.
"We found a blank lifestyle block that suited us, luckily just before prices went up here in Rotorua.
"We also chose to build a house that is highly efficient and warm, rather than impressive or architectural."
Most of what they learned about gardening, soil health, and permaculture, was off the internet, including from gardening Facebook groups, national seed saving organisation Koanga Institute; Koanga Garden Guide book; and Edible Backyard gardener Kath Irvine.
"There's lots of great stuff on YouTube for learning. My husband (a systems engineer) learnt the butchering cuts for lamb from YouTube."
Claire, 37, a self-employed graphic and web designer, likes knowing where her food comes from.
"Having children really put the focus for me on what we ate, and is when I really got more into buying organic food, wanting to avoid the pesticides and herbicides.
"I also became more aware of the advantage in taste and nutrition of growing my own, or buying locally because of freshness."
She grows most of what she needs in fresh greens and supports local growers by buying online and in store at Brown Owl Organics, where budget allows, as well as supporting those who are saving seeds from more varieties than the few commercial ones.
Of her own growing journey, she's constantly learning, and gave some examples that she wished she knew earlier.
"Generally aphids will only attack a plant if it is already under stress or not healthy, so rather than reaching for a pesticide, looking at what the plant or soil might be lacking is a better approach.
"And, some weeds indicate what the soil is lacking, and are actually amending the soil for you.
"I'm developing a better knowledge of what grows well here, increasing my soil health and fertility, getting better at making compost, learning how to prune fruit trees, learning what crops my family will and won't eat too."
Support local
Research here and overseas shows that demand for grow-your-own food in the form of vegetable seedlings and fruit trees was at an all-time high after the Covid-19 lockdown, given that people had the time to get their hands dirty.
But for those who haven't got the room to grow their own produce like the Flynn family, buying from a local market gardener has also grown in momentum.
Market gardening is the commercial growing of vegetables, fruits, flowers, and other plants, on a scale larger than a home garden, yet small enough that many of the principles of gardening still apply.
Businesses are often geared towards local markets, although production to more-distant markets is also possible.
Trixie Allen, the manager of Tauranga Farmers Market, says residential housing demands are seeing more subdivisions pop up, and with land requirements around a house becoming less and less, fewer residents have space, or the elite soil, to grow their own produce, so the demand for market gardeners grows.
"I think the awareness of space will become more and more," she says.
Allen, who owned Oriana Tomatoes in Bethlehem for 21 years from the late 1990s, says Tauranga Farmers Market - which has 50-plus stallholders coming from the Bay and Waikato - offers organic and non-organic produce.
To qualify as organic, gardeners need to have full certification or be in the process of attaining it. This takes three years and is issued in stages: year one (C1), year two (C2), and year three (C3).
"The market has a policy whereby a grower can't use the word organic unless they can show one of those certifications."
Consumers are becoming more aware of food growing processes, and like to ask questions.
"Which is great in the market environment, because they can speak directly to the grower," she says, giving bees and the use of sprays as two topics that shoppers might want to know more about.
The growing popularity in markets is seeing New Zealand go "full circle".
"We're going back prior to supermarkets, where you had your local fruiter and your local butcher, and you had your markets.
"We've evolved through the supermarkets coming in big and bold, and then the trend was for growers to become big and bold, and now the trend is back to a lifestyle block, whereby you can generate an income off it; and that's where you're getting varying styles of what you call market gardeners or small orchard blocks."
And the pulling power of market growers is that their produce is fresher, explaining of spray free: "Occasionally, your cabbage may have a few holes, or on one occasion we have even seen a snail sitting there looking at you - additional protein," she quips.
"You put your produce in the fridge and it'll last you a week or two, as it's not already three days old. When you deal directly with the grower, they've either picked it the morning of the market or the day before."
What's more, perfection doesn't matter.
"Conventional retail outlets, the trend was everything had to be just the right size and colour. That is changing. People are prepared to buy "The Odd Bunch" [as seen at Countdown] and that's what you can pick up at a farmers market as well."
A new type of shopper
Discerning shoppers are embraced by Pāpāmoa's ReDefined Farmers Market, which is part of the ReDefined Integrative Health and Wellbeing hub.
Launched in March, co-ordinator Emma Gibson says the aim is for customers to be able to do most of their weekly shopping for food staples.
This includes 25 stalls of fruit and vegetables, bread, eggs, nut butter, honey, coffee, meat, cheeses, and every so often, plants and soil, where market gardeners advise on how to grow your own.
"It's going that step beyond and having, for example, the soil there so people can take that education and integrate it immediately."
Gibson, who is a naturopath and medical herbalist, says ReDefined is built upon a "universal wellbeing philosophy", modelling its values on the "blue zones" of the world where communities are living the longest, happiest, and healthiest.
Furthermore, they are driven by environmental awareness.
"If we go beyond the sustainability trend, and look at regenerative living and ways of being, it is feeding back into our local ecosystem both environmentally and economically, in ways that we can regenerate the whenua [land] directly around us.
"Market gardening is an opportunity that if people can embody the education we aim to offer, their weekly grocery shopping becomes a contribution to the bigger picture."
And Geoff Pooch, of the Rotary Club of Rotorua North, says many Kiwis have been shopping at community markets for years.
Rotorua's Saturday market, a charity fundraiser for the club, has been operating for more than 30 years in various locations before its present home at Kuirau Park.
"Whilst not a local farmers market in the true sense, it is where many Rotorua people continue to do their weekly shop."
Their biggest stall is Jackie's Fruit and Veg, with Grow Together Farm also recently setting up shop.
The market offers social connections and to catch up with friends and family "in a way that supermarkets don't quite have".
Meet the growers
Silvio Maffra of Abundant Backyard
A study holiday in New Zealand proved the impetus for Silvio Maffra, of Goiania, Brazil, to run his own market garden in Whakamarama.
"We have a really meat-eating culture in Brazil so once I came to New Zealand, after a while, I started changing my way to see things.
"I just started to enjoy more healthy foods straight from the garden."
A friend encouraged him to do an NZQA qualification in organic horticulture in Tauranga, and the 38-year-old soon became the proud lessee of 0.4ha of "permaculture inspired" land, where he commercially grows 50 varieties of vegetables, from chillis to rainbow chard, gherkins, radicchio and scallopinis, and specialises in salad mix and microgreens.
He is fully certified organic with Organic Farm New Zealand (OFNZ) and big on promoting nature-friendly farming systems and practices that are energy-efficient, climate-friendly, and oriented towards the conservation of the environment and sustainable farming.
All planting, cultivating and harvesting is done with hand tools, as opposed to big machinery, so that his soil is disturbed as little as possible.
He works six days a week. Five days on the farm and then Saturday at the Tauranga Farmers Market. On Sunday, he rests while an employee takes care of the ReDefined Farmers Market in Pāpāmoa.
He also sells his produce online and to local businesses.
"It's super-hard work. You've got to be loving what you do because, after the physical work, I still need to think about the business side of it."
He came to New Zealand in 2008 to study English, having already gained a four-year degree in animal science, and loved it so much he stayed, spending five years in Queenstown before coming to Tauranga where he lives with his partner and their son.
A seasoned traveller and follower of overseas market gardeners on the internet, he is always learning.
"I'm getting the knowledge wherever I can," adding that climate change is altering productivity for all growers.
"Definitely things have changed in the five years I've been here. Few good things and a few bad things as well. I'm able to expand the planting of a few crops nowadays, but there are a few years we go a little bit drier, so there is a little bit of change but we try to adapt as much as possible.
"I like to grow good organic food, look after and build community, and make it sustainable for the people who live here."
Tony Cato of Pirongia Mountain Vegetables
Former commercial builder Tony Cato sells more than a third of his produce at the Tauranga Farmers Market every Saturday.
Cauliflower, broccoli, three types of cabbage, cos lettuce, potatoes, pumpkins, and garlic.
He says most customers are clued up on food growing processes but for those who aren't, the markets are a good opportunity to educate shoppers on seasonal changes and why prices and quantity of produce can fluctuate.
Pirongia Mountain Vegetables, formerly Cato's Potatoes and Garlic, is chemical spray-free, and they make their own compost, as well as use biological products to feed their soil and plants.
Cato's family have been in the growing business for 40 years, and he took over the enterprise six years ago selling online via their website, at markets, and to businesses.
They started growing cut flowers commercially in 1986 as part of their sheep and beef cattle farm at Te Kuiti in the King Country, then in 1988 moved to the Waikato and continued their business of growing and exporting cut flowers across the globe.
Cato says the satisfaction he gets from being a market gardener is growing and nurturing something from a seed to a transplant, and then being able to offer that nutritional vegetable directly to your table.
"It's a good feeling, especially when people come up to you the next week [at the market] and say: 'That was just awesome', or 'just beautiful, thank you'."
"And you know you're giving them something pretty healthy at the same time."
