Gardening: Scraps put to work

Awaroa Lodge has a large vege garden and an impressive composting system. Photo / Meg Liptrot

Food waste has a life-giving purpose in Abel Tasman eco-lodge

Over the summer holidays we caught a sea shuttle from Kaiteriteri Beach and spent a week with my family at a holiday house in Awaroa Inlet in the Abel Tasman National Park.

I first walked the 51km Abel Tasman Coast Track as a teenager, laden with a heavy backpack all the way from Totaranui to Anchorage. I have since done the walk from Marahau to Awaroa.

Holiday houses are a rarity in this national park in the Nelson-Tasman region. In summer, visitors have two days to stay at camping sites on the track and have to carry everything with them. So we appreciated this holiday stay even more, having had a tramper's perspective in the past.

It is a welcome sight to come across the cafe at Awaroa Lodge just as your dehydrated dinner supplies start running low. As we were staying in a holiday house this time around, we were pretty well stocked for food, so we resisted dropping in for a meal until we felt the urge for a flat white and a bite to eat on a stormy day.

Awaroa Lodge blends in harmoniously with regenerating native forest, and is surrounded by quiet leafy paths that weave in and out of the forest, leading trampers and day visitors to the next pretty bay and camping spot.

A highlight for me is the large vege garden on site, which supplements the lodge restaurant with fresh veges and herbs.

I had a quick chat with head caretaker Rene Le Cheminant who manages the garden. When we visited, the lodge had just gone through a change in ownership so the gardens were a "work-in-progress".

I was impressed with the large-scale bokashi set-up in the garden, which handles much of the food waste from the cafe and restaurant.

Making bokashi from food leftovers. Photo / Meg Liptrot

Eight large-lidded barrels have been customised into bokashi bins, with broad 32mm ball valve tap outlets. One of the barrels I peeked into had several fish carcasses in it. There were no flies and little smell.

Bokashi is a Japanese word that roughly translates as "fermented organic matter". Bokashi zing is a combination of essential micro-organisms known as EM, which are added to a bran mix. This zing is sprinkled on to kitchen waste.

The scraps break down into a fermented product, which is then fed back into the garden. The addition of fermented bokashi to the garden significantly increases soil and plant health.

Rene says they use the diluted bokashi juice for their crops, as well as compost from their large bins, and other organic goodies. The soil at the lodge is free-draining and sandy, so Rene has the sprinklers going in the evening for an hour or so when it's very dry - water comes from a nearby stream and water use is metered.

The raised beds are mulched with pea straw to help keep the moisture in and to enrich the soil with organic matter as it breaks down. Some of the paths between the garden beds had nitrogen-fixing clover growing as a groundcover; this is great for the bees, which in turn pollinate the gardens for better fruit and vege production.

Awaroa is isolated, and national parks operate on the premise of "what you take in with you, you take out, including all personal rubbish". The lodge is a member of the Nelson-Tasman Sustainable Tourism Charter, and has Earth Check bronze status, which is a worldwide standard for ecotourism. Recyclables are separated and packed into woolpacks, then sent to a recycling depot in Takaka. Glass is crushed on-site for eventual use in concrete products.

Rene says they have new ideas to extend the lodge's open season and to attract visitors during the cooler months. They are also reinstating a solar system, reducing the need to run generators, and hope to put in a larger glasshouse to grow more of their own seedlings and extend the vege-growing period.

Late summer to dos:
• Water the soil around veges and flowering plants with diluted liquid seaweed fertiliser, particularly for fruiting veges such as tomatoes and zucchini. You can also use diluted bokashi juice, wormbin liquid or nitrosol, which will help strengthen plants to produce good fruit and resist fungal issues during hot, moist weather.

• Deadhead flowering annuals and perennials to extend the flowering period.

• Apply mulches such as pea straw or compost after decent rain to give soil micro-organisms and worm numbers a boost, helping to improve soil structure.

• Prune stone-fruit trees on a dry day, once they've finished fruiting. At early morning or evening, spray potassium soap or neem to reduce whitefly numbers and other sucking pests under the leaves of susceptible plants such as citrus.