Ranfurly gardeners Gary and Paula West have growing proof that you can create a productive food garden on the barest of land.

When they bought their property, the old Checketts McKay Law building in Pery Street, the backyard was just gravel. Two years later, their three hothouses are teeming with plant life, despite winter frosts, and the remainder of the land is waiting to be planted out to feed the couple and the community.

“This was an old gravel pit,” Gary said. 

“We’ve put in a lot of sheep manure and built it up over two years.”

In summer, a roadside stall at the front of the property is filled with organic vegetables from the garden, and the couple has also started running workshops teaching gardeners at any level how to get the most from the space they have, and adding some food self-sufficiency to their budgets.

The Central App joined a workshop on growing your own seedlings, but there are others on how to build a garden from scratch, creating a no-dig kitchen garden, making organic fertilisers and nutrient-rich teas, pest control, and building up good soil with compost and worm farming.

After making their own potting mix, workshop participants planted sunflowers, kale and bok choy to raise seedlings for their own gardens.

Gary said gardening does not need to be expensive, and saving seed and propagating your own seedlings has multiple advantages. Not only does it save money in seeds and seedlings, but the seeds acclimatise to their environment, making them suitable for where they are planted.

“While it is seasonal growing here, growing your own from seed means they are acclimatised and you get a better result. It makes each season affordable.”

It also means that losing a seedling isn’t the big deal it might be if you have bought a punnet of seedlings from a store, he added.

They don’t expect everyone to have a garden of their size, but said every bit helps, financially and in health terms. That entailed recycling such things as cardboard boxes and coffee grounds from a local cafe, and putting food waste back into the garden either as compost or through worm farms.

One simple solution Gary found for keeping the tunnel houses warm despite Central Otago’s winters was to light a candle in a terracotta pot, with a smaller pot supported upside down over the flame. The terracotta held the heat from the flame and was enough to keep the temperature up in the entire space.

“You don’t have to go and pay exorbitant money,” Gary said. “You can make a garden more cost-effective.

“You don’t have to grow everything but you can grow a lot, and you can preserve what you grow. You can live and eat well, no matter where you live.”

Although people pay to attend the classes, Gary said their focus is on spreading knowledge rather than making money, particularly as global weather events threaten food security.

“There is a keenness to embrace these techniques and to learn some new techniques,” he said.

“If you get the message across, and get more people growing, you get a lot of people doing really good things and they are self-sufficient.”

Workshop participant Audrey Southall said she learned that it was possible to grow in Central Otago year round.

“You just start from where you are,” she said.

“It makes me feel more optimistic that I can be more self-sufficient.”