For 35 years the Koanga Institute has been collecting and cultivating heritage food plants and saving the seeds from them to sell to anyone who is looking for an alternative to mass produced seeds. A heritage seed is one that has never been grown in the industrial system. It is a seed that has been passed on down for several generations in a particular geographical area. The people at Koanga believe that these seeds, when grown in strong healthy soil, produce nutrient dense food that provides all the nourishment needed for healthy bodies. In contrast to this, industrial seeds are selected for things such as long shelf life, tough skins for shipping and high production per acre rather than nutrition per acre.
I recently visited Koanga’s gardens near Wairoa and was amazed by the scale of the operation and the energy of the people working there. They have about 50 hectares of land and most of this is planted for seed production. An old house serves as the headquarters where the seeds are sorted, stored and put into packs to be sent out around the country.
The team is led by Kay Baxter who has dedicated her life to exploring and researching ways of improving people’s lives through regenerative gardening. She runs educational courses where students can learn about soil improvement, seed saving and sound gardening principles through active participation. I was there for just one day but learnt so much that my head was spinning.
During the day we helped to extract seed from dried plants by vigorously stomping on them, then collecting the seeds that fell out and passing these through different sized sieves. The largest seeds were kept as ‘mother seeds’ for replanting, the smallest were discarded and the remainder saved for packaging for sale.
We learnt how to make good compost using carbon crops grown in the winter. This, together with ramial wood chip made from coppiced trees, produces all the minerals needed for healthy, nutritious plants. No fertiliser is brought in from outside the site. For lunch we ate delicious soups and bread, all created from the plants grown at Koanga.
It was an inspiring day and I returned home with lots of new ideas on how to make a more regenerative garden that will produce highly nutritious food for us. If you want to know more go to their website www.koanga.org.nz
(Currently there is not a huge amount of information how it the Koanga Institute has fared during the flooding)
