Grow your own healthy kai
Grow On Katikati is a fledgling community project under Katikati Taiao and was born out of the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown where some people experienced a small degree of food insecurity.
“We would like to see more and more families growing their own food, eating healthy and thriving in our community, and are encouraging people to get involved in any way they see fitting,” says group spokesperson Jizzy Green.
The group has vegetable seeds and some resources to get people started on the journey and are working alongside SuperGrans who have a garden mentoring project to “buddy up” experienced gardeners with beginners.
The vision is that the project is open to any individual, group, family, social enterprise, organisation or market gardener in and around Katikati.
What would you like to do — sow seeds, grow seedlings, grow food, preserve or process produce, teach others how to garden, make compost or bokashi, share cooking or preserving skills, increase your supply and demand networks or learn how to grow food organically?
Jizzy says this is a learnthrough-action project where the group hopes to encourage local food security by sharing knowledge and produce, supporting local enterprises and paying it forward (grow one, give one back) so that everyone has access to nutritious food in our community.
“Since it is a new project we are still gathering resources and applying for funding for this purpose.”
If anyone has any of the following — compost, seed raising mix, potting soil or an area to store large quantities of any of the aforementioned products, please contact Grow on Katikati.
If you are a retired orchardist with knowledge of pruning and caring for citrus trees, or if you have tech skills and would like to get involved in this community project and design a website linking all growers and skills, they would love to hear from you.
For more information or anyone keen to join the food revolution, email Jizzy Green at growonkatikati@gmail.com