The brewmaster
Melissa is an expert compost-maker and usually has several piles on the go. She uses ingredients from the garden and supplies from locals, such as spoiled hay a farmer friend was going to burn.
“The kids pick up buckets of horse poo and sometimes we head down to Middleton's Bay at Opunake to get seaweed.”
They pile the compost inside timber and chicken netting frames, which are easy to set up and dismantle.
Another of her specialties is making fertilisers that meet all her plants' needs for nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorus. She mixes a cultured ‘mother brew' using Lactobacillus, a beneficial bacteria found in yoghurt, kimchi, and kombucha. It's diluted and added to liquid fertilisers made of comfrey, seaweed, and a mix of eggshells and bananas. The brews are used every second week.
Melissa says the ‘lacto' stops the fertilisers from becoming smelly. Instead, they develop a sweet smell similar to silage.
“Comfrey tea stinks because it's anaerobic, and I don't think you should be putting stuff that reeks on your vegetable garden. Lacto creates an environment that's hostile to bacteria.”
It also greatly reduces the smell from Melissa's liquid manure brews – made from chicken manure and fish – and is an excellent compost activator.
“We made (a pile) a week ago, and I tipped a bucket of the mother brew over it. It has already sunk to the same level as another one we made weeks ago. That's the only thing I did differently, and it composted beautifully – it was up to 65°C in a few days.”