How to Grow a Food Forest in a Temperate Climate | With Jo Duff

What does it take to transform a bare paddock into a thriving food forest?

In this episode of White Strawberries, I’m joined by Jo Duff, co-founder of Kahikatea Farm, who shares the lessons she has learned after more than 20 years developing a three-acre food forest in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Jo and her family started with bare land — no water, driveway, or buildings — and slowly designed a productive ecosystem using permaculture principles, observation, and experimentation. 

We discuss passive irrigation using swales, designing for dry climates, growing plants suited to your conditions, and why Jo would plant more densely if she was starting again.

🌱 What You’ll Discover

•  How a bare paddock became a three-acre food forest 
•  Why observation should come before planting 
•  How swales can capture rainfall and support tree growth 
•  The importance of planting for function: biomass, fertility, food, medicine and habitat 
•  Why food forests are about creating a place to live, not just growing food 
•  Lessons Jo would apply if she started again 

Jo also shares some of the plants that have worked well in her Hawke’s Bay climate, including comfrey, prickly pear, tree lucerne, globe artichokes and other multifunctional plants.

🔗 Resources Mentioned

Kahikatea Farm – Food Forest Nursery, Plants & Education

Kahikatea Farm plants mentioned in this episode:

Peaches
Dwarf Peach

Prickly Pear (Opuntia / Nopales)
Thornless Prickly Pear

Comfrey (biomass plant)
Russian Comfrey

Lemon Sorrel

Globe Artichoke (biomass plant)

Cardoon (biomass plant)

Willows (woody biomass)
Examples include Willow ‘Hiwinui’ and Willow ‘Tangoio’

Tree Lucerne / Tagasaste (biomass and nitrogen fixer)

Alder (nitrogen-fixing tree)
Chinese Alder

Yuccas

Buttercup Bush / Senna

Eucalyptus (support species / biomass)

Explore all Kahikatea Farm plants
Certified Organic Nursery – edible, useful and food forest plants

Join Kahikatea Farm for some onsite education. 

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Support the Podcast – Buy Sam a Cuppa to help keep new episodes coming.

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Ask a Question – Submit a gardening question for a future episode.

Transcript

final - Growing a Food Forest with Jo from Kahikatea Farm

 [00:00:00] 

If you have a climate of around five degrees Celsius in the winter, about 40 degrees Fahrenheit, and summers sit between 20 to 30 degrees Celsius, so 86 Fahrenheit, then listen up. You will get something out of this episode. Today's guest is Jo Duff, co-founder of Kakatea Farm

we talk about the bare paddock she and her family moved on about 20 years ago and she has turned it into a thriving permaculture farm complete with an organic nursery, and get this, a three-acre food forest. In this episode, we explore how to start a food forest, specific plants that can be grown in this temperate forest.

I put notes to them all in the show notes, so no need to go and get a pen and a paper out. You can continue doing your dishes or driving to work or whatever. We talk about passive irrigation using swales, and what Jo would do differently next time.

I learned so much from this conversation, and I think you will too. Here's my chat with Jo Duff.

 What was the property like when you first moved on?

 16 acres and it, was, you know, what we call bare land, of course.

Just your classic mix [00:01:00] of temperate climate grazing grasses really. Most places in the area are, sheep and beef farms or, cropping farms or rotated over the year, either or. and nothing else. So no infrastructure at all, no water, no driveway, no buildings. Nothing, 

 There was actually an easement to our neighbor's, water bore, but we knew that it was quite shallow and we also felt that we never, ever wanted to argue or fall out with our neighbors over the issue of water, and we'd much rather just secure our own source.

Mm-hmm. And the second thing we did was, get ourselves a little caravan, convert that for living and get that up on site and just get to know the place really. that permaculture observation, we, yeah, just didn't do anything else for a year.

 Explain To me the observation. Did you keep a notebook? Did you keep the pictures on your phone? What were you observing? 

Oh, no such thing as phones in those days. With cameras. This is pre-smartphones. So there was no Facebook. Old school. No nothing of that. You know, yeah, old school. And, and of course that mean that a lot of information that's available to people doing this now wasn't [00:02:00] available to us then, so it's a very different ballgame now.

We spent a lot of the time ... I mean, for me, the, the sort of feeling of a place is really important. How does it feel now and how do you want it to feel? So just sitting in spaces, you know, seeing where the sheltered spots were, seeing where the water pooled, seeing where it just felt nice to go and sit with a cup of tea, seeing where the dogs wanted to lie.

 and we had a local permaculture group out, and got them to explore a bit as well and just sort of throw it open to them and say, you know, "Well, if you were moving here, where would you put the house? Where would you, you know, put the veggie garden or whatever." Mm. so that was quite nice.

Get lots of other feedback from other people, especially even though- My husband is from this area originally. He'd been overseas for 20 years, so we, we were sort of starting from scratch in terms of learning the land. even the broader area, not just our own site. 

Right. Mm. Even just- Mm

identifying the weeds and the current natives and the current neighboring trees and that sort of thing. - Yeah, 

that's right. Yeah. 

Yeah. 

Not that there's many of them, but yes. 

[00:03:00] Right. Yeah, well, kikuyu. rye grass maybe. 

Oh, not here. Couch for us. 

Different, same, same but different. Um- Yeah, exactly. Yeah Okay. So then- 

Same problem, different climate ... 

did you know that you wanted to do a forest garden? Like, was that something that was sung to you, or was that a couple of years into doing an- annuals that you started to consider perennials? Like, what was your train of thought around the timeframe?

Yeah. so we originally wanted to do a community-supported agriculture scheme. that's what we'd seen, overseas, and we were keen to sort of, do vegetable, annual vegetable production, cut flowers, honey, whatever, a diverse, range, of products. And, we knew that that was a bit unusual in New Zealand then.

I mean, it still is now even. So we started a little local market to get some trust with people and get them to know us, and we also started supplying annual veggies to our local organic store. and the food forest, when we were in the planning stages of that we were still calling it an orchard.

 so we knew that we didn't just want [00:04:00] a monocrop, or we didn't just want fruit trees. We wanted support species, following our permaculture training. so we wanted nitrogen-fixing species. We wanted, all the different layers, through to ground covers. But we hadn't heard the term food forest at that stage.

 So for those of you listening at home, when we talk about the different layers of a food forest, typically you'll hear seven different kind of categories, um, which are tall trees, or some people will call them canopy trees, and those are right at the top. Small trees, oftentimes the small trees are the ones that we are foraging from. Or are supporting trees. Shrubs, so smaller. Then we've got herby plants, vines growing up those trees or in and around that area. Ground covers, and then root crops. And so it might be a root crop or it might be, a plant that is sending down long tap roots and bringing up minerals like dock, like comfrey.

Uh, and so those are our seven layers.

Again, this is you know, pretty early on. I mean, , it's lovely how it has become so much more mainstream now and, you know, firstly the word [00:05:00] permaculture is now, you know, maybe 10 years or so ago that started being used in gardening magazines and so on with no explanation in brackets afterwards. and food forest has followed on from that.

And I think food forests actually have really helped the permaculture movement because people struggle to understand what permaculture might mean, but food forest is already very visual in your mind, and it's a very inviting concept as well,.

Yes. Yeah. Especially maybe for the Australians and the Kiwis- That's a good- ... because our bush has these layers. , down Australasia, when we think about, a bush or a forest, it's really quite dense.

There's lots of things going on. I specifically like on your website , when you're selling different plants or giving different information, you actually break many of those layers up-

Yes. By layer, but a, more so by functionality. So that's been- Mm ... a, a key point of difference with our nursery, is that we- our plants are, are, are listed by their, by their functionality.

Mm-hmm. 

So they are trees, shrubs, and ground [00:06:00] covers, and vines, and that sort of thing. But more so, what is this plant gonna do for me? So we don't, you know, we're not selling bedding plants by color or anything like that. We're selling a medicinal herb or an, an edible, you know, salad leaf or a perennial vegetable or a dye plant, or whatever.

Mm. So it's what, what is its h- function to humans or, you know, within a system- 

Mm ... 

that humans can use. So it might be stock fodder as well. yeah, definitely- It's so helpful ... point of difference. 

It's so helpful. Uh-huh. Yeah. I was looking on there and I thought I- there's probably 50 plants here I want, Jo.

So I may have to come and volunteer, I think, so I can collect them all. Maybe not here then we can do both 

in that sort of way ... 

yeah. I've got a few different ground covers. But I, I went into your website and it was like ground covers, okay, then nitrogen fixing ground covers, 

and you can actually get an idea of even what's possible in our climate- Yeah ... which is always exciting. I can tell by being on your website that you are looking at plants from a certain perspective of how they fit into the wider ecology. Yeah, sure. Which you [00:07:00] very rarely get on nursery pages

yeah. 

Yep. We- Relaunched our website last year with a, a new format where we actually ... There was so much information on each plant that I needed to break it down. So now it's, it's much easier to see on the page. Instead of being a long essay, you can see, you know, the cultivation required for the plant, and you can see any medicinal uses, and you can see all the other uses of that plant.

And we've also introduced a little box on there that has a comment either by myself, which is mainly the ones that are related to food forest plants, or by Patricia, who is our, herbalist who works in the nursery, or by Herbie, who is my dog. so Herbie's- ... in charge of commenting on all the plants that relate to animals.

 so he might tell you that, you know, his horsey friends, you know, enjoy some alder branches, Aha ... you know, to have a munch on now and then. and Patricia will tell you that, you know, certain medicinal plants have these effects, and we have to be a little bit careful obviously because, you know, you, you don't, haven't got somebody's diagnosis or [00:08:00] anything, so.

But, but generic information. and then, you know, my comments might be how things have performed in the food forest for us and, and, we'll often relate that to Hawke's Bay as well. So I'll say, you know, "Actually, it's a little bit on the dry side for this thing where we are, but if you've got a slightly higher rainfall than Hawke's Bay," which is most places- Mm

"it's gonna thrive for you." Mm. Or vice versa. 

Or even just- Yeah ... to know that it's gonna be a little bit more fussy. It might need to be watered. It's not gonna- Yeah ... just fit right- 

Yeah ... 

easily into the microclimate. 

Exactly. 

And I would say- Yeah ... probably most people, dare I say, are sort of pushing their climate limits because it becomes- Absolutely.

Yeah ... quite exciting, doesn't it, to, um- Yeah ... to sort of push your own microclimate and see what else you can do , with minimal input. And we do wanna continue to think about minimal input, but hey, if we've gotta water a plant every so often but we get, bananas or whatever the, the thing is- Yeah

sometimes it's a bit 

more- Oh, for sure ... worth it. Who, who doesn't wanna grow bananas? I mean- 

No. I saw that you had prickly pears- 

And what's interesting- ... on your website. Mm-hmm. 

Yeah, that's 

right. [00:09:00] Yeah. Yeah. We're, we've started planting those out on the farm quite a bit as well to see what their tolerances are, you know, to get more first-hand information.

 they're just so useful. one of the main functions that I want them for, apart from their edibility, is as, is a fire break. so in Hawke's Bay, you know, and the east coast of the South Island as well, obviously s- fire is a huge risk, especially, you know, if weather forecast for the year ahead, is for hot and dry.

And yeah, certain, having fire breaks, which can consist of planting or open spaces or a pond or a driveway or whatever situated across your, across your property, I think is a very important thing to think about. lots of native species are low flammability, and there are some good lists you can get online.

anything with fleshy leaves, yuccas, and the opuntia, the prickly pears, Mm ... absolutely. 

so- Yeah. I was, I was i- interested to see those. I saw them all through, Italy last year when I did some WOOFing there. Mm-hmm. 

Mm-hmm. And I was 

like, "What are these things?" Yeah. [00:10:00] And it sort of tastes a little bit like, a dragon fruit maybe.

Is that how you would describe the fruit? 

I haven't tried a dragon fruit, but they- they, the fruit is definitely very tasty. Yeah, once you've negotiated the, the prickles on the outside. Yeah. Yeah. If you're v- very careful how you peel off the skin, then- Yeah ... yeah, they're actually really, yeah, a really rich flavored fruit inside.

Really nice. but the, the pads, the n- nopales are also edible. So you know, in, in Central, America they're used extensively- 

Mm ... 

in all sorts of ways, and they're highly medicinal as well. So it's, I mean, it's fabulous multifunctional plant and perfect, perfect permaculture plant. 

Absolutely. 

It can be weedy in some areas, but then so can lots of things.

 So can lots of things. It's finding that balance between in permaculture we do wanna grow things that grow easily and grow well. Yeah. And those are often the ones that will naturalize. What are the goals in your food forest?

 The initial goals were, Not to see how much food we could produce, which might be surprising. But what I really wanted to know is how much I could produce without [00:11:00] irrigation, so what will grow without irrigation. You know, you see apples at the side of the road, peaches at the side of the road, plums popping up everywhere that, clearly thrive without any irrigation.

 and then we see Hawksbay full of orchards that, get the taps switched on all the time. so I was like, hang on a minute, if these trees don't need that much water, why are all the orchards irrigating them? And, and, you know, where's the sweet spot sort of thing. 

Mm-hmm. 

One thing we did do early on was put in swales.

So a swale is a, a ditch on contour. and we had the initial ones done with a, with a digger. So they scrape off the top, topsoil, set it aside, scrape off the subsoil to create the ditch, and then put all the topsoil on the downhill side, and that's where you plant your trees. And actually, that's worked really well for us.

Doesn't work well for everybody. depends on your soil. It depends on your slope. So I, I always say to people, like when we're doing tours and things, it's like, "Don't go home and say Jo said do this." I don't ever [00:12:00] say do this, you know, because everything is about context. But for us, what we've found it's done is twofold.

What, what tends to happen is we have very, very long dry periods and they are broken by a very heavy rainfall. And when your ground is hard and dry, the rain just runs off if you're on a slope, right? Whereas for us, that is captured in that ditch on contour and it soaks in, slowly into the hillsides.

That's called passive irrigation. So the berms are planted up with the trees, and there's a, a catchment on contour and then that will fill up, and over the course of a few days it'll just seep back into the soil. so that's great for capturing those first rains in the, you know, often in the autumn. but the other thing that we found, which I hadn't read about in any book or anything, is that because we're on clay soil, they lift the tree roots out of the claggy wet soil- Mm

in the winter- Uh-huh ... that's, you know, cold. We've got a hard pan as well, so it really is claggy and, and wet in the, in the winter, [00:13:00] and cold. but they're slightly lifted out of that, and so, yeah, the trees just absolutely thrive on, on that swale bank, so it's great, yeah. And you, you 

c- 

Without any irrigation from me.

Yeah. 

Without any irrigation from you, which is phenomenal. And when you get the high- Yeah ... I, I, I'm assuming when you get the high rainfall you can actually see the water kind of traveling down this swale on contour. 

It's, it's on contour so it s- it seeps in, so what you're seeing is it filling up, yeah, and then you'll see it can be full, and it will be full for three or four days, and then it slowly- 

Okay, so you don't have a zig-zag swale coming down.

You've just got kind of lines? No. 

No, because that would... Uh, i- if you do do that, you have to be extremely careful 'cause you can create a lot of erosion and landslides and all sorts of things because you're pushing the water downhill, but... So if you're channeling water off because you've got too much of it, you have to be extremely careful to get those, engineering works right, basically.

Okay. How big are your swales? How big are they? How wide, how deep? 

 they, the longest ones are about [00:14:00] 150 meters long, which is not quite the width of the property in some areas. and they are- Maybe, I actually can't even remember, a foot and a half deep, two feet deep some of them. They vary.

They're different because it depend, a- again, context. so yeah, different places. We've got one very big one, which holds a lot of water a lot of the time and, you know, that can be full for years. Wow ... and now it's been empty for a couple of years because we've been very dry. Wow. All our ponds, swales are empty at the moment.

Yeah. 

Mm. It's a shame. It's, it's not nice- Mm ... when you see the little, frog babies at the bottom too. 

No. 

Which I've 

seen But the, but the- It's super nice when it rains for them ... when we get some rains w- we've, there is, there is a little bit of water sitting. We had 130 mils which sort of broke- Mm ... the, the last run of dry weather.

Mm. 

So yeah, all in, you know, in 24 hours. Mm. That's absolute classic stuff. 

Mm. 

So I've been thinking how different your swale is to mine and maybe I would need to call mine something [00:15:00] else. mine would be a couple of s- ch- ch- ch- ch- ch- 50 centimeters high and maybe 50 centimeters max low. 

Yeah. 

 so is that- Yeah, it's, it's all, 

it's all context

a f- f- 

Yeah. 

Yeah. And, and so I've only got a very gentle slope through my food forest, my wannabe food forest. At the moment it's hard to know whether or not to call it an orchard or a food forest. I don't have the eight layers yet, but I'm trying. Yeah. And, and, and I just filled it with mulch and it, and I do see out the end water coming through. but definitely a couple, couple of things that you said. Firstly, yeah, don't go home and say, "Jo told me to do this." 

Yeah. 

That makes me because you just can't copy and paste these ideas. You really have to observe- Absolutely not ... and see what works. 

No, no. 

And also the other idea of, yeah, I mean, if you're putting quite significant swales in you do need to be careful about erosion.

I could imagine a slip happening. 

Yeah. 

Yeah. 

Yeah. Totally. 

Okay. So coming back to the forest goals. So mainly you're wanting to create an ecosystem that was quite low input. You weren't necessarily wanting the highest output possible, but you were just more focusing on h- what sort of ecosystem you could set up on your property.

Would that be right? [00:16:00] 

Yeah, so, so what can you produce with no additional, irrigation. Mm. We pretty much know that now. And for example, citrus, I have learned over time that, that, that does need irrigation, and I'm not gonna get any citrus fruit unless I irrigate, so now we do. Right. So that's okay.

So we're talking about a paddock that's two and a half, three acres here. I, I wanted to create a space that can be lived in. You know, I wanted to be in that forest. I don't want to- I'm not going out to an orchard to pick an apple and, you know, that's it, I'm done.

Or do my pruning in winter and then I'm done, or whatever. I want it to be a place that, I want to live in almost. I want to be a forest dweller. and whilst our house isn't in there, we have, in fact built a little earth hut, our little whare iti, in there. which, it was built from, from the clay from where we dug out a pond.

 and I do spend some summer nights out there. it's a very beautiful space. and after that we built a little, kind of kitchen bar out there. And we've had lots of groups, campfires and, [00:17:00] school groups. Our local organic store had their Christmas party out there, end of term parties for the kids- Mm

and families when they were little. triathlon, all sorts of random little events. And, yeah, it has-- I mean, again, we're, we're nowhere near finished. but it has become a really nice space to be. One of my daughters', teenage daughters does yoga out there now.

Mm-hmm. And so yeah, it's ... That, that for me is like recreating, um, uh, uh, some kind of landscape, that you just want to be part of, um, rather than bare rolling hills. Um, which people often say, "Oh, the view's beautiful," but, actually I'm, I just wanna cast my eyes down and look at my own trees. I don't wanna look at the bare hills be- beyond it, you know?

Mm-hmm. 

Yeah, so it's a- about creating a sense of place as much as anything. And then the food that you get out of it is, just a bonus really. 

What a privilege, 

we're acutely aware 

and ex- extremely grateful to be [00:18:00] doing what we're doing- 

if someone's thinking about starting a food forest, where should they start and what sort of plants should they start with?

And then secondly, could you say a little bit more around just what kind of seeds or kind of propagation should they use?

In, in general, what sort of plants should we be looking for? 

So one of the key things you need to do if you're setting up a food forest or an annual garden or anything, is to maximize your photosynthesis, and that means having as many plant leaves, little solar panels, as possible.

So not being scared to plant densely, and not being scared to, plant things that are purely sacrificial, in order to cut them, for two reasons. One, to provide biomass, from the top. So you're chopping and dropping, basically. That's quite a common permaculture concept. When you're chopping that material, chopping it up small, laying it on the ground, it's acting as mulch, protecting the soil from erosion and that sort of thing, and keeping the soil cool, and breaking down over time in the same way that you would add [00:19:00] compost.

But what we now know is that that only helps to build 20% of the soil. 80% of the soil is built through, the photosynthetic, pathway. So when plants photosynthesize they are, feeding out the carbon to the soil microorganisms, who are then going to forage, if you like, for the nutrients that the plants lead, need.

And it's a super complex, soil food web. Lots going on under there. So in the past we've focused on soil, the , physical properties of soil, soil chemistry, and then it's only really since maybe the 1980s that people have looked a lot more at soil biology and re- in the last five years there's been a huge leap in, knowledge, probably still the tip of the iceberg, but in knowledge of how soil is built and how plants function.

So every time we make those pruning cuts on plants, so we're not just talking about your fruit trees or whatever, but you know, [00:20:00] cutting anything, the plant roots are sending out a signal, to ask the microorganisms to help them grow back again. And if you cut everything in the system in one go, you get this massive growth pulse happening, which leads to a sort of a positive f- feedback loop in your system.

Now, of course you don't always want to cut your target plants, so if you over plant, with lots of sacrificial plants, or things that can stand being regularly pruned, then you can a couple of times a year or more go through and give your system this massive growth pulse. so we are starting to view plants in terms of those functions a lot more than we did before.

 and we're starting to think about them in, their growth form, so what we would call soft biomass. So we've got plants like comfrey. lemon sorrel is a good one for us. I mean, even dock, which is a, [00:21:00] a weed, which is related to sorrel. It's got a lovely big taproot. Actually quite useful. Chicory, and all of these plants.

Again, they're either edible, they're medicinal, they've all got other functions, that are useful for us. Globe artichokes and cardoons have lovely massive soft leaves to cut. and then you get into your more woody things, like, willows, and poplars. some people are using eucalyptus, so it depends on your climate 

and also what, how, how much pruning and what tools you want to use and how high you want to go and that sort of thing. Mm-hmm. Again, very contextual. Mm-hmm. tree lucerne, and we're finding the buttercup bush, or senna, is a great one for us as well. They're shrubby trees, but they're providing quite soft biomass and it's very easy to cut just with a pair, pair of secateurs or something.

 of course at Auckland, Northland, Bay of Plenty, whatever, where you're a bit more subtropical, Westland, you can grow a lot more big, you know, like banana leaves and that sort of thing. Mm-hmm. As people are going in there with machetes, where we're going through with secateurs [00:22:00] and loppers and things.

Mm-hmm. It's a very different, style. A little bit jealous, but that's all right. We'll work with what we've got. But yeah, planning your- Mm-hmm ... your food forest, you wanna plan to have a whole load of excess plants that you're gonna prune. 

Mm-hmm. 

 you're gonna make sure that your target plants, whether it's an apple tree or a banana or whatever it is, have got the, their perfect light requirements, and you're gonna prune everything around to keep full production.

so we're, yeah, experimenting with different layouts, using, different... some plants just as edging for beds, like evergreen comfrey has been a great one for us and we can get about four cuts a year out of that. Lime balm and lemon balm, Mm-hmm ... great soft material, really easy just to go along with a, a little niwashi shark and cut, handfuls of that and just lay it down on- Mm-hmm

 When we first started, a lot of sort of the food forest commentators had said, "Oh, make sure you don't, you know, plant your trees too close." 

Mm. 

But we planted Our productive trees nice and [00:23:00] widely spaced, and we had our nitrogen-fixing trees in, in between.

 but then, yeah, years and years later, looking at syntropic agroforestry and going, "Right, all of that was a big empty space, especially in the early years, with no photosynthesis." 

Yeah. 

Like, if we'd packed that full of layers of plants and, and managed it- we could have really boosted the- 

Mm

the, the soil health, and the productivity of the whole system. You, you'd increase the water holding capacity of the soil. so even if, you know, we're not irrigating, but if you were, you would be able to reduce your irrigation requirements over time. 

So it's huge. It's a whole new way of thinking about- Mm

designing systems and, have lots of ideas for my own site. I would- but I'm certainly not an expert in, in syntropic agroforestry. Mm. And, and timing for us is also difficult because a lot of that big pruning should be done in the spring, and running a nursery, I'm a little bit tied up in the spring.

So- 

 We do miss the boat on that one. So I've- we're very [00:24:00] conscious of the sort of syntropic ideas, but I won't say that we're always able to- 

Mm ... 

enact them as much as we'd like to. 

Yeah. When you do learn, you know, about permaculture and syn- and syntropic agroforestry there's a few terms that float around, and I always find it doesn't matter what it is, I learn something. Mm-hmm. A new perspective on something. And so then your food forest comes to resemble you because you're part 

of it. 

I liked that you had evergreen comfrey as... Do you have it as an annual bed border? we have got it in some of our vegetable garden- 

Yeah ... 

annual beds, yes. Yeah. because it's a very good, border for keeping out couch.

Yes. 

 And because it's evergreen, you've s- you've got it all, all year round- Yes ... obviously, and so you've still got something photosynthesizing through the winter, which is great. and also it doesn't get knocked. So Russian comfrey is great, but if you knock a piece of comfrey root, you get a new plant.

Yeah. 

 it [00:25:00] doesn't spread by seed, but it does spread by the roots. Mm. So when it's dormant, especially like somewhere like here where we do have a lot of volunteers and waffers and so on, people don't know what they're doing. It would be very easy, to forget that that's there and just to dig and knock a piece of root.

 And then before you knew it, you would have a whole bed of, of comfrey Yes ... and no room for annuals. So the evergreen- Is much better because you can see it the whole time. I'm talking about, grandiflorum, which is the one that we sell 

 I have annual garden beds that are slowly turning into perennial garden beds because I just, my patience for annuals is growing lower and lower I have the odd Russian comfrey in my- Yeah ... annual garden beds now, and I'm like, okay, this is... You can stay. And I mean, and it plays a role in all the things, but I am definitely a lot more mindful now of when I am- 

Mm ... 

cutting around them. But I'm am thinking the evergreen also, because it has the leaves, would actually stop some of the kikuyu coming through into that, into that bed.

 so- Yeah. 

I mean, I think it's the root, the root systems of the comfrey that stop the running grasses. We- that's what we find with the couch- Mm ... rather than the [00:26:00] tops, 'cause the evergreen's very low. 

Mm ... 

but it, it definitely, a double row of either type of comfrey will definitely slow down your running grasses- Yes

either kikuyu or couch. Yeah, it does a very good job. 

Plus you've got the biomass to cut. And the evergreen comfrey is, you know, there all winter, and it's already flowering before the leaves of the Russian comfrey are even coming back in spring. So it's, it's just lovely to have. It's a great plant.

 I can see that. 

What would you do differently now? If you were to, go back and talk to a, a younger Jo that's just moved- Mm ... onto the property, what would, what would you do differently?

 I think we would, well, two things. Def- we'll definitely plant more. We, we, you know, we know that now. Pack the plants out- 

Mm-hmm ... 

more. I would also try and concentrate on a smaller area. We did spread ourselves too thin. and I continue to do that 'cause I do love a new project.

I 

think maybe all gardeners- 

do that a little bit. 

Yeah. but also that, part of that is because we put in the swales. Now as soon as you put in a 150-meter-long- [00:27:00] 

Mm-hmm ... 

swale, you've got 150 meters of edge to manage. Mm-hmm. And edges are all the most productive places, what we should have done is, gra- had someone in to graze more of the land, ongoing and to not try and sort of spread myself out into those areas until a bit later on. We did have a neighbor graze very early on, but then for a long time, you know, we just had a lot of rank grass that I kept thinking, "Oh, I'll, I'll get there soon.

I'll get there soon," you know. and sort of thinking also along the permaculture lines of, you know, there's no point in doing the work if, if you've only got to do it again, so I won't bother cutting that grass. It can just stay there until I'm ready to, get to that spot. But again, from syntropics what we know now, that's, it's just going in a downward spiral.

 that's entropy, and we want syntropy. We want photosynthesis. We want growth. We want that pumping the system. And if you graze regeneratively, then that is also what you're creating. So we would've done a much better job had we got someone to graze it for [00:28:00] us 

we were advised not to let tree lucerne get too big and, and leggy, but we did because it was the only trees that we had. Mm. You know, and when it's 36 degrees and the paddocks and everything you can see around you is brown- 

Yeah ... 

and crusty, if you've got these blooming trees and that's your only bit of shade that you can sit under- 

Mm.

Mm ... 

 You don't wanna go and keep cutting them. So, so we didn't. And then of course, the time has come now and, you know, they're slowly dying off and they're quite hard to deal with. 

Right. 

 Just in terms of cutting them up and stuff. Yeah ... so yeah, we've got a bit of work to do with, with those.

I can't say I would've done it differently because I probably wouldn't. 

Before we wrap up, is there anything else that you wanted to add? Is there anything that you're thinking, yeah, you'd like to say that's been itching on your mind that you haven't had a chance to? Um, oh, well, I mean, I did mention that I spread myself too thinly and always love a, a good project, so I could talk about all the lovely, good, new projects that we [00:29:00] Yep

got on. Um, one, yeah, two things that are quite exciting. One is, um, a retrofit of our olive block, which was, um, some olive trees that were kindly planted by a friend of ours when I was pregnant and I think Aaron had hurt his knee or something. And, um, um, we pretty much never got back there ever again, you know?

So they were completely overgrown with grass. And, um, we're going row by row and giving them the syntropic treatment, and that's actually- Mm ... yeah, pretty exciting, um, to see what that brings, and hoping to maybe run some workshops around that as well. Um, and, the other is a medicinal herb garden, which I've been talking about for years.

And Patricia, um, our herbalist, give me , a proverbial kick up the ass, behind- ... um, to say, "Right, we really need to get this happening." Um, couple of years ago we'd had an intern, um, who was studying medicinal herbs and, , [00:30:00] she did a lot of work with us, and we had a, made a really good plan actually, and even started on the ground, mapping out some beds, making some compost heaps in situ, sort of ready to kickstart new planting.

 We are determined this year to start that and to try and open it up as some kind of, um, community activity or club or something. So the grand plan is that we have, it's, um, the area's probably at least half an acre. We have beds that are guilds of plants, um, by the part of the body that they have the action on.

So we'll have a, a, a tree and, you know, then your shrub and ground cover layers, um, which are for heart medicine, some that are, for your kidneys. We'll have women's herbs- Mm ... and that sort of thing. One for skin, which goes along the edge of it. It interfaces with our nursery, so where we've got, fruiting medicinal plants [00:31:00] we've got them overhanging the area of the nursery where we keep the chickens and the ducks that we use integrated in our nursery so that they'll be getting the fruit dropping in there.

So there's a lot of permaculture designs. There's a lot of thought that's been gone into it already. Mm, mm. We just haven't been able to enact it on the ground yet. Um, but we're hoping that we can sort of rally some people together to do that over time and, um- In the course of that, then Patricia will be able to share her knowledge on the plants themselves, so people will be, be able to, uh, you know, learn, learn about- Mm

the actions of the plants and then take some plants home in exchange, um, for their mahi. Um- Mm. Sharing our plants is, is so easy to do and it's such a lovely human experience.

 And then you know the whakapapa of the plant. You've learnt it. Yeah. You've seen it in the soil. a picture's worth a thousand words. What ... You know, a video's worth, I don't know, a million, and then actually being there in real life is worth, I don't know- Yeah

a billion, right? Yeah. Um, so if someone wants to follow your journey, if they want to- Yeah ... buy plants from you, which highly recommend everyone checks out your website. It's, it's [00:32:00] definitely, , very well put together for someone that is specifically is wanting to do a food forest, but also if someone wants to search by medicinal or by different ways in which the plant can be useful.

 Where can they find you? Yeah. Yeah. So the website is, kahikateafarm.co.nz. Mm. And as you say, that has got a shop on it, by category. So yes, you can go into medicinal herbs. And then you can drill down into different types of medicinal herbs if you want. So we've got a, a section on Japanese and Korean herbs.

We've got Rongoā herbs. Ayurvedic herbs. That ... So you can go in and find out more about them. So you can order through that. Um, it's an online nursery only. We're not open at the site, except for on special occasions. then also on the website there's an education page, so that says what, um, what courses we've got coming up, and workshops. Um, I have slowed down on those a little bit, um, over the last couple of years. Um, and we'll be picking that up again soon-ish. Um, [00:33:00] but um, mostly with tours to start with probably. There's also a page on, about volunteering, so it just describes different ways people can get, for different lengths of time and different outcomes, and what we offer in exchange for that because it's very important to us that it's, , a two-way street.

We've had people here for four years, and we've had- Wow ... um, local people who come, you know, one day a week, um, and all sorts of variations in between. . Fabulous. Okay. So that's kahikatea farm.co.nz. I will put a link to that in the show notes, and I'll also link to some other things that we've talked about, the specific plants that we've mentioned, and direct links to where they can find that on your website as well. Thank you so much for talking to me. It's been such a pleasure. Awesome. Thank you for having me on. 

 If you've been following White Strawberries for a while and you rate us, can you please also do this on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, wherever you get your podcasts?

That really helps us. Thank you. The other thing is, if you've got a question for me to answer in the podcast, I would love to hear it. If you jump on [00:34:00] whitestrawberriespodcast.com, you can see there's a few ways of sending your questions, and you can write me in a question. You can send me in a verbal question, and I would love to either play them or put them onto the podcast and answer them for you.

So if you've got a burning question, even if you've got a low-key question just on your mind, please send it to me. That would be so cool. I do love hearing from real people. Until then, may your gardens be abundant and your strawberries white.