Get Growin' your own food

Papamoa Community Garden on Hartford Ave. L-R Bill Purdie, Ngaire Pene, Lily Tworogal, Dave Hursthouse. Photo/George Novak

Not everyone has green fingers, but that doesn't mean they can't learn to grow some of their own food.

Papamoa Support Centre is about to start a course that will offer an insight into organically growing your own food.

The Get Growin' course will run for the third time, led by Dave Hursthouse, Lily Tworogal and Chris Anderson, starting on March 10.

Dave says one of the reasons for running the course is to give people the knowledge to be able to help out at The Rock Community Garden in Papamoa, just down the road from the support centre.

"One of the biggest obstacles to people being involved in the community garden is not knowing anything about growing food, so part of the reason is to get people more educated in terms of the community garden and get people involved," he says.

"But the biggest reason is to teach people to grow food for their own self-reliance and self sufficiency."

There are also economic and sustainable reasons, with food prices increasing.

"Food production in general is pretty destructive, so we are also teaching ways that are less destructive."

The course will cover subjects such as soil - an important topic in the sandy Papamoa area - pests and disease, composting and worm farms, harvesting, cooking and preserving and crop rotation.

Dave and Lily studied organic horticulture and the community garden is an organic garden, so the course is based on organic principles.

"It's very much a basics course. Pretty much everyone who has come has a vege garden that's not working or doesn't have a vege garden at all, but at the end, everyone feels they can get some stuff grown in the garden and they are going to be successful."

Course time is divided equally between theory in the classroom and practice in the community garden.

"We make compost and get our hands dirty and we make it a lot of fun," Dave says.

* The course cost is $16. To find out more call the Papamoa Support Centre on 574 7170. The course will be run each Thursday for six weeks between 10am and 1pm.