What do you need?

Our Garden Party wants every aspiring veggie grower to succeed. For those who've never grown veggies before, the first thing to know is: it's not super hard! Sure, it's easy to make mistakes too. But you'll find veggie-growing quite a natural thing to do once you get over the fear of getting it wrong. Regardless, support is available, and Our Garden Party offers it in two ways: When you place your first order, check the box that offers a Planting Party. Along with delivering your seedlings and add-ons, we'll send an expert to run your cluster through the steps of getting started. The cost is spread among whoever attends – and booking is essential We'll be building up our online support over time. For now you can chat with us in real time about any of your questions, or visit this section and see if there's already an answer for any question you have. But also know that you can give us a call on 021 255 0593 and we'll either answer on the spot, or figure out how to give you the clarity and confidence you need.

Below is a list of common issues. Email ourgardenpartynz@gmail.com or call 021 255 0593 if you don't see anything useful here! Sun Is your garden getting enough hours of sunlight? Vegetables do best in full sun – eight or more hours per day. If your vegetables aren’t growing to a good size, or aren’t producing as much as you think they should, lack of sun might be the reason. Relocating your garden into a full sun area of your yard that’s the best option. If there’s no suitable sunny spot, you’re best to grow vegetables that need less sunlight. Warm weather vegetables like tomatoes peppers and eggplant prefer as much sun as possible. These might not be the best choice for a partly shady garden. Root vegetables such as carrots and beets, and leafy vegetables such as spinach, salad mix, cilantro, and kale. Soil Does your soil have sufficient nutrients? If you don’t have healthy soil, none of your other gardening efforts will be as fruitful as you deserve. It’s not possible to have a well-performing garden with unhealthy soil. Our Garden Party subscriptions include organic fertiliser because your vegetables will consume a lot of nutrients out of your garden every season. Adding compost is a great practice, but it usually isn’t enough to replace the nutrients that have been depleted. Weather Are weather patterns in your area affecting plant wellbeing? For example, particularly cool or hot night-time temperatures can cause some plants to drop their flowers. If that weather continues around the time these plants are usually flowering and setting fruit you may produce less than expected. If you’ve been having hot and dry weather and haven’t had any rain recently, some of your plants might be stressed. Make sure your plants are getting at least 2cm of water per week – more if you have sandy soil. Mulching your soil is highly recommended because it traps in moisture and helps regulate soil temperatures. Variety Are you growing a variety that suits your conditions? Our Garden Party’s seedling bundles are designed to be optimal for variety, but we’re open to your feedback and mixing things up. We’ve chosen varieties that grow well in New Plymouth, but if you’re not having luck with any particular variety try talking to other cluster members about their results, or to other gardeners in your community to see which vegetable varieties they’re having success with. Water Is your garden too wet? is in a boggy area where the soil stays waterlogged, or if you’re watering too much (as in every day) your veggies are unlikely to thrive. Most vegetable crops like to dry out a bit between waterings, and some vegetables like tomatoes and squash don’t like to be soggy. It’s best to water your vegetables at the root of the plant. Spraying your whole garden with a sprinkler may seem like the best and easiest option, but it can worsen disease issues, for example on squashes and tomatoes. Insects & Disease Are insects or diseases taking their toll? Especially during the summer gardening season, insect and disease pressure is extremely high. If there’s a particular vegetable in your garden that’s not doing well, say all of the cucumbers are wilting or the kale has tons of holes in it, the poor performance could be from an insect or a disease. In order to have a healthy garden you need a wide variety of insects living in and around your garden, so we don’t recommend the use of chemical sprays near your veggies. Chemicals tend to work indiscriminately, killing harmful and beneficial insects – bees, butterflies, dragonflies, and many more. Chemicals are also likely to compromise the health of your soil, not to mention the food chain implications. The best approach is to spend a little time reading about the vegetable plant. Google “cucumber pests” or “cucumber diseases” and learn about the symptoms of disease, which insects attack those plants, what they look like, and what to do about them.

Over time we'll be offering workshops that address common problems and opportunities for veggie growers. It's early days for us, but please drop us a line with any requests you have – workshops aren't free, but our aim is to spread the costs among clusters.

That's totally up to you and the neighbours who wish to join. Our only requirement is that a cluster is close enough together to make this a neighbourly activity. Part of that is because we want to keep costs down by delivering to a single address. Part of it is because we actively encourage social connection as a positive aspect of health and wellbeing. And part of it is because we support the environmental and health benefits of walking over the need to travel a longer distance to participate.

There aren't really any hard and fast rules. Our Garden Party is here to support veggie growing in neighbourhood clusters. It's up to your cluster to decide who to invite and include. We work to provide whatever your cluster needs to make veggie growing easy, successful and rewarding. Members of your cluster who need what we offer will subscribe to our packages and buy whatever add-ons they need. Others in the cluster may already have everything they need, so there's no obligation for them to subscribe.

Our Garden Party is a not-for-profit organisation. Our vision is that neighbours can connect in healthy ways, and veggie growing seems to be a popular, accessible way of doing that – and lots of research we've done confirms this. We work to make sure all of the labour that goes into supplying and supporting Kiwi neighbour is paid for at a fair rate, so we're not a volunteer organisation. And we work to keep our operating expenses as low as possible, to ensure cost isn't a barrier to any Kiwi who wants to enjoy the benefits of gardening as a neighbourly activity. Whatever profits that leaves are put straight back into the operation, in order to increase access and improve our ability to supply and support veggie growing clusters wherever they're wanted.

Our Garden Party isn't opening up any new clusters during the pilot phase, as we want to be confident that our approach is successful. All the feedback we're gathering, and observations we're making, will help us ensure that when we open new clusters, they'll be rewarding for the participants and manageable for our team. What we'd love them to do is to join our waitlist – and we'd be grateful if you'd pass the link on to them: