Joyful Little Leaves

It can be hugely satisfying growing your own tasty vegetables at home, from the humble potato to culinary herbs, you can grow a lot in a small area. But what happens when you supersize the home garden and use bio-intensive growing techniques originally developed by Parisian market gardeners to produce lots of nutritious and delicious produce to create a business? The result is a small- scale contemporary market garden business called Joyful Little Leaves that has grown almost as fast as the crops they grow.

Trish Drummond and Carlton Richards have taken their skills and turned a relatively small piece of land into a highly productive organic market garden that is hand tended, intensively planted, and ecologically focused producing a variety of healthy leafy salad greens from the special piece of land they have in Lower Moutere.

With perfectly tended rows of permanent garden beds that measure 75cm wide and 15 meters long Trish and Carlton grow a range of organic produce like seasonal lettuce leaves, mesclun salad blends, Asian greens, rocket, spinach, kale, culinary herbs, edible flowers, and microgreens that are packed with flavor, nutritional value and are proving incredibly popular with their customers.

What exactly is bio-intensive growing? Trish says it’s about building deep aerated living soil teeming with organic matter and living organisms to foster a high production of healthy crops on a small area. “Through methods like cover cropping, crop rotation, minimal till, composting, mulching compost teas and creating beneficial insect habitats (and many more) every decision we make has the health of the soil in mind. We never use chemical pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, or synthetic fertilizers and hold high standards using natural organic methods for growing robust crops to ward off pests and disease.”

Even though she comes from a family with deep roots in the horticulture sector they are constantly learning and seeking new ways to become more efficient with their systems on the farm. “Our garden beds are all standardized to be compatible with specialized small scale market garden tools which have been developed over the years by others experienced in this field. Clever tools like the Jang direct seeder, Paperpot transplanter and battery drill powered surface tilther enable us to do multiple successions of crops as quickly and efficiently as possible while preserving the health of our soil.

“The organic farming sector is a wonderful group of generous and skilled people who are very open to sharing their knowledge and experience so new growers like us have benefited greatly from their hard-earned wisdom and encouragement.”

This joyful little business started in June 2022 when Carlton and Trish laid down large silage tarps on the area they wanted to turn into productive gardens, leaving them in place for close to 12 months to heat the soil and stop light to inhibit the existing perennial grasses and seeds from growing, which in turn has enabled them much easier weed management. They then erected a large tunnel house which they grow seasonal summer crops in, and which enables them to extend the growing season of their leafy greens over winter then began building their permanent garden beds.

The couple were living in Nelson at the time, owning and running a bathroom design business which they had enjoyed for the last 14 years. “The land at Lower Moutere has been owned by our family for many years, and we lived in the home here for some time before we originally moved to Nelson. Returning to the farm which my brother and I now share our family are thoroughly enjoying living rurally once again as we develop this business and beautiful property.”

Trish is a naturopath and herbalist by trade and both her and Carlton are passionate about the health benefits of nourishing fresh food that is grown organically. They also value the culture of locally produced quality produce and are enjoying now being able to contribute to growing food for their local community.

Carlton has utilized his years of design and building skills to construct a very efficiently designed wash and pack building and chiller room to process and store their fresh produce on site. They harvest early in the morning while the crops are at their best and package their various salad leaves into home compostable packaging and deliver to their customers as soon as possible, very often on the same day.

It’s surprising just how much food you can grow on a relatively small piece of land if you utilize it the way Trish and Carlton do. “We love creating, we love projects and it’s really magical watching plants grow from seed and the market garden coming to life. We have certainly had many long days as we build our infrastructure and business, but we hope to demonstrate, like others in our field, a productive, financially feasible, healthy alternative to current conventional models of food production.”

The other thing I love about this business is the personal side of it, they offer a home delivery service delivering their freshly harvested bags of vibrant salad blends to your door each week on Wednesday and their produce can also be gathered from their stall at the Nelson Saturday Market. Fresh Choice Nelson and Connings, who kindly support local growers, also stock their salad greens.

If you want to find out more about their home delivery service, and the other places you can buy Joyful Little Leaves just chat with Trish at the Saturday market, send her an email or maybe even phone her on 021-449-362. Email info@joyfullittleleaves.co.nz

Published in the Nelson Mail 07.05.2024