Articles—
Books
Homegrown Fruit: A Practical Guide
Homegrown Fruit: A Practical Guide by Kath Irvine and Jason Ross is your comprehensive, fruit growing manual.
Kath and Jason take you step-by-step to create a naturally, healthy orchard that thrives with minimal effort. You’ll learn how to choose the right varieties, plan a productive layout, build a living soil, assess tree health, and confidently prune, train and care for your trees year-round. Real-world examples, sample plans and down-to-earth advice provide simple, practical solutions for gardens of every shape, size and climate.
This inspiring, accessible book is perfect for beginners setting up a new orchard, busy people who want homegrown fruit without the fuss and seasoned growers seeking deeper knowledge.
Kath and Jason have more than 25 years of experience designing and managing home orchards in a diversity of environments across Aotearoa. The book's focus is on creating a healthy setup and choosing well suited varieties. From this solid foundation, fruit trees flourish, care is easy, there's a lot less pests and disease and most importantly, growing is fun!
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- Simple, practical, low-cost setup.
- Practical planning skills with sample plans of both urban and lifestyle block orchards in different climates.
- The basics of tree anatomy and the lifecycle of fruit trees so that you can understand your trees.
- A detailed catalogue of deciduous, evergreen and subtropical fruits to help you choose the right varieties to suit your place.
- Helpful measures to support every decision: warmth, hardiness and chilling hours help you choose your fruit trees, fertility measures help you assess soil health, measures to assess tree vigour and health help you work out how to care for your trees.
Format: Paperback Pages: 240 pages Published 2023 ISBN: 9780473441197
Pruning Fruit Trees: A Beginner’s Guide
Calm trees is the overall aim. A less-is-more approach to cutting with a focus on training as well as pruning. This doesn’t mean wild, woolly things that need ladders – compact and productive are our guiding lights. The goal of this guide is to school you in the basics and bring an understanding of the seasonal rhythm of fruit trees. A strong start to your pruning journey!
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You’ll learn
- Pruning goals and a few important tips
- Choosing a shape for your tree
- Training and pruning deciduous fruit trees from just planted to old and neglected
- Tree trickery: cunning ways to get the best out of your trees
- The art of espalier
- How To thin fruit
- How to prune avocados, citrus, feijoas, grapes, figs, currants + berries
Format: Paperback Pages: 75 pages Published October 2025 ISBN: 9780473714338
Companion Planting in New Zealand
Companion Planting in New Zealand by Brenda Little helps you work with nature to get the best from your garden, producing cabbages that 'squeak with health' and beans that 'snap like a gunshot'. Every tip in this pocket-sized book has worked for somebody – why it worked may be a mystery, but the result of a healthy crop is the greatest reward for a gardener and this book shows how it can be achieved.
Entertaining and often anecdotal, Brenda Little's notes are inspired by a wealth of experience and commonsense. Companion Planting in New Zealand offers the reader a gardening system relying completely on observation of the natural ecosystem and a respect for the plants and animals living there, (e.g. how parsley grows well with chives but away from mint and where a light spray of seaweed solution is useful in combating certain pests).
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