Prize veges

BY BLAIR ENSOR

Marlborough's young green-fingered garden guru Joshua Marshall is setting up a website to showcase some of his award winning tips.

Joshua hopes to encourage other children to get into gardening and the website will teach people what to plant, when to plant it and how best to take care of veges once they are in the ground.

He also hopes to get gardening started in schools.

Earlier this week the eight-year-old was announced as a runner-up in the NZ Gardener magazine's 2009 Gardener of the Year competition after winning the regional competition.

He is the youngest regional winner to date.

Joshua, who won $1000 for being named Marlborough's top gardener, was nominated for the national competition for his gardening skills and his generosity.

He gives most of his produce away to elderly neighbours, but he also enjoys snacking on them fresh from the garden.

His garden grows a vast array of produce including silverbeet, celery, carrots, lettuce, beetroot, tomato, broccoli, cauliflower, beans, spinach, corn and zucchini.

He also grows herbs, thyme, chives, parsley, sage and basil.

Josh admits that it was not until his mother, Julia Marshall, told him that "gardening was good" that "for some reason" he began "liking it".

"I like digging holes, planting things, putting pea straw down and watering plants," he says.

"It's important for children to be among nature, for their well being and for nutrition.

"There are no sprays or chemicals in his garden," says Julia.

"I think it's fantastic  the best thing that a child can do."

Josh spends roughly four hours a week in his prized patch and his latest development has been the cultivation of an area for summer crops which will include tomatoes and zucchinis.

He won't plant any vegetables in the garden he does not like eating.

"You need to love your garden so you put more time into it," he says.

In the future Josh hopes to be a landscape architect and his vision is that every public botanical garden has a designer vegetable garden with fresh veges to give away to people.

Some of Josh's tips for beginners:

Start your garden small and build up the vegetables as you learn more.
I start planting seeds in trays and then pot them up.
Water them once a day.
When they (seedlings) are three inches tall I plant them into my garden which has lots of compost in it.
We have compost bins for our scraps.
I put pea straw on my garden to stop the weeds coming through.
I plant the seeds like carrot and beetroot straight into the soil.

- The Marlborough Express