After a bumper summer season that saw both first-time and experienced home gardeners producing impressive crops of fresh vegetables, the second season of Wesley Community Action’s Grow Me! initiative is now well underway.

Every two weeks between mid-March and mid-May, Grow Me! members picked up a selection of two to four varieties of strong, healthy, organic vegetable seedlings raised at Wesley House in Cannons Creek (Porirua East) to plant in their home gardens.  

By the end of the autumn/winter planting season members had received at least 15 vegetable varieties to enjoy eating fresh over the next few months. They range from traditional green spinach to more exotic options like golden beetroot and kohlrabi. The cost for the seedlings is $50 per season.

Grow Me! is run by our Mahi Kai team throughTe Hiko, our Centre for Community Innovation. It’s part of Te Hiko’s wider vision to increase access to affordable, healthy, culturally appropriate food in Porirua East. It started as a pilot with 14 people in October 2024 and has now grown to 25 people. 

The purpose of Grow Me! is to work with the local community to develop skills around food production – soil enrichment, composting, seedling production, growing and harvesting nutrient-dense food – and to move towards kai sovereignty.

Grow Me! is led by Mahi Kai worker Gina Wong with a team of local volunteers. They raise seedlings in compost made at Wesley House then transfer them into repurposed six-cell punnets.  

Most of the seedlings are heirloom varieties. They come from a variety of sources including commercial seed growers as well as the heritage seed bank, Kōanga Institute. Gina has also had some success harvesting her own seeds.

They’re raised using biology-first principles – that means no artificial fertilisers, no herbicides and no pesticides.

“It’s all about harnessing the power of nature to grow strong and healthy seedlings,” says Gina.

Every two weeks during the planting season the punnets of seedlings were packed into repurposed paper grocery bags to be picked up at five Wellington Region Fruit & Vege Coops distribution hubs and taken home for planting.

Gina says the hope is that eventually Grow Me! participants will be able to sell their surplus produce through the coop.

“Our goal is to help develop a movement of knowledgeable local leaders who can inspire others and keep resources and wealth in their community with a real focus on kai which is a real need in communities like Porirua East.”