Home grown
If you’ve always wanted a thriving veggie garden, Bay local Heidi Hughes’ ingenious Veg Babies is a great way to start.
If you’ve always wanted a thriving veggie garden, Bay local Heidi Hughes’ ingenious Veg Babies is a great way to start.
Big ideas often start with a small question. For Heidi Hughes, it was simply, “How can we get more people into gardening?”. This small question was the seed that sprouted Veg Babies.
Veg Babies is like a food box with a twist. Instead of a week’s worth of meals, once a month a box of seedlings is delivered. You plant them and soon you’ll have an overflowing bounty of fresh, homegrown veggies and herbs.
“The idea and design is that you’ve got a constant harvest to go on your dinner table,” Tauranga resident Heidi explains.
The boxes offer a curated gardening experience that will quickly grow leafy greens that turn over each month, like rocket, lettuce and bok choy, as well as seasonal vegetables like cucumbers, tomatoes, chillies and capsicums that take a few months.
“There’s a real variety and it’s all designed so there’s always something you’re harvesting, as well as something that’s looking into the long term of harvesting down the track,” Heidi explains. “People also get a different herb each month. Within 12 months, you’ll have a beautiful herb garden.”
One of the benefits of the service, aside from all the fresh veggies, is that the curated experience takes away the stress of knowing when to plant what. Heidi says it’s perfect for beginner to mid-level gardeners who don’t have much experience or space, as well as time-poor gardeners.
“Many people don't know where to start with gardening,” she says, likening it to how food boxes simplified cooking and made it more accessible. “This gives you a whole process that is achievable and keeps things going.”
To make Veg Babies as accessible as possible, the whole garden has been designed to fit in a planter box that’s only 2.5 m2. This will fit in most backyards and/or apartment decks. The seedlings are delivered straight from Veg Babies’ commercial growers in Pukekohe where they spend a couple of weeks outdoors before being shipped out. This makes them hardier than those found in places like garden centres. There’s also no plastic used in the delivery or shipping – something Heidi says was crucially important to them.
The subscription is $26 a month for the box of seedlings. How does that compare to buying from the supermarket? In terms of cold hard cash, what’s the monetary value?
“It’s about $40 a month if you’re getting a constant harvest off your garden,” Heidi says. “I’m currently harvesting lettuces, which I’d be paying $5 each for. I haven’t run out of cucumbers or courgettes all summer. You can get a bunch of parsley out of your garden whenever you want, or basil or oregano to put on your pizza. Same with tomatoes, you just pick one off. Once you get on a roll with things, it’s on tap. People often waste a lot of food, especially herbs. You buy a bag for $5, use half of it and throw the rest out. When you take into consideration that waste, we’ve worked out the value is about $40 a month.”
But it’s not just about the vegetables. Heidi also wants to share her love of gardening. To help people’s gardening journey she sends out weekly instructional emails, along with a YouTube video she records in her garden. She explains where your garden is at, what you should be harvesting and even suggests cooking ideas.
“I’m growing in the exact same amount of space with the same veggies, and the same box,” she says. “Every week you’ll know what to do to make your garden thrive. It’s real colour-by-numbers gardening.” Veg Babies is part of the PiPS Charitable Trust, which sets up school gardens around the Bay. All Veg Babies profits go directly back into the trust to help them grow.
“We currently have eight gardens in eight schools,” she smiles. “We have orchards and veggie beds, and teach kids how to grow food. We’d love to include more but we’re at capacity until we can raise more funds.“
It’s not often something comes along that can not only improve your life but also the lives of others. Veg Babies does both. It teaches new skills and provides constant fresh healthy vegetables as well as raising money for charity. That’s got to be better than a sausage sizzle outside a big box hardware store.“Yeah, totally,” Heidi laughs. “It’s win-win.”