Kat's Garden Guide
The Kiwi gardener's month-by-month quick guide to growing food.
What you can do RIGHT NOW for a productive home vegetable garden.
Launches 16 August 2026
SOUND FAMILIAR?
You have a garden. A few times a year you buy some seedlings and throw them in.
Your life includes other things too. Family, work, and other commitments mean it's hard to stay on top of the garden as well. But a whānau's still gotta eat.
A successful garden depends a lot on timing. Whenever you do manage to find some time for it, there also seems to be a research phase.
By the time you know what you need to do, the opportunity or the motivation has faded.
Maybe you harvest your vegetables. Or maybe you miss the window and keep seeing your plants shooting off to seed.
That's where my guide comes in. Flick to the right page and see at a glance what needs planting, tending, or eating, right now.
Less research, more time for the important things.
OVER 35 COMMON HOUSEHOLD GARDEN CROPS
The entire year broken down month by month and crop by crop.
PLANT
When to plant seeds indoors, or out into the garden. Or when to think about seedlings instead.
TEND
Nature needs a bit of help to give you the best harvest. Things like mulching, fertilising, pruning, and mounding live here.
HARVEST
Your reminder to check in on (and eat) what you've grown.
Plus! The most important tasks highlighted for every season, and every month.
ONE NO-NONSENSE SOURCE
ChatGPT has never put its fingers in the soil. Gemini has never watched a sunflower grow from a tiny seed into a towering bloom over a season. And Claude has never watched its prized crop succumb to a pest or disease.
And yet AI is taking over the gardening information space, mostly compiled from Northern Hemisphere sources. Even a traditional search will return thousands of results to sift through. Many of which are written by AI (or companies trying to sell their products).
Kat's Garden Guide is written, researched, and assembled by a real human gardener. It's your quick reference when the thing that's standing between you and a thriving garden is decision paralysis.
I simply want to help you get out into your garden, to grow food without any fuss.
The guide can live on your phone, so that it's with you when you're staring at a rack of seedlings at the garden centre with good intentions. It's there when you have an hour to plant something.
Whether you're growing in containers on an urban balcony, have a sprawling acreage, or something in between. Kat's Garden Guide is here to help you grow, harvest, and eat your own kai.
Kat, circa 1985, and today
WHO IS KAT, AND WHY TRUST HER?
I've been gardening since I was a child. I took a few years off when I was a teenager, but I've grown plants in everything from frosty gardens to container gardens, exposed gardens, sandy soils, and even puddles!
More recently I've completed formal qualifications in general horticulture, organic horticulture, New Zealand native plants, and landscape design.
By working with the seasons, I learned some tricks that allow my garden to grow itself to a large extent. Understanding when plants want to grow, and how they prefer to do it is half the struggle.
THE TWO MOMENTS THAT MATTER MOST IN ANY VEGETABLE GARDEN ARE WHEN PLANTS GO IN, AND WHEN FOOD COMES OUT.
Not everything in my garden succeeds. I've definitely killed a few plants along the way (especially in the puddles). I focus on what we do eat, and learn from everything else.
My Garden Guide is based as much on my failures as it is on my successes.
10 THINGS YOU'LL LEARN IN THIS GUIDE
- Tips to spend less on seedlings and seeds.
- When to choose a seedling, and when to plant seeds instead.
- How to work with the seasons to produce more, with less effort.
- Which fertilisers you really need.
- Low-toxicity pest and disease deterrents made from household ingredients.
- When to look out for seed potatoes, garlic, and promotional specials in garden centres.
- Choosing plant varieties that are right for your garden and gardening philosophy.
- When it's time to harvest and eat your crops.
- How to store crops to eat over winter.
- How to improve your garden's soils without spending a fortune.
JOIN THE WAITLIST
Kat's Garden Guide launches 16 August 2026.
Join the waitlist now to know when it goes on sale, and secure the special launch price!