Food Gardens

WaterUps Ready-to-go Food Garden Kits 

Kits for Food Gardens include WaterUps Wicking Solutions and more

Food Gardens have become increasingly popular as people seek to grow better and more nutritious fruit, vegetables and herbs to improve their health and save on grocery bills.

At WaterUps we recognise the importance of creating circular food systems where food scraps go back into our gardens rather than into landfill. For this reason, we have partnered with Tumbleweed to provide worm farming and composting solution in our Food Garden kits.

By growing your own food, you can significantly increase the taste of your fruit and vegetables and their nutritional value of vitamins and minerals. See the Research notes below which show how much the nutritional value of our food has declined in the past few decades.

WaterUps makes growing good food easier, more reliable and more cost-effective than many other commercial options.

To help you get started, we’ve put together the essential elements you need in special Food Garden Kits.

Our four packages are designed to suit different size backyards with our Basic Food Garden Kit even suitable for a terrace or patio.

Importantly, all of our kits enable you to compost vegetable scraps thereby improving the quality of the soil and the food you produce in your food gardens.

All you need to add at your end is soil and plants.

Sustainable food gardens are possible with WaterUps Food Garden Kits - ideal for home gardeners, hotel gardeners, school and community gardeners

Here’s what included in our 4 Food Garden Kits

Inclusions BASIC SMALL MEDIUM LARGE
WaterUps Oasis 1680 Wicking Bed 2 4 6 8
WaterUps Flexi Garden Bed Covers 2 4 6 8
WaterUps Square Planters 1 1 2 2
Perlite 20L 80L 120L 160L
Tumbleweed Worm Factory 1 2 2 2
Tumbleweed Worm Buffet Kits 2 4 6 8
Tumbleweed Tumbler Kits 0 1 1 2
Free Shipping Yes Yes Yes Yes

The WaterUps Oasis Wicking Beds and Square Planter/s come with the wicking cells required for each unit and the right amount of Perlite that you need to put into each wick.

These Australian made innovations will

  • Save you 80% of the water used in top-watered / irrigated garden beds
  • Grow healthier plants faster
  • Produce more fruit and vegetables than traditional gardening methods.
  • And save you considerable time in gardening maintenance. (You will be able to go away over summer and not come back to dead plants.)

The Flexi Garden Bed Covers will keep out insects, rodents and creepy crawlies and protect your plants from being burned in the height of summer.

The Tumblewed Worm Kits are a neat invention by our friends at Tumbleweed. They are a container that is planted in the ground with a lid for easy disposal of vegetable matter and perforations on the side to enable worms to come along digest and redistribute the matter in the garden soil.

The Worm Factory gives you the ability to make worm juice or worm tea and the means to recycle additional kitchen scraps like onion skins that worms don’t like, as well as garden and grass clippings. Amazingly, this system tumbled regularly will create mulch in four weeks and compost in six weeks. This will also help turbo charge the fertility and health of your garden bed soil.

Food Gardens are important for better health

In recent years, edible food gardens have been inspired by cooking programs and those wanting the freshest produce. Then Covid-19 came along and highlighted food scarcity in supermarkets as a major issue. In 2022 rising inflation is continuing to see more people wanting to grow their own food to combat the cost of living.

Above all else, though, food gardens are the key to healthier eating and more nutrient-rich foods that can boost your immune system, provide natural anti-oxidants and other health benefits.

Studies across America and the UK over the last few decades highlight the significant decline in the nutritional value of fruit and veggies, largely due to the soil becoming depleted from increased watering (washing away of topsoil), chemicals and other impacts.

A study published in the British Food Journal reported on the dwindling mineral concentrations of 20 UK-based crops from the 1930s to the 1980s. It found that in 20 vegetables, the average calcium level had declined by 19% ; iron by 22 %; and potassium by 14 %. A related study found that a person in the 21st century would need to eight oranges to acquire the same amount of Vitamin A as their grandparents would have derived from just one. Source.

In 2004, American Donald Davis and a team of researchers released their findings of a longitudinal study that analysed 43 fruits and vegetables grown in the USA from 1950 to 1999. It reported significant reductions in vitamins, minerals, and protein. Source.

? Apples: Vitamin A was down 41%

? Sweet peppers: Vitamin C was down 31%

? Watercress: Iron was down 88%

? Broccoli: Calcium and Vitamin A were down 50%

?Cauliflower: Vitamin C was down 45%; Vitamin B1 iwas down 48%; and Vitamin B2 was down 47%

? Collard greens: Vitamin A was down 45%; Potassium was down 60%; and Magnesium was down 85%

It is unlikely that food grown in any other western region around the world fares any better. This is why food gardens like what can be produced with the WaterUps Food Garden Kits are so vital for our health and longevity.

Research also shows that a surprising benefit of having your own organic food garden (that relies on worm tea and compost rather than artificial fertilisers and pesticides) is that plants protect themselves by producing more phytochemicals than mass produced ones. Thus, they have greater antioxidant potential which is better for our cells.

On our blog we have numerous articles for planting out vegie gardens. Here’s one for starters.