Halo, conservation-minded viewers, and welcome to Planet Earth: Our Loving Home. On this week’s program we journey to the pristine land of New Zealand to visit Shangri-La, a splendid green center promoting vegan organic (or veganic) agriculture.

Nestled in the mountains of beautiful northern New Zealand, Shangri-La is an earthly paradise, a 180-hectare veganic haven that’s been cultivated for the past 10 years by volunteers from the US-based non-profit group Gentle World, which actively promotes the vegan lifestyle. Shangri-la is home to a vast array of trees, flowers, vegetable plots and fruit orchards. It is also the site of cooking classes and seminars put on by Gentle World’s volunteers so the public can learn about the many benefits of veganic living.

Today we will hear some veganic gardening tips and get a brief tour of the center, where we will see delicious fruits and vegetables growing abundantly in a loving, Earth-friendly environment.

Hi everyone and welcome to Shangri-La. My name is Angel and I’m a volunteer for Gentle World, a vegan educational organization and intentional community in existence for 40 years.

For the past 10 years Gentle World volunteers have spent four to six months of every year in the far north of New Zealand, transforming 454 acres of beautiful New Zealand countryside into a vegan educational center where visitors from all over the world now come to learn about the many benefits of veganism and how to live vegan, healthily and joyfully.

As part of our program people learn how to grow their own food, not just organically, which is without the use of chemicals, but also without the use of any animal by-products, including manures, blood and bone meal, fish emulsions, or waste from the slaughterhouse floor.

Magic is Shangri-La’s head gardener who has been a veganic grower since 2000. He will now explain the differences between the veganic method of cultivation and conventional organic agriculture.

It’s very similar to organic growing but we have more compassion in our growing methods. We don’t use fertilizers like blood and bone or animal manures from exploited animals. And we also have compassion with our growing methods in that we take care of the plants without using sprays and use simple methods that we don’t harm the earthworms and other creatures that are in the soil.

We plant our crops to rotate and grow things at the right time of the year so they don’t get pest problems. And also we keep our plants healthy with green manure crops and rotation so the plants are not susceptible to the fungal diseases and the insect attacks that it’s possible to get.

Growing nutritious veganic produce begins with loving cultivation of healthy soil, which of course requires healthy worms.

Veganic gardening is the same as being a vegan. You want to be healthy, so part of being healthy is getting your plants healthy. And to get your plants healthy it’s really crucial to have healthy soil; that’s the important thing. So we really encourage the soil.

The soil is a living organism that’s full of life and worms and things, so the idea of being veganic in gardening is that we are gentle with those organisms that are in the soil because those are what keep our plants healthy because that’s where their food and nourishment comes from.

A fresh, nutritious garden salad can be part of any tasty veganic meal, and Shangri-La’s salad garden contains plenty of delicious greens to choose from.

And this garden is our salad garden, so it’s near the house so we have a huge range of different plants and herbs. So I’ll just list a few to give you an idea. We’ve got celery, we’ve got dill, parsley, coriander, beans, bok choy, and we’ve got a mizuna mix, which is quite a mixture of different plants. And we’ve got carrots and beetroot, tomatoes, lettuce, arugula, peas and a few other added in there for the mix.

We next learn a helpful tip in keeping plants disease and insect-free without chemicals.

Okay, these are some of the tomatoes that we grow in this garden. When we plant them, we dig a hole and put compost in the ground and then the plants grow really well because the compost holds the moisture and nutrients. And we put a wire netting ring around them so that they keep off the ground and so it keeps them disease-free.

And so I’ve found that when your plants are healthy, the insects and bugs don’t seem to bother them so much, so that’s the key thing with veganic gardening that we’ve found here, that if we keep our plants healthy, the pests and diseases don’t seem to bother them. And I think that goes for people too and your health. If you’re healthy you’re less susceptible to all sorts of problems.

Harvesting and preserving your plants’ seeds for next season’s planting are important steps in maintaining a vibrant and flourishing veganic garden.

Also here in this garden we also save our own seed as much as we can. And here are some peas that we’ve harvested the crop and we’re leaving some for seed. And so we’ll let these dry on the vine and then when they’re dry we’ll pick them and shell them and dry them, finish drying them and store them away for next year.

We’re trying to save more seed each year. It’s time consuming and labor consuming but it’s very worthwhile. It’s sustainable and saves us money buying seed, and plus the seed is far more healthy, we know it’s veganic, and we know it’s going to be reliable and grow how we like things to grow.

After the following brief message, we’ll learn more about veganic agriculture while continuing our tour of the Shangri-La center. Please stay tuned to Supreme Master Television.

Here we are in our second garden and as you can see we’ve got watermelons growing here very prolifically. And we’ve got courgettes with cucumbers growing in between and sweet corn.

Welcome back to Planet Earth: Our Loving Home, as we continue our visit to Shangri-La, a center promoting vegan organic (or veganic) agriculture that is operated by the vegan advocacy organization Gentle World. Practicing veganic agriculture involves applying vegan and organic principles to all aspects of the cultivation process and avoids the use of manure, blood, bone, fishmeal and other animal by-products as fertilizers as well as abstains from spraying chemicals on crops.

Veganic produce is healthy for our body and our planet and growing it does not involve the suffering of sentient beings. Head gardener Magic will now provide us with another useful veganic gardening tip.

In veganic gardening, one of the things that’s really beneficial, is to have a variety of plants that bring in lots of life; bird life, insect life and just enhance the quality of our lives from the pleasant sight of the colors, and it brings the bees. And so we grow a lot of different flowering plants to enhance the beauty of the place and also to make food for different insects and the bird life. And it’s really beneficial for the orchard.

Here’s a healthy, veganic avocado and you can see it’s got some beautiful little avocados for next season just happening here. That’s one of the varieties of fruit trees that we grow here. We also have peaches, plums, apples, pears, and a variety of different citrus fruits. We have cherimoyas, which are from South America, along with feijoas from South America, and casimiroas.

The surrounding mountains nourish the land with the treasured gift of fresh, crystalline water, a blessing for the gardens as well as the inhabitants of Shangri-La.

Here in Shangri-La we have beautiful rivers that come down from the mountains that surround the beautiful land that we have here. And the water is beautiful, it’s clear, and it’s just ideal for veganic gardening because you want to nourish your plants with beautiful, clean water and we’re blessed here to have this water.

It’s beautifully clean and healthy, and we all drink this water, and it’s from the mountains that surround us that have thousands of acres of reserve. So we’re one of the luckiest people in the world; you can’t do this in a lot of places anymore. But we still can drink this water and it is really beautiful tasting.

Mulch is a protective soil covering that is highly beneficial for growing trees as it keeps moisture from evaporating away. It also lessens soil erosion and prevents weeds from sprouting.

Here we are in Shangri-La in one of the veganic orchards. The main way we fertilize our fruit trees and other trees in Shangri-La is we use mulch that is actually harvested, the grass that’s growing around the trees in the orchard. So it’s collected up and raked up and put around the trees in a thick mulch, which conserves the moisture, and feeds the soil. The worms just love it, they really thrive under there and they turn the mulch into beautiful fertilizer as it rots down into black compost. So it keeps the trees really healthy.

We also occasionally use a dusting of dolomite if the trees prefer a more alkaline soil or occasionally some rock dust. But other than that our main fertilizer source in the orchards is the grass that we grow. We also have a composting toilet in Shangri-La and we compost that for a year and then that gets put around the fruit trees as well, as an added fertilizer.

Here we are under a feijoa tree; it’s been mulched for the summer and the mulch is protecting the soil and feeding the tree. And as it rots, it breaks down into this beautiful black soil that feeds the worms and the microorganisms and stays nice and moist. And you can actually see the fine feeder roots from the tree taking their nutrients from it.

Many thanks Magic, Angel and the loving Gentle World volunteers at the Shangri-La center for creating a veganic paradise for all to enjoy, and for sharing your invaluable knowledge about compassionate cultivation with others who wish to know more about the benefits of veganic gardening. Our Earth is truly blessed by your commitment to promoting a world where all life is cherished.

For more details on veganic gardening, please visit www.GentleWorld.org

Loyal viewers, thank you for your company today on Planet Earth: Our Loving Home. Coming up next is Enlightening Entertainment, after Noteworthy News. May the veganic trend soon sweep our world, making it a place full of love and light.