How it came to be.

It wasn’t the first time we had walked past and said hello. I think it was Professor Stephen’s flat cap, Dutch beard and Helen’s technicolour dream coat that made them so memorable. Well certainly more memorable than people without dogs. Come to think of it, I’ve probably made more effort to meet dogs than humans on our walks. I have been known to cross the road just to interact with a dog.

But I digress…

It was the love of sail boats that got the conversation going. It traversed engineering, science and finally landed somewhere in the garden, right on top of a pile of biochar.

My wife Susan and I tried to establish a garden in our yard a year prior. However growing in our current soil was just not producing anything to be proud of, a handful of vegetables at best. I had installed a decent watering system, and we looked after it as best as we knew, but things were just dying out.

It was the use of wicking beds that solved our problems. Although my Susan was already familiar with wicking beds, it was only now that I started looking at using them as a possible path to a successful harvest. And after several discussions with Professor Stephen as well as seeing his results we decided to incorporate wicking beds with biochar into the project.

Was it successful? Absolutely! We currently have 27 wicking beds with another 23 planned.

What’s in a name.

I’ve been designing and developing products for almost 20 years now. It has always been for clients or companies which I had no personal stake in. This had changed a couple of years prior. We had decided to invest in ourselves and started looking at developing products for our own brands.

Due to the success of our little adventure, Susan’s enthusiasm for the garden and Professor Stephen’s influence, we decided to look at possible products that tied into our success with biochar and wicking beds. And out of that need came the brand Terrapee.

So why Terrapee?

Well, it does sound like therapy, right? And just like therapy, growing your own food is great for your body and soul.  Eating your healthy, organic, glyphosate free produce and pottering in the garden, can greatly benefit your mental and physical health.

In addition, using biochar to renew old, tired soils  provides it with the well needed therapy it deserves.

I guess the name is now becoming obvious, Terra, (Latin for Earth) and pee.

Pee? Well yes, pee.

You see, one of the ways of making good biochar is to quench the char with urine. Urine is full of nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus and as you quench your char with diluted urine, the char traps the moisture and the elements within its pores. Which inadvertently creates a fantastic slow-release fertiliser and provides fantastic conditions for a healthy microbiome.

And there you have it, Terra-pee, garden therapy.

Where to from here?

As I had alluded to before, we have plans, well, rather active projects now. To provide others with the ability to duplicate our success. We are currently working on several products.

• Complete Wicking Beds, aimed more at the suburban gardener. Someone with little time but keen to grow some of their own produce.
• Wicking Bed Kits, all the essentials you need that are difficult to find. These are for someone with tools and skills that is used to making their own garden beds.
• The Minimak – A multifunction back yard pizza oven which can make great biochar.
• The Tokamak – A biochar batch kiln, ideal for small holdings, a specialised biochar kiln which can deal with organic biowaste and turn it into amazing biochar.
• The Tokamax – A commercial biochar kiln, great for dealing with large quantities of organic matter.

We are Australian made!

All our products are made in Australia. Although some of the components do come from countries such as Greece, Poland, Germany, Japan and Malaysia. Those imported parts come through Australian owned distributors, keeping as much money here in Australia as possible.

Where are we located?

We are  based on the beautiful Central Coast of New South Wales