Tagasaste Seedlings

Using Tagasaste

Tagasaste is great as a nitrogen fixer in your food forest, as a nursery plant for native trees, as a shelter tree or as stock fodder. Can also be used for firewood.

We use these as pioneer trees in our food forest alongside willow, manuka and Kotukutuku (NZ tree fuchsia), as they quickly provide shade, shelter & nitrogen as well as large amounts of chop & drop material. We generally keep ours pruned to small tree size to keep them manageable & prevent wind damage, although they can grow much larger.

In addition to being fed to stock animals, rabbits also seem to enjoy eating it & they are particularly popular with the local Kereru who eat the leaves & flowers.

Growing Tagasaste

Tagasaste are frost tender when young but tolerant of drought & wind and generally a very hardy tree. If exposed to high winds we have found it beneficial to cut the main leader back in the first year or so of growth to prevent it snapping.

Birds & bees love the white flowers which appear in winter. Around our site in the Bay of Plenty they tend to flower anytime from June to September depending on the season & microclimate.

Pea like pods appear over spring & pop open in early-mid summer.

Check out this blog here for more great information about Tagasaste.