Plant it, grow it, use it, eat it! Here's our favourite resources on growing all types of good things – from microgreens to oak trees.
See below for planting guides, how-to's, books and resources, as well as interviews with amazing growers to get you inspired…
Last year it was so easy, the carrots seemed to grow themselves! This year, however… not so much. Carrots are one of those crops that, in dry summers like this one, need a lot of love and care from before they’re even planted, all the way through to harvest. Under Michael’s tender care the carrots…
The capacity and creativity of Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) models are growing. What used to be a simple (but noble) system of receiving a box of veggies fresh from a reasonably local farm each week is no longer the only CSA option for getting connected to your food. But if you’re invested in picking up…
I just wanted to flag something at this point in Milkwood Farm’s development, regarding food. You know, those beautiful shots we share of honeycomb on sourdough scones, home-cured bacon and fresh rainbow radishes. They look nice, don’t they? and they are. They really are. Feeding crew and students amazing food, grown and cooked with love,…
Field pea harvest time… this calls for a pea party. While no longer common in supermarkets, podded peas are on the menu at Milkwood Farm this week. Michael sowed them as a spring crop that would both improve the soil and give a yield, before we plant our summer veggies of capsicum, tomato, eggplant and…
If you’re looking for a good resource on the actual practicalities of taking on market gardening, get a copy of this book. It’s full of deeply practical insights and uses multiple small-scale, successful vegetable growers direct experiences as templates for it’s planting and financial guides. In the ways of synergies, Crop Planning for Organic Vegetable…
Cima di Rapa is is a common brassica green in Italy, but not well known in Australia. Which is a shame, because it is truly delicious. And hardy. And nutritious. So we’re growing bucketloads of the stuff in the market garden. You can eat the leaves and the flowerheads in salad, or it makes a…
Hooray for salad! We’ve hit 100% self-sufficiency in salad greens for crew and courses at Milkwood Farm. And we’re not just talking leaves-of-things-that-are-edible-and-could-be-used-for-salad-at-a-pinch, we’re talking retail quality, beautiful, sweet, diverse beyond organic greens. We’re pretty stoked. Michael has achieved this by being careful with his propagation techniques and with his choices in salad species. At…
This year in the market garden Michael has sown lots of silverbeet and rainbow chard, because it’s such a versatile and hardy green. However silverbeet are poly-embryonic, which means that multiple plants will sprout from the one seed. So to prevent crowding and to be able to regulate the final size of the plant, silverbeet…
How to make the most of the late brassica harvest? Sauerkraut! Fermented cabbage is a hard thing not to love. It’s spicy and it’s sour and it looks beautiful too, especially made with your own red cabbages. The cabbage harvest was not what we’d hoped for, with lots of half-headed cabbages that were obviously perfect…
While worm farms are pretty normal to find nowadays in many yards, their capacity to cycle essential nutrients and make nutrient dense soil additives available to you, for free, can’t be understated. Worm farms rock, seriously. Our bathtub wormfarm next to the kitchen garden, with it’s built in vertigation (direct worm juice injection into the…
Recently we had 24 folks come to Milkwood Farm to learn the basics of market gardening under the stewardship of Michael Hewins, Milkwood’s resident market gardener. It was a great weekend of learning and digging and doing. Michael’s been a market gardener for some years up north, and it’s been great to have him arrive…
So most of our spring seedlings are now out of their soil blocks and getting planted into the ground. But being Mudgee, there’s still plenty of frosts, which doesn’t sit well with spring veggies – time for spring row covers! Row covers are pretty invaluable in a small setup like ours – we dont have…
Just a few photos from the recent and awesome Market Garden Masterclass at Allsun Farm down in Gundaroo. It was so exciting to have 25 future market gardeners in the one space, all with so many skills and ambitions! Joyce, Mike and the whole Allsun Farm crew packed us full of knowledge over three days…