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…
Now that Autumn’s here, our woolshed is bedecked in produce and garlands… brown onions, red onions, preserves, pickles and all the rest. And it turns out (fortunately) that stringing onions into a garland is actually quite easy.
To the garden! A break in the rain calls for action. So we went down the hill (splashing in all the puddles), past the baby chicks (whose water we topped up), around the geese camped on the road (who honked, as always), and on to the market garden…
It is with great excitement that Stephen recently calculated that we’ve officially grown over one tonne of nutrient dense, organic vegetables in our Market Garden! Whoohoo! Which is not bad for the first six months of our organic market garden project, with about 500 sq m under cultivation, on crappy soils in non-ideal conditions, and…
We’re doing some serious (for us) tomato growing this year. And it’s all been going pretty well. We’ve figured out how to trellis those varieties that need it, kept the compost and biofertilizer up to them, and defended them from the dreaded 28 spot ladybeetles. So just as the romas were all ripening in quantity…
Here come the potatoes! This is the first year we’ve grown them en-mass, and we are now (finally) starting to harvest. Duch creams, Ruby Lous, Nicloas…. mmm fresh organic potatoes roasted in our own olive oil and rosemary – om nom nom… This story starts with an encounter with a potato nerd (self proclaimed). His…
Is it bean season where you are? At Milkwood Farm we’re awash in them. Green beans, purple beans, borlotti beans, scarlet runner beans… it’s one big bean-athon. Down in our market garden is a strange and extensive structure called The Bean Banjo. The Banjo is our bean growing trellis of sorts, constructed from polypipe and…
It seems unbelievable that only 5 months ago our now abundant market garden was a scruffy bare creek flat. But it’s true! And now we’ve got produce coming out our ears, thanks to many fabulous folks coming together to make it so. Up in the hills as we are, it’s a bit of a harsh…
We just capped off a massive week at Milkwood Farm – running our last on-farm course till next year, farewelling 6 interns, harvesting honey and braiding garlic. Summer seems determined to skip us this year. It’s now December and we’re still in winter jackets, and eating all the soup we can. What does it all…
This list of books by organic market garden expert Eliot Coleman was given to us by the Allsun Farm crew. Apparently these are the 12 books that most influenced Eliot during his transition from school teacher to organic market gardener extraordinaire. They’re pretty radical! Eliot writes: “In order to understand the present and prepare for the future,…
The last danger of frosts have passed – finally. It is officially time to plant tomatoes at Milkwood. And plant them we did. Oh yes, how we did. The plan here is to be awash in tomatoes by early February. We want tomatoes coming out our ears and out our toes. At which point there…
Thanks to the amazing efforts of many forces, I can officially say that we are now feeding everyone at Milkwood Farm from the Organic Market Garden each day! Starting with feasts of fresh rocket, lettuce and pak choi. It’s been an adventure of epic proportions to get to this point. But thanks to our amazing…
Why was Joel Salatin so excited when we took him to visit Col Seis’s pasture cropping farm last year? I think it had to do with Joel wanting to close the loop on his regenerative farming enterprise by plugging one of the biggest holes Polyface Farm has: grain inputs for animals. The idea of truly…
I must say that while I’m finding this market garden experiment very exciting, it’s also rather daunting. What are we planting today? What are we planting next week? Where are we going? Who am i and where are my pants? The solution to all this is Allsun Farm’s planting calendar system. Joyce Wilkie devised this…