Damsons are a much-loved preserving variety of plum, and with good reason. They’re intensely beautiful with their indigo skins and pale bloom, and their astringency means that the jam they make is divine.
I was at Allsun Farm this week hosting our autumn Organic Market Garden Masterclass, and the damson tree by the back door was ready to drop. Time for a jam session, alongside the weekend’s action of growing new growers. Read More
Without Joyce and Mike from Allsun Farm, we probably wouldn’t have a market garden. These two firey spirits have been growing good stuff and passing on their knowledge for decades. We feel lucky to know them and we love to see other folks writing about them. Read More
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 oodles (or any) space in greenhouses to grow out veggies ’till the last frost passes, so once they’re past the seedling stage, it’s into the ground for them. Row covers help in a range of ways and are simple to construct. Read More
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 of seeding, reading, listening, crop rotation planning, hoeing, soil blocking transplanting, broadforking and (of course) eating… Read More
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 garden card system firstly for her market garden at Allsun Farm, but happily she’s the kind of lady that likes to share. So she shared it with us. And now we can share it with you. It’s un-tangled everything and put us on the straight and narrow. Read More
We’ve just finished hosting our first Starting an Organic Market Garden course with Joyce and Mike from Allsun Farm, and it feels like the start of a quiet revolution. 30 people for 3 days, in our woolshed and down on our creekflat, learning the basics of growing good food well. Whew!
I knew this was going to be an exciting three days. But then, I’m excited by vegetables. Especially vegetables grown in a regenerative fashion, close to home. What I didn’t think about was just what a whirlwind 30 people getting equally excited about this stuff would mean. And it meant action! Read More
What do you get when you cram 200 people into a room with Joel Salatin to talk about awesome small-farming techniques that heal the land and create livelihoods at the same time? You get the shivers, that’s what! Or i did, anyway.
Last Tuesday we hosted a workshop with Joel on the south coast of NSW, and it was a big bag of fun… Read More
So we’re sitting at the kitchen table, planning our market garden with Joyce and Mike from Allsun Farm, and Joyce suddenly looks at me sharply: “you’ve seen our vegetable growing CD ROM, haven’t you?” Erm, no?
With forewords by Eliot Coleman (international edition) and Peter Cundall (Australian edition), I’m not quite sure why I’ve only just come across this comprehensive resource. It’s Allsun’s self-published guide to growing vegetables, covering everything from tools and planning through vegetable varieties and harvesting. Wow. Read More
This week I received all our yearly seed catalogs, and, as usual, started planning feverishly. How many is too many weird and wonderful heirloom watermelon varieties? And then I paused. Wait a minute, we’re aiming for community scale in our vegetable production this year. This shifts the goalposts entirely.
I’m now realizing that, for our organic market garden adventure, we will no longer be focusing on the craziest colored tomatoes. At least for this first year, while we learn the ropes, we will be going for yield and nutritional density as top priority. Pragmatic organic, here we come. Read More
