December 4, 2012 – 7:00 am
So we’re into year 2 of community-scale tomato production. Last year the tomato yield was respectable, hailstorms and fruit fly notwithstanding.
This year, we’re trying to hone our technique a little in terms of infrastructure, as well as planning to preserve the harvest while preserving our sanity. Read More »
November 12, 2012 – 10:14 am
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 root crops. They are one of my favorite veggies… Read More »
November 6, 2012 – 7:00 am
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 Growers actually recommends Allan Savory’s holistic goal setting (developed for Holistic Management of cattle, but applicable to many situations) as an approach to planning your farm’s financial management. Because if you go broke, it doesn’t matter how awesome your veggies are, you probably can’t keep growing them for a living. Read More »
November 5, 2012 – 7:00 am
See? New season radishes have got to be one of the cutest things in the garden cabinet. Especially when they’re organically grown, multicolored, freshly washed and about to become lunch…
Radish tops are also great in salads, especially when the crop is young like these. Radishes are also very easy to grow and can be used for under-cropping and inter-cropping with other plants – coming up quick and shading the ground while slower crops establish. By the time the bed starts getting crowded, you’re harvesting the radishes, simultaneously making room for the inter-cropped plants. Permaculture stacking of time and space, in miniature… Read More »
November 1, 2012 – 7:00 am
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 heavenly pasta with Parmesan, lemon and olive oil.
Michael has just started selling our surplus of this crop in bunches to a community food box scheme in the Blue Mouantins, so now over 60 families are learning the way of the spicy Cima… great stuff. We got our seeds from Allsun Farm, who stock ‘The Italian Gardener‘ – a really good quality, organic, non GMO seed range…
October 18, 2012 – 6:00 am
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 can be ‘thinned’, so you end up with just one silverbeet per planting. Thinning can be done at various stages of the growing cycle, but Michael decided to pick/thin the chard at micro greens stage, which means the beginning of mass salads of loveliness at Milkwood Farm. Read More »
October 4, 2012 – 6:00 am
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 at Milkwood Farm and get stuck into growing. We’re all learning fast (including Michael whose moved from sub-tropical growing to the wonky warm/cool temperate climate of Milkwood) and the greens are growing faster. Here’s a bunch of photos from the weekend… Read More »
September 28, 2012 – 6:00 am
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 »
September 13, 2012 – 6:00 am
Cold frames are a great way to get the jump on the growing season with your seedlings, without a big outlay of cash. Recently we built a bunch out of re-purposed glass doors and hardwood frames, and they’re working a treat.
Since our last frost is in November, September is still full of icy mornings, which is not good for seedlings. After researching various cold frame designs, we settled on this design based on time, funds and Michael’s previous experience… Read More »
