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How to plant plant(s)

Before we go deeper into the depths of agroecology, I thought it appropriate to start at the start.

Super simple yet devastating when we stuff it up, planting is one of our most satisfying jobs in the market garden. Here’s a how-to:

  1. Make sure you have a strong plant which is ready for transplanting
  2. Dip or water the roots of the plant with a seaweed based liquid fertiliser
  3. Make sure your soil is lovely (sign up to our newsletter where we share some tips on developing delicious soil!)
  4. Open up a hole big enough for your plant
  5. Place it in the hole
  6. Cover all roots of the plant, and make sure none of the transplant soil is showing
  7. Press firmly and kindly
  8. Try to really gently tug on the leaves of the plant, it should not come out
  9. Water it in with a good soak

Hope this helps, sometimes it’s nice to revisit the basics.

Β 

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Snippets of farm life

Snippets of farm life with a growing family – the highlight kind of snippets. There’s quite a lot in between these moments that really don’t look and feel as whimsical πŸ˜‚

The majority of the farm work just is plain hard, with not much reward – and we are dancing the delicate balance of doing this on a low budget, while we also sow into our young family. Many would say it’s really not an ideal time to do something like this – but the fruit shows that God has said differently. There has been a whole lot of times where we’ve prayed for provision for something we’ve needed to keep running our little farm that was above our pay bracket – and every time, miraculously, we’ve been provided for. We have all we need for each day in this and we are certainly not a fancily set up operation – but we have seen the fruits of deeper trust and endurance, and our family being brought together in a way we haven’t known before.

We’ve had quite a few people say the phrase to us, β€œyou’re living my dream!” It makes us laugh, as most of the time it can feel very far from dreamy. But the dream we are living – and will not trade for anything – is following God and risking saying yes to him, at all costs. It is what has held us here when we’ve wondered if it’s all worth it. To live with the One who is bigger than all of this, who owns the story of all time – it is something all of us are invited into.
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Cool-to-warm transitioning

We are currently sitting in the transition between cool season and warm season – still enjoying the final few weeks of tasty brassicas while busily planting in all matters of summer sunshine foods. Cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, zuch’s, corn and many others should be starting to change up our veggie boxes soon. Stay tuned β˜€οΈπŸ§‘πŸ½β€πŸŒΎ

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The Rabbit Race of Market Gardening

Running a market garden with kids πŸ‘¨β€πŸ‘©β€πŸ‘§β€πŸ‘¦
Is it fun and magical? At times, yes!
Are there times we question if we are crazy and everything seems to fall apart? Absolutely.
Do things take longer? Usually.
Do we now have permanent soil somehow attached to us wherever we go? Definitely.
We are all learning a lot, every single day, and thankfully God really does help us πŸ˜…

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New Logo

Stoked to reveal our beautiful new logo, created and painted by the talented @kayeredmanart 😊

The beauty revealed through creation is something that is close to our hearts, and it is a big element of why we love what we do. So we are very excited indeed to have this piece of art represent that ✨

Never fear though – the radish wreath profile picture on Instagram will remain in its place πŸ˜‰

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Planting plenty plants

It’s really a thing!

We have been busy these past few weeks getting plenty of veggies in the ground and getting them growing, all while succeeding and failing and adjusting (and taste testing).
This is a whole family affair – it often means progress is a little slower, but far more colourful. Eden specialises in planting, watering, harvesting (peas are the favourite choice) and digging deep holes to call for the worms. Cedar is great moral support showing his excitement with big arm movements and rapid grabbing, and will often taste the soil to check its growing suitability.


Lots of exciting things are being formed, and get ready for veggies boxes very soon πŸ€—πŸ₯¦πŸŒ±πŸ₯•

Music credit, Zephyrus by The Oh Hellos

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First harvest at Marabelle

Radish bunch

Yewww, our first harvest at the new plot (which we shall affectionately name Marabelle – star of the sea). And what better than the humble old radish? πŸ˜‰

Veggies incoming. πŸš€

Don’t miss out on this goodness, keep in touch with us below

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RSS is like a personalised news feed you have control over. You sign up to an RSS reader (https://www.inoreader.com/ is pretty nice) and then subscribe to the feeds you want to be notified of, and you get their content delivered to you! No more AI/big tech/Social Media getting us all addicted by manipulating our cheeky dopamine response. πŸ˜‰

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Pruning our wild tobacco “big brother”

In our front food-forest-nursery-garden we are working alongside nature to produce the inputs our garden requires.

In this case we prune back this epic wild tobacco plant to give the garden a pulse of growth and to encourage the plants around it to start pushing growth and encouraging flowering. Doing so gives them a nice bit of fertilisation both in the soil through root die off (which adds organic matter, changes the makeup of the soil life, and encourages the plant to release growth hormones), and above the soil through the mulch (which creates an amazing microclimate upon the soil) and additional sunlight.

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Veg seedlings back on

With much prayer πŸ˜‚ we have finally worked out a way to raise seedlings again at our house. πŸŽ‰πŸ₯³ Fighting with slugs and mice in our wild greenhouse was a battle indeed! We got there with a few neat tricks (and no poison!).

How to stop mice eating seeds or seedlings without poison

If ever we sowed seeds, the mice would eat them straight up. Sow out a tray and in the morning it was completely eaten. Super depressing.

We have now put traps at the base of our tables, this has helped their numbers dwindle.

And if any are not phased by the delicious peanut butter traps, we bought a table smaller than our seedling trays. The seedling trays then overhang the table, so they will have to be some ninja mice to climb up the overhang onto our trays. So far so good!

How to stop slugs eating seedlings

And then the slugs. If the mice missed any seeds the slugs would eat the baby plants.

Copper tape. We bought some garage shelving from bunnings and wrapped a real thick application of copper tape around the base of each foot, the slugs don’t like passing the tape so they don’t climb up. Win!

Copper tape wins versing slugs
Copper tape wins versing slugs

We also make sure there are no plants reaching up onto the legs of the table or onto the seedling trays so that they can’t bypass the copper tape.

Make sure you double check your seedling trays that have any hidden cheeky guys and we’re good to go.

And with that, we have vegetable seedlings available! Check out our plant list and see if you could use any veggies (or any other goodies in our greenhouse). We’ll be using these seedlings in our new (sunny) plot, so if you don’t want to plant the veg yourselves but just enjoy eating them, we could have some coming your way real soon. Follow us below and we’ll let you know straight away!

https://firstlightagroecology.com/feed

What is RSS?

RSS is like a personalised news feed you have control over. You sign up to an RSS reader (https://www.inoreader.com/ is pretty nice) and then subscribe to the feeds you want to be notified of, and you get their content delivered to you! No more AI/big tech/Social Media getting us all addicted by manipulating our cheeky dopamine response. πŸ˜‰