Our Farming Philosophy
Cover Crop
In between our vegetable seasons, we grow cover crops on our soil to keep feeding our soil based biology, reduce compaction, capture nitrogen, build carbon, and provide habitats for our above ground insect friends.
Hedgerows/Beneficial Insects
Instead of pesticides, we rely on friendly insects, birds, and reptiles to keep our pests in check. These hungry creatures can devour thousands of damaging insects a day. Pollinators are beneficial insects too and help our crops yield good amounts of fruit. Scattered around the farm, you will see perennial hedgerows that provide homes for all of these creatures.
Compost
Along with our cover crop, great compost is the base of our soil fertility. We use large amounts of compost to boost the Cape’s naturally poor (in terms of veg growing) soil. It also forms the basis of our propagation mix in which we start all of our seedlings.
Great veggie varieties that taste good
The seeds from our farm come from heirloom as well as modern open pollinated and hybrid varieties. We believe that using great seed varieties selected and bred for flavour is the first step in growing food with exceptional flavour.
Great people
Over the seasons, we have built a fantastic team of committed, skilled, and wonderful people. They know our systems, keep an eye on the field, and make sure the farm is in top shape. From seeding, to composting, and knowing when to harvest, they are the key to producing great food.
Soil
Healthy soil has strong populations of bacteria, fungi, and larger arthropods that create structure and make nutrients available for our crops. To ensure that they thrive, we avoid heavy soil disturbance (deep tillage) and fertilisers (organic and conventional) that can burn or kill them. We believe that our soils are fundamental to great flavour.
Our Produce
We focus on growing food with great flavour. This starts with selecting seed varieties that have been selected or bred (sometimes over many decades) because of their superb taste. Generally, these are not varieties you can find on supermarket shelves as the compromise for flavour is often yield, storability, or harvestability
at large scale. While heirloom varieties, especially tomatoes, are often held up as the benchmark for flavour; there are also outstanding modern breeders creating new varieties that do well in the field and excel on the plate.
Some of our and the chefs’ seasonal
favourites include Mokum carrots, Tetra squash, Kyoto Egg eggplant, Caraflex cabbage, and Jimmy Nardello peppers.
Here’s a link to download our full list for the season.
