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MelbourneFoodforest

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  - Heirloom Seeds
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Home
Growing
Eating
Tours and Workshops
Shop
- Seeds
  - Heirloom Seeds
  - FAQ
- Plants
- Our Must Haves
About
Contact

Welcome to our site! We are here to help you create your own flourishing foodforest - no matter how big or small your space.

Here you'll find detailed articles with tips and tricks for beginners through to green thumbs, organic heirloom seeds tested in the toughest conditions and our favourite products to help you grow, eat and live sustainably.

Home

Articles & Guides

King White Mulberry (White Shahtoot Mulberry) Every backyard should have a mulberry tree. They are such wonderful fruits and stunning ornamental trees. If you only have…
How to grow Strawberry Guava Strawberry Guava is one of our favourite fruits to grow – it’s drought-tolerant, disease-resistant and delicious. One of the toughest…
How to grow Blueberries the easy way! Blueberries were one of the first fruits in our foodforest. They’re one of the reasons I became totally addicted to…
Dehydrating fruit and veg If you’d come by our house recently, you might have thought Christmas had come again, because there was a lot…
Vegepod 101 Growing Tips and Tricks 1. Construction of our Vegepod / Assembly / Unboxing 2. Vegepod: Spring Tour / Incredible Before & After 3. Vegepod:…
Easy veggie burger that doesn’t fall apart I have been searching for years for the perfect home-made vegan, veggie burger – one that not only tastes delicious,…
Tomato Garden Tour!!! Early Summer – 25 Varieties I’ve got an exciting one for you today for #tomatotuesday! Come take a walk with me through our garden, I…
10 Surprising Facts about Berries Since filling our foodforest with berries, I have learnt so much about berries I didn’t know before. Berries have a…
Our Top 5 Berries to Grow We grow over 80 varieties of fruits in our backyard foodforest, and berries are one of our favourite fruits to…
Puffing Amaranth for Sunday Granola / Muesli Did you know you can pop your own grains to make a delicious wholesome muesli with no added sugar or…
Making tofu with lego and lemon Did you know that you you can make your own tofu at home? Using simple objects around the house (Hint:…
Delicious plant-powered Bolognese Want to know the secret to a delicious, succulent AND healthy bolognese? One that’s meaty but without the meat. Well…
Myth-busting – Coffee grounds in the garden: Friend or foe? A question I am often asked by new gardeners is: Is it safe to use coffee grounds in my garden?…
Tomato awards: Our must-grow cherry tomatoes While you all know I have a soft spot for giant beefcake tomatoes, there is also something enchanting, irresistible and…
Faba-ulous Mayonnaise Great mayo is harmony, versatility, and ease. It gives boiled potatoes life, it moistens stale bread, and it adds zing…

Shop

Glass Gem Corn

Wide Brimmed Hemp Gardening Hat

Fabric Grow Bags

Vegepod Wicking Bed – Medium

Vegepod Wicking Bed – Large

Fruit Protection Bags

Seed Raising Heat Mat (for propagation and germination)

Soil pH Test Kit (check your soil acidity and alkalinity)

Molly’s Zebra Bean

Lazy Housewife Bean

Sunset runner bean

Sunset runner / Scarlett runner – surprise mix

Black turtle beans (Dwarf)

Edamame soy bean grow your own

Edamame / soy bean (Dwarf)

Giant sunflower seed

Sunflower seed Mix

Indestructible garden tools

Indestructible garden tools

Dehydrate your own produce with the best dehydrator on the market Excalibur

Excalibur Dehydrator

Compost caddy stainless steel

The cutest compost caddy

Large bird netting for fruit trees and berries

Bird netting for trees, veggies and berries (Medium / Large)

Organic Canvas Apron for Tools and Harvests

Sweet Pea (Pinks and Purples)

Fig Leaf Gourd

Subpod (Worm Farm + Garden Bed All-in-one)

Frost Bean

Mini Blue Corn

Oxacan Green Corn

Red Aztec Corn

White Glutinous Corn

Cranberry Bean

Purple King Bean

Scarlett Runner Bean

Madagascar Bean

Glass Gem Corn (Pink Hues)

Broadbean (Dwarf, No Staking)

Dwarf Self-climbing Pea

Hollyhock (Mixed)

Purple Podded Pea

Butter Bean (Dwarf)

Lodge 3 Litre Cast Iron Combo Cooker

Latest Videos

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Highly productive urban farm / Sustainable garden / Permaculture / Edible beauty / Fruit & Veggies

King White Mulberry – Foodforest tour | White Shahtoot Mulberry | The biggest and sweetest Mulberry!

How to grow Strawberry Guava + Taste test | Backyard Foodforest | Delicious, hardy and disease-free!

How to grow blueberries the easy way! PH testing, soil, repotting, our fav varieties to grow

Late Summer tour of the fruits, vegetables, flowers of our Urban Food forest | Ideals & inspiration

Our Large Vegepod Wicking bed! Is about to explode, check out our insane harvest | Tips on pests

An abundant Permaculture Garden in a small space | Raised beds brick keyhole | Dealing with pests

Growing Choko Chayote | Permaculture plant with many uses | Delicious dish feat choko, pumpkin vine

Beautiful and productive raised keyhole bed | Garden Tour | Heirloom veggies, flowers | Urban Farm

An Easy No-Knead Sourdough Bread Loaf | French Country | Pain de Campagne | Rye, Wholemeal

Easiest tomatoes to grow | Great for small spaces, beginners | Compact, neat and productive

How to dehydrate fruit vegetables | 101 Guide | Citrus banana mango kiwi apple | Onion celery powder

How to Grow Amazing, Chilli, Bell Pepper, Capsicum | Garden Tour | Rare Unusual Varieties | Guide

Sourdough Crumpet recipe | Delicious and easy | Bubbly and light, crispy & fluffy – Never rubbery

Incredible Tomatoes – grown in a Backyard! │Cherry, Beefsteak, Heirloom │Urban Farm Garden Tour

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Latest Instagram Posts

Farewelling the last of our eggplants from our @ve

Farewelling the last of our eggplants from our @vegepod and time to clear out our summer produce, it's time to rejuvenate the soil. It's been such a successful harvest over summer, the craziest eggplants we've ever grown! Just like we need a break to recharge, so does our soil. In a closed system like the Vegepod, it's even more important to continually think about soil nutrition. With each harvest, we are drawing organic matter from the soil; what we take out we need to add back.

We will be chopping and dropping the plants in our Vegepod, to add nutrients onto our soil and letting the soil rest before a winter planting. Spent plants, mulch, compost, worm castings, green fertilisers we grow and manure are all ways we continually add life back into our soil. Anything that was once living, is food for a new generation of plants.

Over winter, our garden becomes shrouded in shade, and some of our man veggie beds we simply let rest. We don't plant anything in them, and we simply pile on the organic matter and let it break down ready for spring.

Our first harvest of Jerusalem artichokes for this

Our first harvest of Jerusalem artichokes for this season, with another 4 batches to go! These have in recent years started appearing on fancy restaurant menus. Fortunately, they are so easy to grow and top our easiest veggies list. They are generally disease and pest free and tolerate extremely poor soils (like our horrible sandy soil!) and even do well in drought - ours don't get any supplemental watering and still produce insanely.

Being related to sunflowers, their tops are stunning 3m tall multi-headed sunflowers which make a wonderful summer hedge. The tubers, which we've harvested here are knobbly and look very much like ginger. Plant one tuber and harvest kilos, nothing's quite this productive!

They have an interesting earthy and nutty taste which is great for roasting, but our favourite way to have them is fermented in brine, or even straight into soy sauce. They make a delicious pickle that goes with every meal.

Harvested gently with our favourite indestructible garden tools, buy once have them for life. Made right here in Australia. Use our discount code "MFF" for 10% off. More details on our website: https://melbournefoodforest.com.au/product/our-favourite-garden-tool-set/.

Our top tips for growing in pots This is our magn

Our top tips for growing in pots

This is our magnificent White Chupetihno chilli, a winner both in looks and in taste. Incredibly fruity taste and ranges from mild to very hot.

We grow most of our chillis and capsicums in pots - there's a few reasons for this. I've had a lot of questions about how we do it, so here's some tips.

1. As chillis are hot climate plants, growing in pots allows us to move the pots under cover in winter, and overwinter them. Being in a temperate/cool climate, this gives out chillis and capsicums a huge head start compared with planting from seed each season. It means we can harvest ripe chillis and capsicum much earlier in the season.
2. Chillis are dormant in winter. By growing them in pots, this also means that our chillis are not taking up vital veggie bed space in winter as we can simply move them out of the way to a shady spot.
3. Chillis also like a warm spot. Growing in pots means that we can move them to the spot in our garden which gets the most sun in summer, and pots promote a warmer root zone which helps peppers grow and ripen faster.

Plants grown in pots depend entirely on you for their nutrition. Therefore it is vital to start with a quality potting mix as your base. After trialling every potting mix on the shelf, we now only use @lovethegarden_au scotts osmocote as our base. It’s the best balance between quality and value.I’ve tested the pH and this mix comes out spot on at around 6.5-7 which is a great neutral base. If you test the cheaper potting mixes, they are generally off the charts at pH 9 or 10.

We then add a few secret ingredients to help our chillis and capsicum flourish. As I say time and time again, a diverse soil is a healthy soil, hence our secret formula to happy pot culture is not one thing, it is a mix of quality ingredients:

50% Scott’s Osmocote orange bag which contains 4 months of feed
25% quality well-rotted manure
25% quality compost
Handful of worm castings in each pot
Sprinkle of rock dust for trace elements

This mixture has worked so well for us and means we don’t need to do anything again after planting - it sets your plants up for the whole season!

📺Today on our channel, we take you on a tour of

📺Today on our channel, we take you on a tour of our King White Mulberries - one of the sweetest, biggest and tastiest fruits we grow in our foodforest. We're currently harvesting a second batch of these, after already enjoying a harvest in spring/summer! Yes they fruit more than once per season. Link here and in my bio: https://melbournefoodforest.com.au/2022/05/10/king-white-mulberry-white-shahtoot-mulberry/.

We've got everything you need to know about growing and harvesting them including:
► Their taste, growth habit, light and soil requirements
► Secret tips for getting more fruit off your mulberry tree
► Shape-training your tree to fit small spaces
► How to know when to harvest your fruit
And much more!

As always, both an article & video version available on our website.

FIGS FIGS FIGS I cannot believe we haven't shared

FIGS FIGS FIGS
I cannot believe we haven't shared a photo of these beauties this season. Oh wait I can... we've been slaving away preserving and dehydrating a truckload of these delicious heirloom purple figs!! Summer and autumn are busy times in our Foodforest. This is the biggest crop we've ever gotten off our fig tree, I'm pretty certain our living compost paths have finally kicked in. We don't water or fertilise this tree at all, but no doubt it's roots are tapping into our bush mulch paths which decompose into a fudgy compost and are a wonderful source of organic matter for our fruit trees.

Swipe to see our mammoth dehydration effort! Our @excaliburdehydratorsaustralia has been running overtime, every night for the past month. We've stored up about 10 tubs of these delicious dried figs. I'll share the end result with you soon once we're finally done 😁 Dehydration is such an easy and convenient way to store fruit across seasons, just slice, place on trays and watch the magic happen. For more information, we have an article and video on our website: https://melbournefoodforest.com.au/2022/01/20/dehydrating-fruit-and-veg/. Link also in my bio. I will be releasing an updated fruits of our food forest tour which will include our figs as well as some tips on dehydration as a way to preserve your harvest.

💗💗💗A closer look at our pink celery growi

💗💗💗A closer look at our pink celery growing very happily in our @vegepod. This is an Heirloom Chinese variety of celery, originating from Beijing where I was born! No wonder I have such a strong affinity for this plant, and the neon pink stems might help too 😀. If you've ever struggled to grow celery, then give this a go. Much easier to germinate, faster to grow and less fussy than European celery. Doesn't need blanching either. Has a strong celery flavour which is delicious in dishes. While I enjoy it raw, you might find it a bit strong and not as tender as standard European celery, so best cooked into stews and sauces. We're going to dehydrate some this year and make our classic celery powder. It does retain its colour even when cooked, unlike many coloured vegetables which lose their colour. I wonder if we will make pink celery powder?! 💗💗💗

Seeds purchased from @theseedcollection. Our favourite plant labels provided by @hoselinkofficial.

Wet and cool days like today are perfect for plant

Wet and cool days like today are perfect for planting out new seedlings. A few weeks ago we planted out our pink celery into our Vegepod - check out our stories for how much it has grown - we're adding an extra boost of worm castings today. At the time of planting, we filled its hole with our own homemade worm castings, the best fertiliser and head start you can give to your seedlings. Pink celery is an heirloom Chinese celery - it's quite mild and doesn't require blanching, plus has insanely photogenic pink stems!

Planted out using our handy @cyclonetools gloves and potting mix shovel. Disclaimer: products gifted to us, but reviews and opinions are always our own.

📺Today on our channel, we talk about Strawberry

📺Today on our channel, we talk about Strawberry Guava - one of the toughest and easiest fruits you can grow and do a Taste test! 💗💗💗Link here and in my bio: https://melbournefoodforest.com.au/2022/04/17/how-to-grow-strawberry-guava/.

Strawberry Guava is one of our favourite fruits to grow – they are drought-tolerant, disease-resistant and delicious. One of the toughest fruits in our Foodforest, yet produces delicious fruit with a delicate strawberry flavour. A wonderful addition to those tricky dry shade positions in the lower-canopy of a food forest. It so giving and fruits continuously over the warmer months. Did you know both the fruit and leaves are edible? Head over to our article or video to see how we grow ours in our Foodforest, all the reasons we love growing it, what it tastes like and how to use it.

As always, both an article & video version available on our website.

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