Roundup video no.1

Roundup no.2

Roundup no.3

Roundup no.4

Roundup no.5

Roundup video no.6

Roundup video 7

Castelen Community Farm Shop

Planting the Food Garden (part two)

We had been provided a selection of seedlings, seeds and herbs from Pete's greenhouse and now came the time to prepare the soil for planting. Steve had cleared the kikuyu beforehand with his Bobcat and it had also been cultivated, so the group was spared the task of starting from scratch. We measured the pH of the soil, determined lime requirements and then applied a mixture of lime, guano and Norfolk Gold. We then covered the 50 sq meter plot in a 10 cm layer of mulch we had produced from prunings and leaves. Watering cans were used to apply the compost tea and Nutri-Life 4/20™ inoculums and the beneficial microbes were thoroughly watered in with hoses. The seeds had been soaked overnight in a NTS product called Stimulate™ and then sun-dried prior to planting. The seedlings were all dipped in a solution containing Platform™, which is an inoculum of Mycorrhizal fungi. These amazing creatures burrow into the plant roots and then create a root extension involving a lace-like network of fine filaments. They can effectively increase root surface area ten-fold and they mine minerals from the soil and deliver them to the plant. This symbiotic relationship is one of the most important on the planet, because it is now known that Mycorrhizal fungi are responsible for one third of all the stable humus in our soils. They produce a carbon-based substance called glomalin that is the trigger for humus formation. Mycorrhizal fungi are missing in most soils and it could easily be argued that they are the single most important creature on the planet at this point in time. Bio-promotants, like fish and kelp (Life-Force Sea-Change™) were watered on to the plot and then we all began planting. It is a remarkably rapid process when many hands are involved and within 40 minutes the seeds were sown, the seedlings planted, the climbing frames installed for runner beans and peas and the herbs were positioned. We all headed to the veranda overlooking the ocean to enjoy a great lunch flushed with the sense of having created something really worthwhile. Full Production in One Month: Becky and Steve's garden was planted on December 9 and Moira and I visited the plot to check the progress on January 11, during our summer holiday on Norfolk. It was a sight to behold. The peas and beans had reached the top of the frames, the robust corn stood 1.5 meters tall. Kale, silver beet and a variety of lettuces were ready for harvest. Cabbages thrived, tall, dense tomato bushes were in full fruit and the herbs were also remarkably mature. Becky gifted us a bag of French bush beans that were amongst the tastiest we have ever eaten. No chemicals had been used in this garden and none were required. Plant vitality was the driver and there was barely a blemish on any of these healthy plants. We are hopeful that some of those involved in the creation of this wonderful food garden will visit Steve and Becky (they are all invited) to witness the fruits of their labours and to recognise that an abundance of nutritious food can be produced so successfully when you work with nature rather than against her.

A Productive Food Garden in Four Weeks (part one)

In December 2012, I travelled to Norfolk Island to conduct a two day weekend workshop specifically designed for local people seeking to create food gardens. This is of particular relevance to the island, as they are in the midst of a serious recession and food gardening is the great recession proofer. The course was roughly modelled upon an intensive, hands-on, one-day course conducted in Brisbane earlier in the year by my partner, Moira Clayton and myself. Here, the attendees were involved in everything from composting, microbe brewing and garden creation to food fermenting, green smoothie production and stress busting exercises. At the end of that action-packed day, our host, Susan McKinnon, had seen her lawn transformed into a fully planted, fertilised and mulched vegetable garden, beside which stood a two metre, free-standing compost pile. She was even left with a large bowl of sauerkraut to ripen. The course attendees were excited and motivated to create something similar after they had all been physically involved in the creation of something special. Susan went on to win a prize at the Brisbane Organic Growers Group for some of the excellent produce from that new garden as she has become a passionate advocate of the biological approach. She is currently designing programs to teach children about soil and human nutrition. Master Chef in Paradise On Norfolk Island, we decided to extend this course over both days of the weekend. Saturday morning involved my introductory lecture covering the links between soil health, human health and planetary health. This was followed by a delicious breakfast on a veranda overlooking a commercial garden that supplies the fruit and vegetables for a popular local restaurant, called Hillies. Pete Barney, is the grower responsible for these gardens. He is an accomplished local horticulturist who has attended the NTS Certificate in Sustainable Agriculture four day course and he has embraced the biological approach. Pete uses a variety of NTS products in the soil and on the leaf and he regularly brews beneficial microbes to keep the soil firing. Pete is also the president of Sustainable Norfolk, the local organisation who were hosting my visit. It was a real pleasure to look down upon clean, healthy vegetables produced without chemicals and to sample the flavours of that abundant, nutrient-dense produce during breakfast. This property has recently become a popular tourist destination where visitors walk the gardens with Pete explaining the basics of biological food production and the links to superb flavour. They then select the food they would like to cook and return to the kitchens of the house overlooking the gardens for a cooking lesson with the chef from Hillies. The delighted tourists then get to eat these dishes on the veranda overlooking the food gardens with a dreamy ocean backdrop. Norfolk Island is one of the few remaining pieces of paradise and it should be on everyone's bucket list. I have a farm on the Island and I can't get enough of the place. In fact, I am writing this article from my veranda on Norfolk Island. We are positioned beside the National Park overlooking two serene valleys. The farm is encircled by ancient Norfolk pines. A flock of white terns return to this property each year from the other side of the globe to nest and their aerobatics flavour the natural harmony. Unlike the dripping heat of Queensland, the summer here has been clear blue skies, emerald seas, 26 degree days with no humidity and the ever present ocean breezes. Becky's Gift The balance of the weekend was spent at the gardens of Steve and Becky Nobbs in a glorious location overlooking a beautiful bay. This couple are living the dream with private access to a quiet beach where they can catch their protein and complement the fish with organic, home grown vegetables. They have created a wonderful, hand crafted home fashioned from the ubiquitous Norfolk Pine and other native timbers. They also keep bees and produce a tasty honey for local sale and they milk their own cow to enjoy the multiple benefits of raw milk. Becky had attended an earlier NTS course on Norfolk Island and she had become a passionate composter and vegetable producer as a result. It was decided that she should be rewarded with a whole new vegetable garden and compost pile as we were confident that she had the skills to maximise the potential of this gift. Introducing the Life Force The hands-on sessions began with lessons covering the importance of mineral balancing to achieve the level of resilience where chemicals are never needed. We then moved on to the second part of the healthy soil equation which involves soil microbes. Participants learned how to make a worm farm and how to use the microbe rich liquid that can be harvested from this farm. They discovered how to make a compost tea in a 20 litre bucket and how to produce a more task-specific microbe brew like Nutri-Life 4/20™. This particular microbe mix involves billions of organisms that fix nitrogen, solubilise phosphate and supply the plant with bio-chemicals that build resilience. The brewing demonstrations were conducted on the first day so that we could use the completed brews on the new garden the following day. Microbe brewing is not difficult. It is as simple as adding compost, or an inoculum like 4/20™ to a bucket of water. A microbe food called LMF™ is then added and the microbes are multiplied with the help of 24 hours of aeration with an inexpensive fish tank aerator. Beneficial bacteria subdivide every 20 minutes so there are huge numbers of organisms involved after a day and night of brewing. Saving the World One Compost Heap at a Time The following morning everyone got involved in creating a large, free standing compost heap. This involves achieving a balance between carbon (dry, brown material) and nitrogen (fresh green plant matter). Nitrogen is the most abundant mineral in plants but the mineral is lost as nitrous oxide (as part of the nitrogen cycle) as the dead plant matter turns from green to brown. Extra nitrogen is usually necessary to achieve the ideal carbon to nitrogen ratio for compost of 30 to 1 and this is usually supplied as animal manure. So, a balanced compost pile usually involves alternate layers of green and brown, with animal manure added to each layer. In this case, the group selected from a pile of freshly mulched prunings (green) and some sawdust and wood chip from a neighbouring sawmill (brown). The first 15 cm layer was created from the brown material and it formed a circle of about 2.5 meters diameter. Upon that layer we sprinkled lime and soft rock phosphate and included some cow manure. We also added a few shovelfuls of Becky's existing compost to serve as a starter for the new pile. The next 15 cm layer involved the green material and to that layer we added the same mix of lime, soft rock phosphate, manure and old compost. Each layer was thoroughly wet down and we continued this layering process until we had a pile about 2 meters tall. This pile should hopefully deliver two tonnes of finished compost within five or six months. The soft rock phosphate is a great additive because it is a colloidal clay. One of the most important composting breakthroughs in recent years has been the finding that the addition of clay to a compost sponsors the formation of a clay/ humus crumb. The humus that is created has a dramatically extended shelf life. In fact, the stable humus will now last in the soil for up to 35 years. That is of huge import in light of the urgent need to sequester carbon as humus to keep it out of the atmosphere and help avert a climate change catastrophe. Composting is the single biggest contribution any individual can make in terms of turning the global warming tide. Every kilo of organic matter that is composted represents CO2 that would otherwise have returned to the atmosphere as part of the carbon cycle. Composting should become the mantra for 2013 as we all work to save the planet, one compost heap at a time. We Are What We Eat and What We Eat Comes From The Soil The fusion of practical sessions and lectures continued on Day 2 and included a talk about the missing minerals on Norfolk and their significance to the health of the people. Very little food is imported to the island so what is missing in the soil is missing in the people and there will be related health issues. Several years ago NTS was commissioned by the Norfolk Government to test the majority of the food producing soils on the island. We discovered commonly occurring deficiencies and developed a composted fertiliser for the island, featuring all of the missing links, called Norfolk Gold. Copper and boron were two of the missing minerals and deficiencies of both minerals have been linked to increased incidence of arthritis. There is no shortage of sore joints on Norfolk. We are what we eat but many people have not made the link that what we eat comes from the soil. Several of the Norfolk food producers, including the two largest growers on the island, now use Norfolk Gold regularly and there are some amazing forgotten flavours in Norfolk's fresh food. Written by Graeme Sait,CEO Nutri-Tech Solutions P/L. Extracted from Nutrition Matters newsletter Feb 2013.

The Russians Prove Small Scale Organic CAN Feed the World

The Russians Prove Small Scale Organic CAN Feed the World by Christina Sarich May 29th, 2013 If you’ve already been through an economic collapse, you might know a thing or two about how to feed your family with little money. More importantly, you might know how to do it without pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, and GMO seed. On a total of about 20 million acres managed by over 35 million Russian families, Russians are carrying on an old-world technique, which we Americans might learn from. They are growing their own organic crops - and it’s working. According to some statistics, they grow 92% of the entire countries’ potatoes, 77% of its vegetables, 87% of its fruit, and feed 71% of the entire population from privately owned, organic farms or house gardens all across the country. These aren’t huge Agro-farms run by pharmaceutical companies; these are small family farms and less-than-an-acre gardens. A recent report from Agro-ecology and the Right to Food says that organic and sustainable small-scale farming could double food production in the parts of the world where hunger is the biggest issue. Within five to 10 years we could see a big jump in crop cultivation. It could also take the teeth out of GMO business in the US. According to World Watch, we can also farm fish responsibly and feed the planet. Sustainable fish farms along with organic gardening are becoming the new agro-business. “Farmed seafood has certain advantages over wild fish in meeting modern demand. For a global marketplace that demands increasingly predictable products—uniform-sized fillets available year-round, free of the vagaries of weather or open-ocean fishing—fish farming delivers this predictability. Farms are also becoming more productive, raising fish at a lower cost and expanding the potential market.” (Brian Halwell, Farming Fish for the Future). As long as this is done in sustainable ways without GMO salmon, we really can feed over 7 billion people. Unfortunately, not all of us want to utilize organic farming. Purchasing 500,000 shares of Monsanto stock in 2012, Bill Gates is just one key figure who argues that GMOs are an absolute necessity in order to fight global starvation. Of course along with ‘saving the world from starvation’, GMO crops also bring along a large number of unwanted health and environmental effects. This isn’t even considering the fact that long term, we truly don’t know what kind of impact this will have on the earth on a major scale. Though we do know once everything is GMO, it will be virtually impossible to go back to a natural world. Check out NaturalSociety’s YouTube Channel for some recent videos on the March Against Monsanto event occurring in Philadelphia, PA. The videos offer some educational information along with a look at how people everywhere reject Monsanto and genetically modified organisms. Say goodbye to GMOs. We don’t need them. “We won’t solve hunger and stop climate change with industrial farming on large plantations,” says Olivier De Schutter. Read more: http://naturalsociety.com/russians-prove-small-scale-organic-can-feed-world/#ixzz2UwwKRKSP Follow us: @naturalsociety on Twitter | NaturalSociety on Facebook

The importance of humus

Go to Youtube and search on "TED talks Graeme Sait" for a 19 minute presentation by Graeme on the vital importance of humus. This talk was given at a conference in Noosa in March 2013.

How to grow beetroot

Why it is more important to buy food that is freshly picked than certified organic

Food production has been pushed further and further away from populated areas because of the high cost of land and rates. This means that the food you buy has to be picked, transported and stored before it is available for you to buy. This can sometimes take several days. One of the most valuable things a retail store should tell you about the food you are buying, is the date the food was picked because food deteriorates rapidly. It may look good, but it will have little or no food value. Leafy greens deteriorate even more when they are washed in solutions containing anti-rotting chemicals like chlorine and packaged in sealed bags containing gases, which keep it looking good. It deteriorates rapidly when it is processed by being cut up into convenient sizes and packaged in neat containers. When food is processed like this it quickly loses critical enzymes and vitamins. The best food you can buy is the food that is grown locally using organic methods, and is available for sale as soon as possible after it is picked. You will taste the difference. It will have more flavour and will last much longer. Written by Bev Buckley For more information go to http://www.growinghealthyorganicfood.com/course1

Why Organic Certification is not necessarily the answer to ensure good quality food.

Organic certification implies that food grown under this label is grown without the use of chemical fertilizers and agricultural poisons but it doesn't automatically allow you to assume that it is necessarily nutrient-rich or of high quality. The organic industry is based on building up the soil by increasing humus levels and nutrient levels. The nutrients we are talking about aren't just the major ones like phosphorus, potassium and nitrogen, but the much larger range of nutrients such as selenium, boron, molybdenum and silicon. There are more than 70 trace elements that are essential for good plant health and these need to be added to the soil regularly and monitored as well. When applying for certification, organic growers need to do a soil test but no one checks whether, once certification is given, nutrient deficiencies in the soil are rectified or if there is regular input of nutrients to replace those that are taken up by the vegetables and trees that are grown in the soil. There is no on-going monitoring of the mineral levels, vitamins and amino acids in organic food in spite of the fact that these are really important in maintaining human health. We have never applied for organic certification because we have always been aware of the deficiencies in the organic certification process. We know our food is of extremely high standard because we monitor soil nutrient levels by doing soil tests regularly. Our soil organic levels are over 14% which is quite exceptional. Because our buyers respect the quality of the food we produce, know that it is freshly picked and full of nutrients when they buy it, we sell everything we grow on our Community Farm. Our only problem is that we can't grow enough to meet demand. Written by Bev Buckley For more information goto http://www.growinghealthyorganicfood.com/course1

Growing blueberries

Blueberries are bushes that grow up to 2 metres tall. Some are much smaller. There are a number of varieties and they have different growing habits and the berries ripen at different times of the year. In their natural state, blueberries grow wild in deciduous forests where they get plenty of sunshine in winter when the trees lose their leaves. This type of natural habitat needs to be replicated if you want to grow blueberries successfully. For fruit to ripen you will need to grow your blueberries where they have at lease half a day of sunlight and protection from strong wind is desirable. Soils underneath forests are generally acidic with a pH between 4.5 and 5.5. If your soil has a higher pH than this, you have to work to lower it. The reason for this is that blueberries are one of the few plants that require aluminium to grow and aluminium can only be absorbed when the soil pH is below 5.5. It is the aluminium that explains the blue colour of the fruit. To lower soil pH add aluminium and where possible add other fertilizers in a sulphate form eg potassium sulphate. You can buy aluminium at your local hardware store as "alum". This is the same substance you use to turn hydrangeas blue. Adding peat moss, sawdust, pine bark and/or pine needles also helps to reduce soil pH levels. In a coniferous forest, the soil beneath the trees contains large amounts of organic material because the trees lose their leaves every year and layer upon layer of decaying leaf matter builds up. Before you plant your blueberries, make sure you add large amount of organic matter to the soil in the form of woodchips, sawdust, pine bark and leaves and use these same materials to keep the ground around the bushes well mulched. Deep mulch layers retain moisture, which is important because blueberry bushes are shallow rooted so they dry out easily. Ideally, you should prepare your soil six months before planting your blueberry bushes. In a forest setting, trees send their roots deep into the soil, allowing passage for air. In your blueberry area, high levels of organic matter incorporated into your soil will help with soil aeration and planting your bushes on mounds or ridges also helps. A sandy soil is preferable to a clayey loam. Planting Blueberries Prepare your soil well in advance. If you are planting several bushes, make trenches and ridges. Dig a planting hole on the mound. Tease out the roots and spread over a small mound. Fill hole with peat moss/soil mixture and pat down firmly. Dilute liquid kelp or fulvic acid with water (50/1 ratio) and water the plant generously This helps to reduce transplant shock. Add compost and peat moss to both the mound area and the trench taking care not to build up the mulch around the trunk. Watering and Fertilizing Blueberries Blueberries are shallow rooted and don't like to dry out. During the growing season, water twice a week. Water more if conditions are hot and dry. Generously apply compost and animal manure (cow, goat or horse but not chicken) to ensure a good harvest. A slow release azalea plant food can be used two or three times a year but do not overdo the amount used. Alternatively, use seaweed or fish emulsion. The rule for blueberries is to use fertilizer sparingly. Pruning. Prune in winter. Prune out spindly, weak growth and keep the centre open. Plants respond to hard cut back and produce bigger, juicier berries. Written by Bev Buckley For more information visit www.growinghealthyoganicfood.com/course1

How to grow blueberries

Free energy

I've just returned from the coal and gas fields of central Queensland.  It is wonderful to see the revitalisation of towns over a wide area but I would be much happier if that activity were directed to something other than extracting and selling Australia's energy resources, ruining productive land and possibly polluting vast underground water supplies that are essential to our agricultural industry. 

As politicians congratulate themselves for taking measures that ensure a "prosperous" Australian economy, we are hell bent on depriving future generations of their inheritance as fast as possible.   This is called "progress".  Instead of spending millions on research designed to sequester coal-generated carbon in an effort to make coal mining "acceptable", we could instead be fostering research and development of free energy.

Development of such technology infers paradigm-shifting breakthroughs that have the potential to restructure the world's economic framework, giving greater independence to individuals.  It has the potential to reduce the power of centralised governments and transfer it to local communities.  It could mean the elimination of poverty.  With unlimited, virtually free, non-polluting energy, the world would be a very different place.  Instead of polluting our air and water by the use of fossil fuels, we would have the energy to clean up the damage that we have already done.  Instead of turning productive farmland into wasteland through mining we could restore it and use it again for productive purposes.

Is cheap, non-polluting energy just a pipe dream?  I don't believe it is and I believe we are closer to actually having it than many would have us believe.

The Energy Catalyzer (E-Cat) is just one example of a technology that has been developed and is now in the testing stage with extremely promising results.  Tests undertaken by Defence and Energy Department bureaucracies show that the technology works.  Developed in Italy by Andrea Rossi the E-Cat uses tiny ((1.5 grams) amounts of nickel powder, hydrogen gas and undisclosed catalysts to produce mini-nuclear reactions from a portable reactor that is about the same size as a cell battery.  Massive releases of heat energy occur in the process: enough to power a home or a car for a raw materials cost of less than $2 per year. Most importantly, it is safe.

What cold fusion promises is something extremely rare: impossible technology that could underpin a more prosperous world because the benefits will be many times as significant as those of cheap oil but without the drawbacks.

Cold fusion isn't the only example of clean, renewal, affordable energy systems being developed.  Paramahansa Tewari, electrical engineering graduate from Banaras Engineering College, India has recently taken out a patent for a Space Power Generator, which generates energy from a vacuum.

The world's situation looks pretty bleak at present, but there are significant signs that things are changing.  The development of free energy technology is just one of the many highly significant breakthroughs that are happening. "Caterpillars into Butterflies" outlines new developments that have occurred in a variety of areas and explains what you can do to help make the world a better place.   "Caterpillars into Butterflies" is available as a downloadable e-book for $7 from www.growinghealthyorganicfood.com

Bev Buckley.

Food growing facts you may not know.

Do you know that plants grow exponentially?

Let me explain.








Plants are programmed to double in size every few days and with growth come the various stages: germination, maturity and reproduction.

The first stage of growth is not normally seen. It is when the seed sends out roots whose job is to collect food for the plant so that it can grow. At every stage of the plant's life thee is an equivalent growth of roots under the ground as there is volume of leaves and stalks above the ground.

Once the plant has established its life support root system, it starts to grow above the ground. A plant may double in size every three or four days. When the plant is tiny, you don't notice a great change. A plant that is one centimetre tall is very little different from a plant that is two centimetres tall. However, the same growth rate occurs for the plant's whole life cycle. In the same time period of 3 - 4 days that it took to grow from one centimetre to two centimetres, a plant that is 15 centimetres tall and 10 centimetres across, will grow to 30 centimetres tall and 20 centimetres across and if that plant is programmed to start producing fruit or seeds when the plant gets to be 15 centimetres tall, that fruit will grow in those same few days. A broccoli head will double in size every couple of days for 6 or 9 days and then will start to produce flowers.

The speed that plants mature and start to produce edible fruit, leaves and seeds catches most new gardeners by surprise. It seems to take so long for the plants to start looking like the vegetables they planned to grow, that they think it is going to take forever for them to produce edible food.

Wrong! Plants mature in a very short space of time and there is only a relatively short period of time for harvesting. Zucchinis, for example, double in size overnight if left unpicked and quickly become more like torpedoes than food.

At our community farm, I see many of our new members totally surprised to find that they have missed their harvest. The vegetables that seemed to take so long to grow rapidly matured when they just weren't watching! Troy and Shona, in the picture below, keep a close eye on what's happening in their own personal vegetable gardens at the Castelen Community Farm and harvest a bountiful supply of vegetables ever week from just a tiny plot of land. This is just one of the advantages of being a Community Farm member.














If you want to take full advantage of your garden's produce remember to visit your garden regularly, pick the delicious vegetables that are ready and eat them as soon as possible because the nutrient value of vegetables starts dropping as soon as they are picked. You'll be amazed at the difference in taste between a just picked cauliflower and one that has been sitting on the supermarket shelf for a week.

Written by Bev Buckley Visit learn more

How to increase the profit from your garden or small farm

How to increase the profit from your garden or small farm NOW! (growing vegetables, fruits, nuts, berries or herbs).
As the world population escalates, food prices will rise. This trend will be reinforced by rising oil & gas prices (mainstream agriculture is dependent on oil & gas for transport, fertilizers, herbicides & pesticides). Therefore there is a great business opportunity in growing food. Over the past 18 months, I have been doing a study that takes over 100 of the main food crops and assesses and compares their profitability. This is a brief discussion paper giving you a preview. Clearly more money will be made growing the most profitable crops and this study provides you with over 100 crops ranked in terms of profitability. The crops are also categorized according to their climate suitability, so you can find for example which are the most profitable crops in the tropics, temperate or cold climates. What then are the key factors that affect profitability when growing crops? Clearly your choice of crops is fundamental to your financial success. The other factor you have to evaluate is the market demand for the crops you select and your ability to reach that market. You then need to be able to grow the crops. This subject and an overview of over 140 popular crops is covered in my book called “Growing Healthy” subtitled “How to make over $100,000 p.a. on five acres growing fruit and vegetables organically”. This book is available from the website www.growinghealthyorganicfood.com (see book 1) . For even more detail on growing effectively we have 12 monthly lessons on nature’s twelve universal principles of organic food growing. See course 1 at www.growinghealthyorganicfood.com . The other key topic in assessing profitability is cost. There are capital items like land & equipment & buildings. There are the variable costs of seeds, seedlings, fertilizers, watering, pruning & weeding, soil preparation, planting & harvesting, cleaning & packing, transport & marketing. In most of these there is a labour component and this is generally the big cost. Labour costs vary hugely around the world, where the lesser developed countries such as China & India have a big cost advantage and in the western world USA is generally much lower than say the UK or Australia. These factors and others are assessed crop by crop in my study. But for now here are some quick effective ways to improve your profitability immediately: 1. Temperature has a major impact on growth—too hot or too cold stops growth dead in its tracks for most plants. So if you are in an area that gets extreme hot temperatures (over 30 degrees C) you can improve production by using a shadehouse in the summer. Depending on the size of the area you grow in this can be a small homemade device with cloth draped over wood or plastic poles or a large walk in shadehouse with sprinklers. If you live in cold climates that get frosts or snow, then you can improve productivity and lengthen your growing season by using a greenhouse in the winter. 2. Another key factor that impacts profitability is the length of time from planting to maturity and harvesting. Fruit & nut trees for example typically take 3 years or even longer to bear a crop and then it is often then only a small crop and may take 4 to 7 years before full production is achieved. And then you get only one crop a year from most fruit trees. Fruits & nuts payoff is good longer term as the labour component is lower than for vegetables & herbs. 3. However, if you want a quick return on your investment forget fruit & nut trees. You need to focus on vegetables, herbs and berries. The typical vegetable takes 3 months to maturity. Time and cashflow are major factors in profitability, so how about these:months to grow and many of them can be grown several times a year (depending on the length of your growing season). Some vegetables you can pick many times from the one plant---it just keeps producing! 4. Let’s get specific: (a) Rhubarb is a magic crop to grow. I can pick up to 8 times in a year off the one plant. We have of course a particularly long growing season of 10 to 12 months a year, but even in a shorter growing season area you can pick every 5 to 6 weeks once the plant is mature. (b) There are some other crops that you can pick up to five times from the one plant—namely zucchini, kale and silver beet or swiss chard. (c) The other recommendation is to go for crops with the shortest time from planting Zucchini 7 weeks Radish 7 weeks Silver beet 8 weeks Lettuce 9 weeks Broccoli 10 weeks Carrots 11 weeks The exact time will vary slightly with different varieties and the weather. Conclusion: If you try some of the above recommendations you cannot help but improve your return from your activities on your garden or small farm. At least they will make it easier to cut down on your food bills by selling your excess produce nore readily! However this brief free report cannot cover all the details of growing and marketing your crops. If you want more I have recently produced a short 12 week program that does all this. It is now available as course 2 on the home page of our website: go to http://www.growinghealthyorganicfood.com/course2. This program provides a comparative analysis of the profitability of over 100 crops including helping you set up a step by step business plan to maximize the return on your land size and specific climate. This training program also gives you the use of a profitability calculator where you can input your own figures to calculate the specific profitability of a crop you grow in your climate, with your local pricing and local cost of labour and the growing time of the particular variety that you have chosen. Best wishes, Geoff Buckley.