Phil Lavers is passionate about good food. He runs Moonacres, a 140 acre fruit and vegetable farm in the NSW Southern Highlands, and sells his award-winning certified organic produce direct to some of Sydney’s best restaurants.

Phil is not a guy to beat around the bush. He sees big problems with typical practices in fruit and vegetable farming and the impacts those practices have on the soil, the environment and our health. A relentless experimenter, Phil is determined to find ways to do things better.

In this episode we talk about weaning off the rotary hoe, managing weeds, keeping bare soil to an absolute minimum with annual vegetable crops, how to grow the best tasting silverbeet, valuing good food, being a ‘sugar daddy’ for soil microbes, cover cropping and stealing the microbiome from cover crops to grow cash crops.

Head to soilsforlife.org.au to find out more about our work. 

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Links and resources

About Phil and Moonacres

• Moonacres website - Moonacres Kitchen - for more information about whole of operation, farm tours, training opportunities and markets where you can find their produce.

• Moonacres - Heart and Soil Episode #1  youtube channel link

• Organically certified - can’t see by whom he is certified 

Other references from the episode:

• https://www.facebook.com/RailwayStMarketMossVale/ 

• Roller Crimper Roller Crimper Blueprints - Rodale Institute

• Austrian weeding plough

• Southern Highlands on the Grow Inc GROW – Southern Highlands 

Further learning:
To gain some deeper understanding about multispecies crops Phil is using in his soil health building rotations refer to our Soils for Life Multispecies practice guide Practice Guide: Multispecies Cropping - Soils For Life