As springs rolls in, we dream of a bountiful garden – beautiful red tomatoes, tasty capsicums and fruit trees laden with produce – and each year, fruit flies make their presence known, causing significant losses to local farmers and market gardeners.

Andrew Jessop, horticultural entomologist, from the Central Coast, will be in Moruya to discuss new systems that can help you with fruit fly control. These systems use fewer pesticides resulting in a significant reduction of pesticide impact on the environment, growers and consumers.

Andrew will illustrate how to “think like a fruit fly” so you can apply the best strategies for your situation, including monitoring traps, mass-trappings, fruit fly baits and sanitation.

Come along to this free information session on Sunday, August 21 at CWA Hall, 64 Queen Street, Moruya from 2.30 - 4pm.  Afternoon tea will be provided.

Please email Sandra Makdessi education@sageproject.org.au or text her on 0439 032 038 to lodge your interest.  

With the continuing success of the SAGE Farmers Market in Moruya, there is a growing awareness and demand for locally grown produce, preferable using sustainable organic practices. 

SAGE together with Fraser Bailey of Old Mill Road Bio-farm, have developed a series of seven workshops (presented over six months) to provide people with the skills and knowledge, tips and tricks, to seriously grow great vegetables.

These workshops are ideal for any scale gardeners – backyard gardener who want to take their knowledge to the next level, and existing small-scale market gardeners.

You can choose to attend individual workshops – for those who have a gap in their gardening knowledge, or you can enroll in the complete series of seven workshops at a discounted price. It’s up to you.

1.     Market Gardening Business: from the ground up – Saturday 30 July 2016

Becoming a successful market gardener is as much about small business as it is growing vegetables. In this session you will discover the best approach to starting your market gardening business. We will be talking about money objectively and without passion. It can be boring but it’s vitally important if you want market gardening to contribute to your livelihood for the long term. We will:

·       Set clear aims – know what your business is striving for and how to work towards achieving it.

·       Identify your market and how to develop it.

·       Start planning – cash flow and for potential growth.

·       Form a budget.

·       Keeping records – the best thing you can do for your business

2.     Planning and scheduling your season - Saturday 13 August 2016

Before getting out into the garden, getting your head around planning is one of the most important topics you will learn to help you achieve a productive vegetable garden.  Topics include:

·       Understand the importance of planning and scheduling for success.

·       Identify what you want to grow and develop a planting plan.

·       Having a plan but adapting to change.

·       Being organised – the diversity of mixed market gardening leads to complexity that can be paralyzing – organisation helps.

3.     Raising seedlings – Sunday 28 August 2016

Raising your own seedlings allows you to choose the type and variety of plants and can be cost effective. This workshop will be held at Phil Timm’s property in Moruya. Phil sells his seedlings at both the SAGE Farmers Market and the Moruya Country Markets. This workshop will get you started by learning how to:

·       Make seed raising mix and understand the key ingredients.

·       Use different soil containers to raise seedlings – soil blocks, pots, other types.

·       Know when to ‘pot on’ or ‘plant out’.

4.     Seed sowing and transplanting - Saturday 10 September 2016

Learning when to plant out seedlings and which plants are best to sow direct help manage time and achieve a higher success rate with your plants. Topics include:

·       Methods to planting out and direct seed sowing.

·       Prepare your beds for planting.

5.     Maintaining the Veggie Patch – Saturday 15 October 2016

Keeping check of what is happening in the garden and by observation, you begin to develop strategies and techniques to help manage plant health and identify best practices to garden bed maintenance.  This hands-on workshop will have you:

·       Managing weeds – using hand tools, without straining your back to maintain beds.

·       Foliar feeding – do you need to?

·       Observation – what are you looking for?

·       Maintaining moisture – keeping up the watering.

·       Record keeping – monitoring your observations, what worked and what didn’t. 

6.     Backyard Chickens – Saturday 12 November 2016 | 10am – 3pm

Chickens are the ultimate sustainability machine – in the garden they happily scratch up weeds, seeds and grubs while feeding the garden with their manure, they love to consume most kitchen scraps and are a good supplier of fresh quality eggs.  In this full day workshop you will learn how to integrate chickens into your garden and we will build a simple chicken tractor.  Topics include:

·       Identify the benefits and problems with keeping chickens.

·       Choose the right chicken breed and number, for your needs.

·       Essential requirements to creating a healthy and happy life for your chickens –food, shelter, space and bird health.

·       Problem solving.

·       Housing options.

7.     Pests and diseases – Saturday 21 January 2017

Knowing the needs of the plants (soil life, compost and water) will result a thriving garden. But sometimes things don’t go as planned. This workshop will go through natural approaches and provide best practice remedies for common issues.

·       Learn how to identify problems that require action.

·       Troubleshooting for a healthy outcome for your plants and soil.

·       How to maintain and support a thriving garden.

SAGE Garden – these workshops will be held at SAGE Garden in Queen St, Moruya and participants will be using the commercial beds as a template on which to explore and develop their skills so they can adapt them to their own circumstances or enterprise.

About the presenter -
Fraser Bayley, with his partner Kirsti Wilkinson run Old Mill Road BioFarm, a small farming enterprise that aims to enrich local food culture, encourage more small scale farmers and connect those farmers to the consumer. They have developed their farm over the years using sustainable farming practices and sell their chemical free produce at SAGE Farmers Market every week.

About this series of workshops – Fraser Bayley, who designed and developed this series of workshops for SAGE is also the presenter. He is an experienced and successful market gardener, a great communicator, an educator, mentor and presenter. These workshops and the presenter are not accredited however they will teach you very relevant, useful and practical skills. The primary aim is to support and encourage the success of potential and existing gardeners and small-scale growers.

Time: Workshops will run from 8.30am – 1pm (except for the Backyard Chickens which runs from 10am – 3pm).

Fee for Workshop Individual workshops are $55/workshop (SAGE Member) or $65 for Non Members), with the exemption of Backyard Chickens workshop which is $75 SAGE Member and $85 for Non member. Or you can choose to enrol in all seven workshops as a SAGE Member for only $370. Includes notes, morning tea and a light lunch of seasonal local produce.

BOOK NOW So if you are serious about growing a productive vegetable garden using sustainable agricultural practices, then please contact Sandra Makdessi – SAGE Education Officer by email education@sageproject.org.au or on 0439 032 038.