The greatest benefit of growing our own vegetables organically is that they are free from the crap that the commercial non organic growers apply to their crops and the additives in the processed ones. It has also been proven that the vitamin content and health benefits of organically fruits and vegetables is greater than those grown using chemicals.

Growing vegetables here all year round is not an easy task. Lack of rain, with many days in the summer where temperatures are excess of 35° celcius make the raising of seedlings nigh on impossible.

Seed sown in early spring and the autumn usually do well as long as they are sown after a reasonable rain (25mm or greater) and watered well during the growing season.

Late in 2005 we erected a shade house, 10.5 by 4.5 metres, covered with biscut coloured shade cloth. Our idea is to grow as many vegetables in the shade house as space allows during the hotter months as the biscut coloured shade cloth is designed to allow the light in but reflect the intense heat.

All of our vegetable garden beds have been sited so that they run east to west. Our vegetables are planted north to south enabling them to get the full benefit of the sun.

The garden beds are structured to give the greatest use of the available space with most of them being about two metres wide making them easy to work from either side. This allows the rows of vegetables to be harvested easily and when a row or several rows are completly harvested the area is easy to prepare for the next crop.

The paths between the beds are bare earth as it appears to give the least amount of problems. If they tend to get a bit sticky in the wet weather we scatter some straw on them which eventually ends up being dug into the bed. When I dig the beds I usually dig the neighbouring bit of path as well as this helps keeping the area weed free.

Irrigation pipes that feed the garden taps are located under the paths which not only give an idea where they are but keep them out of harms way when the beds are cultivated.

With the tools we use the beds are easily cultivated from either side and when planting, hand weeding or harvesting we put down planks of timber to save compacting the soil.

We make sure that our beds are no higher than the paths as raised beds in our hot climate dry out too fast and can waste a lot of water.