Introduction
What You Will Find In This CD

THE PHOTOS
All the photos are taken on our farm which is located in the Southern Tablelands of New South Wales, Australia

We have tried to photograph best practice, however, things do go wrong and where we think a point can be made by showing you something awry we will show it.

The photographs have been taken over a three year period with many willing photographic subjects (human & vegetable). It has not always been possible to photograph a long sequence, like bed preparation, all in one hit but we have tried to make the sequences as smooth as possible.

SECTION ON PLANNING & DESIGN
This is probably the most crucial part of an enterprise and often the most neglected.
Design of rotations, working out crop quantities etc... is not always easy in a diverse operation and this is definitely a case where we would refer you to the "The New Organic Grower" by Eliot Coleman.

We have shown in detail what we did, many years ago now. It took a lot of hours in the office but rewards us every year. Having a good plan makes you feel secure. It also gives you the confidence to take the occasional risks.

We have also included some Microsoft Word ®, Microsoft Excel ® and Adobe PDF ® documents in a folder labelled "Other_Files". These are for you to copy and then use in your own planning activities.
We grow 1/2 hectare (1 acre) of annual vegetables in what works out to be 100 beds. This is enough for 20 - 25 families. When you are using the plans just scale up or down as necessary.

SECTION ON GARDEN WORK
These chapters illustrate the gardening jobs that have to be done and the tools we use to do the work.
Clearing the ground for growing tomatoes is no different to clearing the ground for lettuces, the issue is whether or not the job was well done and whether there may be an even better or faster way to do it.

Small scale growers often complain that:

The solution to both these issues is to become much more skilled at the day to day work and to make sure that you haven't been tempted to shortcut the planning process.

SECTION ON GROWING SPECIFIC VEGETABLES
This section is by no means comprehensive.
We have tried to cover examples from most groups of vegetables, so there are crops like garlic that are grown on beds and sweet corn that we grow as a row crop.
We have shown tomatoes as an example of a greenhouse crop, and savoy cabbages to represent all the large winter brassicas.
We hope to release a second CD covering more vegetable varieties.

REFERENCE SECTION
We have included annotated listings of useful:

• books
• magazines
• websites
• suppliers

YOUR SUGGESTIONS
Please send us feedback. Because this photo essay is in electronic form it can easily be changed, modified or updated, so let us know if there are improvements that you would like made. Our email address is: cd@allsun.com.au