The ‘mad bastard’ growing veggies for Sydney’s top restaurants, with Phil Lavers

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. If you’re finding value in the Soils for Life podcast, please consider donating to help us continue sharing stories and knowledge from farmers. As a non-profit organisation, we rely on support from generous donors, so please consider making a donation via soilsforlife.org.au/donate . Of course, we understand that not everyone has the means to support us financially - you can also help by rating and reviewing us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. If you have feedback, or suggestions of people or topics we should cover, you can reach us at info@soilsforlife.org.au, we love hearing from you. Thanks for listening. 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 youtube channel link Organically certified - can’t see by whom he is certified Other references from the episode: 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

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The ‘mad bastard’ growing veggies for Sydney’s top restaurants, with Phil Lavers is an episode from Soils For Life by Soils For Life.

This episode is 00:45:26 long.

This episode was published on Jun 10, 2025.

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