North Freo Social Farm

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North Fremantle, WA
North Freo Social Farm

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A 1/3 acre urban community farm located in the heart of North Freo, Western Australia. Plus a load of benefits. Visit www.northfreosocialfarm.org
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North Fremantle Social Farm is a place for people to connect through growing, making and distributing produce. Our vision is to support healthy living and offer opportunities for us all to learn and participate in urban farming. And to have a healthy, thriving farm right here in the heart of North Fremantle. You can be part of it all through farm membership, workshops, social events and volunteer gardening days. Regular volunteering - Tues, Thurs, Sat mornings from 9am

Become a farm member and receive a share of the produce we grow.

31/10/2026

If you missed the chance to make your own nasturtium capers come on down to the Farm for our next Little Pantry Next Saturday for all your Pantry favourites. New season honey is in too! Yum!

28/10/2026

They call this time in the calender 'the hungry gap'. Its when all the winter veg has finished (think cabbages and broccoli) and the summer veggies are not yet ready to harvest. The Farm always looks amazing in spring, but its true that loads of our garden beds are taken up with newly planted summer fruiting crops - some don't produce till Jan with their glut coming in Feb, eggplants are a classic! BUT with some clever planting (and good luck!) We can keep a supply of 'all year round' veggies for our members to pick. Beets, silverbeet, fennel, lettuce, carrots, tatsoi, radishes and herbs are examples of veggies that we *try* to keep in regular supply. We also try to get a jump on planting our summer veggies - with mild winters and no risk of frost we can def do this, check out our squash ready for harvest already! So with these couple of strategies we do our best to keep the hungry gap at bay!

24/10/2026

Lovely to have a visit this week from Josh Wilson, our local Freo frederal MP. We gave a tour of the Farm - worm farms, poly tunnels, native nook and all, inevitably ending with a cuppa and a chat ☕️🍰

In a week where we are all far more concious of valuing our civic leaders and all they do, it was great to just chat amongst the vollies and the veggies and realise common values and human connections. Face to face is the place!

Thanks for the visit Josh!

Josh Wilson MP

22/10/2026

Tubs look familiar but not quite? These are ya typical flexi tubs bought from the big green shed (🙄), that break at the handles after 6 months use. While considering what alternatives to purchase, one of our amazing vollies whisked these broken tubs away and worked some DIY-mend-and-make-do-thrifty-old-school-genius on the old tubs and wham-o, the tubs have a second life! Ian trimmed the broken handles off, used rope, washers and PVC pipe to make new handles. Thanks Ian!

At some point these will break again so we'd love to hear your alternatives ti the flexi tub (so we no longer feed the landfill with plastic waste or the big green shed with our money!)

20/10/2026

Just some fun Farm snaps! Very happy to report that all our crucial summer planting is done! Phew!

We've planted:
13 beds of tommies 🍅
4 beds of eggplants 🍆
4 beds of capsies 🫑
4 beds of cucs 🥒
2 beds of basil 🌱
3 beds of zuccs 🥒 (more to come)
1 bed of okra 🥒
Half a bed of chilli 🌶

And this year we are trying again with beans. Somehow these have just never really fired at the Farm, but if there is ever a lesson about gardening, it is to persist! So we are trying Jackson stringless French beans. These are a bush variety so no staking necessary- thank goodness because we've run out of wire!

19/10/2026

Well at least our feeble garlic crop provided entertainment 🤣

This was the total crop from one 10m bed of garlic. Humiliating! It was the bed that was attacked by onion aphids and despite our love and care, that actually did work to rid the aphids, the damage was too great and their growth was slowed too much. Lesson - be ruthless, rip it out and plant something else! Obtain a yeild!

Happy to report that other beds are much better - four beds were super, three beds slightly below par, and this one was an utter fail (apart from our learnings and a good laugh!).

17/10/2026

It's mulch season! Our Freo soil can become hydrophobic so quickly once it gets a bit warmer and the rain stops. Our soil is NOT suited to growing veggies - there's no mistake about that*. BUT there is plenty we can do to support high yeilding, healthy veggies during spring, summer and into autumn. Mulching is on the top of that list!
We use pea straw (from Nibali Stockfeed , they deliver too!) and put a light layer over the garden beds. We leave a gap around each plant because lil slaters love living in mulch and we don't want them too close to tender young seedlings! We tend not to bother with mulch in winter and the cooler months but this time of year its essential!

*Our soil is not crap, gutless, useless or poor. It is perfectly perfect for growing natives that have evolved with it. Its our problem that we insist on growing hungry exotics. I'm not indigenous, but somehow I don't think the ancestors would appreciate these derogatory terms used to describe the soil we are blessed to live, work and grow on.

13/10/2026

It's garlic harvest time! This year its a pass mark - not amazing but not terrible. We still have three more beds to harvest and they look like they will be a tad better than these first few beds we harvested.

I'd love to blame the weather or the bugs, but this sub par harvest was just a poor decision by me (the farmer!). But here's the whole sad saga if you care you read on...🥹

If you remember last year we had our first horrible infestation of onion aphids. At the time, I put this down to, in part, that we doubled the compost and gave generous side dressings during the growing season, leading to lush and juicy leaves on the garlic - totally irresistible for onion aphids. This may be true, but we did get a decent crop from the unaffected beds. Anyway, this year we went lighter on the compost and side dressings. This did result in less foliage bust also resulted in smaller bulbs ☹️, and had zero impact on aphids 😡 - we lost two bed to the buggers.

BUT (here is the silver lining, a lesson!) my observation this year is that aphids don't seem to move much - the infestations were in basically the same area both years. So my conclusion is : grow garlic with generous compost and side dressings but plant well away from previous infestations. Also, don't plant spring onion in the aphid zone as they suffer the most from onion aphids.

Now let's all try to remember this for next year!

Address

10 Thompson Road
North Fremantle, WA
6159

Website

http://www.northfreosocialfarm.org/

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