Our growing methods

A lot of our global farming practices since the industrial revolution have proved increasingly damaging to both our soils, our health and the health of our local environment. Therefore our practices focus around fostering soil and environmental health, which in turn foster our own health through the high quality vegetables we produce.

Growing Organically and regeneratively

Being organic is at the heart of what we do. Oakcroft has been certified with the Soil Association since the 60’s, which means that the site has been following organic practices for over 60 years. It is one of the oldest organic farms in the country.

Therefore, all of our practices align with the Soil Association’s organic standards, and we receive audits twice a year to ensure we are following the standards carefully.

This means that we do not use any non-organic products such as pesticides and fertilisers. Our fertility comes from compost and maintaining good soil health.

In addition to organic, we class our practices as “Regenerative”. Although there is no certification for this in the UK yet, we take our practices further, with soil building through low tillage and nourishing the biology in our soils.

We are ‘stewards’ of the landscape, fostering it for future generations and we want to preserve and improve what’s already there.

Protecting our soil

With the continual erosion of our topsoils across the globe, one of our key principles is that we do not till our soils. Inverting the soil layers with machinery or other practices has been shown to decrease the life in our soils, break up its structure and release stored carbon back into the atmosphere. The loosened soil is then prone to erosion during heavy rainfall or extreme weather events.

By keeping the soils intact and plant roots in the ground, we preserve soil biodiversity and capture carbon back into the soil. The thriving biology below ground then rewards us by feeding and supporting our plants until harvest.

Encouraging biodiversity

Our market garden produces a huge range of produce in a relatively small amount of space. We grow over fifty different varieties of fruits and vegetables and so our farm is always biodiverse. In a conventional farm, monocultures can create hundreds of acres of only one type of ‘boom and bust’ habitat.

However, on our farm there is always something in the ground with different bloom times for our crops and habitat for beneficial insects. This, in combination with our wildflower banks, deadheadges, hedgerows and surrounding woodland creates an incredible habitat for wildlife. Oakcroft always feels alive; whether it be the singing of birds or buzzing of insects.