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The Gleanr team is proud to announce the launch of a collaborative community platform for urban food growers.

Extensive experience in urban agriculture and community building has helped us to design a space that offers free access to quality information and unique tools, while cultivating (pardon the pun) a rewarding experience for all.

The result is a platform that reflects our vision of enabling local food growing, regardless of patch size, location or experience level. However, as Gleanr Co-founder Peter says, ‘everyone can grow healthy food, but we also want people to be realistic and know that gardens need to be looked after. The key to success is persistence and accessing objective knowledge at all stages of the food growing journey, in other words finding knowledge in context.’. Gleanr is designed around creating context. Persistence is in your hands.

Whether you want to grow vegetables in your backyard or simply raise a small box of herbs; whether you are growing food alone or with family and friends; or whether you seek to upgrade your skills to have your own commercial urban farm, Gleanr has it covered. For those starting from scratch or seeking to expand and make the food garden more consistently productive, Gleanr offers e-resources and tools, such as our Planting Wizard, which have been developed from 15 years of first-hand experience in teaching and supporting people growing their own veggies, herbs and fruit.

Gleanr is about helping you learn how to get the best out of your garden, assist you in designing your own growing space, based on your location, and finally about helping you connect with a community of growers.

Best of all, it’s free to register.

One of our key observations after many years of working with people from all walks of life wanting to grow their own food, was the fact that despite a never-ending stream of ‘how to’ books and instructional videos, people often get frustrated with problems that can occur in any veggie patch or food garden.

We recognised early on that no one book or video would be sufficient to help a food grower maintain their garden sustainably. Part of the problem lies in the fact that there are many complex factors in creating a garden. Weather and climate, soil changes and water quality can all contribute to changes in the garden which could result in crop losses or increased maintenance costs.

It goes without saying that it is important to be patient and keep learning. Gleanr has focused on developing tools that can reduce costs and time, and sometimes even frustration, in order to become a good food grower.

We have developed a set of tools to help food growers design their gardens using local climate data from their nearest weather station. That data is then combined with vital information and growing facts about most vegetables and herbs. Our tools help people make the right decisions about what to plant, and when and how to go about it based on local climate conditions. These tools are accessible through Gleanr’s ToolShed, which also provides many tried and tested e-resources to aid you in improving your food garden.

Gleanr’s Plant Wizard provides key data and information about the majority of vegetables and herbs. Best of all, by using a combination of our tools, growers can integrate climate data specific to their location, and at the same time reveal the crop that is best to plant at the time of interest. Growers can easily narrow down crop selection, based on such factors as ease of growing, yield for space, companion planting and container growing. These tools, in addition to comprehensive organic pest and disease management on all crops, provide an unequalled experience in tailoring plant selection and management to climate, space and gardeners’ skill levels.

All this is further supported by lots of easy-to-understand tip sheets, instructions and checklists.

All available for free to the Gleanr community.

In addition to free access to useful resources and tools to help you get the best out of your patch, Gleanr also offers webinars, workshops, coaching, consulting, specialist resources, garden management plans and large project management at a competitive rate. If you are interested in setting up a profitable urban agriculture project or improve your skills, Gleanr can customise a program to best suit your needs and budget.

To find out how Gleanr can help, drop us a line below.

Australians have embraced a global groundswell of interest in growing healthy food in cities and urban areas. Getting our hands dirty, planting our favourite veggies and cooking tastier organically grown food while also enjoying seeing birds and bees thrive in our backyards, has proven to be excellent for our minds and bodies.

Urban Agriculture (UA) is just one of many terms used to describe this global movement. Gardening, urban farming, backyard gardening, city farming, rooftop gardening, city food growing, are all terms that are used when talking about what are essentially different forms of growing food in urban and peri-urban environments.

Food has been grown in cities since the dawn of civilisation, but the importance of urban agriculture in all its forms is given new meaning when we consider that we are part of the first ‘urban century’ in human history, where the majority of the world’s population now lives in urban environments.

Scientists also have taken a deep look into the health benefits of urban gardening and confirmed what most people who have grown their own food already know; while exposure to plants and green space generally is beneficial to our mental and physical health, working in one’s own food garden is particularly good for us. The therapeutic value of growing one’s own food is, for many, one of the strongest motivators, along with a desire for tastier vegetables. Marked reductions in stress, blood pressure and muscle tension are only some of the well documented benefits that food growers reap.

So, along with the health benefits derived from spending time in a food garden, most food growers also quickly discover that a well-managed garden can produce a significant amount of food. And, because not everyone has access to a large patch of land, even a small space, when well nurtured, can provide abundant healthy vegetables, spices and greens for an entire family.

Growing your own food is also an excellent way of helping the natural environment by supporting local habitats. Insects, bees, birds and even some small animals can all benefit from local gardens. Many urban food growers are willing to do whatever they can to be part of a global community that cares for the environment.

An increasing number of people are interested in the food system and how it can be localised, thereby reducing transport costs and increasing food security and the resilience of communities. More and more people are becoming local food entrepreneurs, growing food that is sold locally directly to cafes and shops, thus making it a viable business venture or even a fun ‘side hustle’.

The list of benefits is ever-growing. Gleanr believes that collaboration, through sharing knowledge and working in harmony, further increases positive community impacts.