How to start a vegetable garden with Little Lyndoch Farm

How to start a vegetable garden, Little Lyndoch Flower Farm timeline

• November 2025: Started planning vegie garden layout, beds and greenhouse placement.
• December 2025: Laid concrete pad for greenhouse. Assembled greenhouse and garden beds, filling them with soil and compost. Planted first crops (seedlings and tomato seeds, all from Bunnings).
• January 2026: Laid weedmat and gravel between the garden beds.
• February 2026: First vegie harvest!
• April 2026: Cleared out summer plants. Final harvest, used to make vats of sauce and green tomato pickle. Prepared beds for winter. 

What's the backstory of Little Lyndoch vegetable garden?

Having rapidly evolved from gardening novices to successful flower farmers, Katie and Rob of Little Lyndoch Farm in South Australia’s Barossa Valley have turned their hand to vegetables. Their dream for this space involved vegetable beds bursting with produce, a gorgeous greenhouse for seed starting and pottering, and a tidy and visually appealing layout that they could appreciate from their front door.

Though the couple are fairly new to edible crops, Katie’s family history (as commercial growers) and Greek cultural legacy is rooted in the vegetable patch. “Growing your own produce is such a huge part of my culture, so it’s always been a huge part of my life,” says Katie. “We always planned to have a non-working space on the farm, where we could just enjoy gardening.”

With this in mind, and guided by advice from their Instagram community, plus hands-on support from their local Bunnings store, the couple set to work. Here’s how they did it.

Tip: Always wear the appropriate safety equipment (safety glasses, gloves, ear muffs and a mask, for example) and always follow the instructions for the product or equipment.

How Little Lyndoch designed their veggie patch

• Mirroring aesthetics from the flower farm: From the tidy rows of pompom-like dahlias to the picture-perfect modern farmhouse, this boutique flower farm is a celebration of beauty, and the vegetable garden needed to fit with the exquisite aesthetic – particularly as it’s located between the house and the street. “Everything we’ve designed on the farm has very much been about symmetry,” says Katie. A limestone gravel pathway leads directly from the front door to the vegetable garden and greenhouse.
• Raised beds are key: Mirrored on both sides of the pathway are a series of generously spaced hip-height raised beds.
• They stayed practical: As well as aesthetics, the site and elevated design of this area of the garden were driven by practicality. “We’ve got a lot of pine trees at the front of our property, and we couldn’t plant flowers there because the feeder roots were suffocating all the plants,” says Katie.

How to use succession planting for a vegetable garden

The stunning greenhouse not only anchors the garden scheme, it’s central to Katie and Rob’s aim to enjoy year-round harvests through succession planting. “We can start seeds in the greenhouse in winter, then direct sow in the beds in summer. The goal is to always have some vegetable, herbs or fruit growing in the garden,” says Katie.

Mastering succession planting is an ongoing learning curve. “I’ve already made tons of mistakes!” says Katie. “It’s different [from growing flowers] because all the vegetables require different knowledge.” But there’ve been loads of successes, too, with her harvesting basket regularly full of eggplants, capsicums and silverbeet. The tomatoes, in particular, have been a roaring success. “We had three truss tomato plants, which I got from Bunnings, and they’re the best I’ve ever had. We were picking buckets of them every couple of days.”

Want tips for starting a flower business?

Check out our article as we go behind-the-scenes with Little Lyndoch Flower Farm.

How to create an underground support system

Use Pope irrigation lines: The secret to a successful harvest lies in the groundwork – below the surface lies a network of Pope irrigation lines. “Rob dug the trenches and laid the irrigation before we installed everything. Then we created risers to go inside the beds, so when we filled them with soil, there was a connection point to the [drip line] irrigation on the top.”

How to create an above-ground support system

Use mesh frames: Above ground, sprawling plants are supported on reo mesh frames. Katie explains they wanted a more permanent solution than bamboo stakes, and she loves the neatness and symmetry of this solution.

What type of soil to use in a vegie garden?

A major benefit of the raised beds is the ability to control soil content. As with the flowers, Katie and Rob use:

• A 50/50 mix of sandy loam and mushroom compost. “It’s worked really well, having that fungus component in the compost,” says Katie.
• Mulch provides protection for their seedlings and breaks down to add more nutrients.
• Neutrog liquid fertiliser is applied regularly.
• Aged manure from their chickens, sheep and alpacas is also the couple’s secret weapon. The manure is applied to the flower rows – and this spring, to the vegie beds, too.

Want to create a similar vibe in your outdoor space?

Check out our article on how to create a modern farmhouse garden.

Keep in mind...

• After applying fertiliser near edible plants, delay harvesting for a few days and rinse well before cooking and eating.
• Wear gloves and a mask when handling mulch, compost and potting mix.
• Take care when selecting your plants as some can be poisonous to children and pets, and check their suitability for your region, as some may be classified as weeds in certain states and territories.

Photo credit: Kate Paneros.