Grow your own food

Healthy Eating and Climate: Grow your own food

Food from Home includes great tips on growing your own food, seasonal planting guides, great recipes and stories form other gardeners. 

(NB: The Community Garden guide does not include Mornington Peninsula Gardens.  See our Community Gardens page for more information).

Gardening Australia includes garden stories from Gardening Australia, a comprehensive Plant Finder as well as numerous guides on growing vegetables, growing methods, soil health and plant health.

Find out more about the environmental workshops offered by the Shire on our Community Environmental Workshops page.

Free seeds at the Seed library

The Shire libraries have a free Seed Library where gardeners “borrow” seeds from the library at planting time. Mornington Peninsula Libraries members can take up to three seed packets per visit. Written on the packets are the plant’s name, a description and care instructions.  At the end of the growing season, you save seeds from the plants and return a portion of the seeds to the library for others to use.

Find out more: Our Seed Libraries - Mornington Peninsula Libraries (mornpen.vic.gov.au)

The Briars Heritage See Garden

The Briars Historic Homestead and Garden, located in Mount Martha, includes a Heritage Seed Garden maintained by local volunteers.  The garden only grows heritage plants and harvests the seeds to ensure these unique plant varieties can be grown by home gardeners well into the future. You can buy these heritage seeds from the Briars Visitors centre during opening hours.  Limited amounts of garlic and heritage tomato seedlings are available in season, please keep an eye on the Briars social media channels for availability or call us on ph. 5950 1221.

Share your produce

Home Harvest exchanges food swaps and share carts are a great way to share your excess produce, gain extra produce and connect with other gardeners. 

You can also find a Grow Free sharing cart near you, where produce is shared for free.

Composting

Home composting is a great way to improve your garden soil, helping you to produce healthy, nutritious fruit and vegetables.  For tips on composting and to find out about our composting rebates see Composting & Worm Farms - Mornington Peninsula Shire (mornpen.vic.gov.au)

Learn more

There are many great local opportunities to learn more about growing your own food.  See what’s coming up by searching under ‘Gardening’ at the Community Environmental Workshops and at Mornington Peninsula Libraries