OMG - Organic Market Garden
257 Symonds Street, Eden Terrace, Auckland
The OMG farm began as an empty lot in 2018. For The Love of Bees turned this land into a high yield urban farm by using no-till, regenerative growing methods. We now grow enough food to feed over 30 families a week on just 450sqm of planted land - that’s less space than a netball court.
The potential of regenerative biology-first urban farms as climate change ready infrastructure is immense!
Urban farms deliver 10 climate change ready values: biodiversity, water retention, carbon drawdown, heat sinking, air filtration, food & nutrition security, 21st century jobs, social cohesion and optimism.
Community Supported Agriculture
Veggie Boxes
A weekly veggie box filled with nutritious seasonal veggies grown in the heart of Auckland city by our urban farmers. Sign up for three months and pick up your box each Tuesday or Friday between 9.30am - 2pm, after hours pick ups are available also.
Salad Mix
A weekly salad mix subscription. Grown at our Symonds Street urban and harvested the same day you collect. This salad is as fresh and flavourful as it gets! Sign up for three months and collect Tuesday or Friday between 9.30am - 2pm, after hours pick ups are available also. Learn more
Food Scraps for Compost
If you are local to the Eden Terrace area and want to see your food scraps go to better use, join our Compost Subscription - We’ll take your scraps and turn them into microbially rich compost that is then returned to the land to grow more nutritious food. Learn more
Seedling Packs
We grow Seedling Packs at the OMG Urban Farm each season and sell them in packs of ‘polycrop guilds’ specially designed to be planted together and form a strong community of plants as they grow.
Join a Working Bee
Be part of our morning harvest
Tuesdays and Fridays, 7.00 am - 12.00 pm at OMG
Learn more here
The OMG site is on steep ground, previously covered in rubble. We’ve demonstrated how possible it is to turn a challenging piece of land into a high yield farm.
With advice from Regenerative Agronomist Daniel Schuurman and a system of microbial supports from BioLogix NZ we are restoring life within the soil.
At OMG we integrate knowledge from permaculture, biointensive, biodynamic, organic, regenerative, synthropic disciplines and emerging soil science to grow an abundance of organic produce from our small site.
Our vision is to enable communities in Tāmaki Makaurau and other urban centres to have access to fresh affordable produce within walking distance, grown in a way that helps heal the planet.
OMG on Seven Sharp
What is Community Supported Agriculture?
Instead of growing food to sell at farmers markets or supply to supermarket chains, a CSA farm is supported by seasonal subscriptions from the local community.
CSA members essentially buy a ‘share’ in the farm’s yields for a season. The OMG Farm offers Veggie Box subscriptions that last the 13 weeks of Summer, Autumn, Winter or Spring. We also have CSA subscriptions for Seedlings and Compost.
Why do we use a CSA model?
Biodiversity
OMG is a small farm and grows a diverse variety of species. We grow lots of common vegetables (salad greens, pumpkin, tomatoes etc) but we also like to experiment. We are modelling a form of no-till bioinetsive regenerative horticulture on the cutting edge of ‘climate crisis ready’ farming. As the science evolves and climate conditions change, we like to try new things.
Some weeks you will see varieties of vegetables that would have a niche customer base if we sold them cost-per-item at a farmers market.
Security
A CSA model gives us the security to pay our farmers a good wage and helps us plan each season with more certainty.
Farming can be unpredictable. Sudden changes in weather and fluctuations in the price of produce don’t just impact incomes, these factors can take a toll on the mental health and well-being of the people growing our food. Farming has been listed as one of the ten most stressful occupations in the world and if we want food security, this needs to improve. By using a CSA model we are able to reduce some of the unpredictability inherent to farming.
Community
Having a have a closer connection to how our food is grown benefits the well-being of us all.
Our farmers keep you updated on what is growing at the farm. You can follow OMG’s progress on social media and see it growing in person at weekly CSA pick ups and at our Working Bees.
OMG isn’t just a farm - it’s a teaching space held within a charitable trust. OMG works with a larger team to innovate, model and enable what is possible. We rely on a vibrant community of membership subscribers and business partnerships to help us catalyse the transformation of Aotearoa’s food systems.
If you would like to join us you can find out how here