About

ECO SQUEAKY GREEN VEG

Quality Vegetables Approved by Nature

Following treatment for cancer and consequent recovery,

MICHAEL O'DEA moved to south-east Queensland where he and his wife Janet, daughter Nicola and family, established an eco-friendly, outdoor, facility; adopting Intelligent Plant Management practices and bio-controls to grow pesticide-free lettuce, herbs and Asian greens for the health food market.
We knew that people have to eat and they would prefer nutritious, pesticide-free food.
Michael and family are against the use of toxic chemicals on food crops.
Our own philosophy and the need to look to the future health of our family shaped our desire to be Squeaky Green and produce eco friendly vegetables.

Inspecting the crop for quality

Food grade poly grow channels

Our Philosophy:

Water conservation and water use efficiency are major problems facing the world and, of course, is a major issue here in Australia . Energy audits on production and anti-GMO sentiment are market drivers that will force growers to conform to stringent quality assurance guidelines to meet food and environmental safety standards; standards that are already embraced by many northern European countries. In the next decade, clean and green will mean zero pesticide residues in food and will require proof that crop production practices do no harm to the ecosystem, otherwise growers will face the prospect of environmental tariffs.

WATER AND FERTILISER USE EFFICIENCY
In our case, we use 500 litres of water to produce $100 worth of produce as opposed to the scandalous 750,000 litres of water to produce $100 worth of rice.

We add in our own organic herbs and spices to get optimum crop health. We use organic seaweed from Canada and a fish fertilizer from New Zealand , both products have enormous amounts of health giving qualities, this makes our plants grow really well and this in turn transfers a benefit to the end consumer.

PESTICIDE FREE

In Europe, especially in Scandinavia , many crops are grown without the use of pesticides using bio-controls to keep pest problems in check. Water and nutrients are recycled.
Our objective at the Squeaky Green farm is to avoid the use of toxic chemicals on the vegetables

we grow to give consumers a pesticide-free product.

Janet & Nicola inspecting the light trap for insects pests

To achieve this, we use bio-controls to keep most of our pests under control. We release a variety of predatory mites every fortnight to keep fungus gnats and thrips under control. We were given some beetles ages ago by Biological Services in Loxton, SA, to control fungus gnat, thrips and shore flies, and we still see these beetles in the media when we are working around our crop. We keep a constant look out for pests in the crop and everyone who works at Squeaky Green monitors the crop for pests and beneficials during their work routines. A daily record is kept of the status of the crop, where beneficials are released and where pests are found.

Because we use friendly bugs, they put a constraint on what we can use in the way of sprays. If we have to use sprays, then they have to be bio-friendly. We did start off by using pyrethrums, which are an allowed organic input, but we found it tends to knock off beneficials as well as insect pests. We have found we get a very good influx of aphidius parasitic wasps to control aphids (Myzus persicae).We also get a variety of ladybird (Hippodamia convergens) that feed on aphids. We are exploring the possibilities of growing banker plants to keep a population of parasitic wasps on hand. As far as the aphids are concerned, if we keep a careful eye on our Asian veggies, we know where the aphids are and we can get rid of them by spraying them with an Oil (Canola oil and tea tree oils). I only use a small pack to spot spray hot spots. We did get some large brown aphids (Uroleucon sonchi) on our lettuce in the winter months, but they seemed to disappear by spring. We also release green lacewings fortnightly and they do a great job of cleaning up anything they can get their fangs into; including my arm. I have seen a few whitefly on our sticky traps, but numbers have never increased, so maybe the lacewings are eating any nymphs. We have a resident population of brown frogs in our flood and drain trays. We use netting, and we also use a Vortex Bug Bin light trap. We started off by putting the light trap inside the netting, but we have since moved the trap just outside the netting. This device has proved invaluable to us because it traps so many bugs. I do not know all the bugs it traps but I did have a talk to Dr Richard Drew at Griffith University , Qld, who has worked with the light trap. He is enthusiastic about its ability to trap bugs of the crop-eating kind. We have detected Brown Lacewings in the crop and I have collected eggs and larvae and sent them to NSW Dept of Ag at Gosford, they are interested in breeding them up. We have a small brown ladybird that is a voracious devourer of aphids.

LABELS ON FOOD

Clean and green will mean zero pesticides in fresh produce with no harm to the environment, and some kind of proof to show that these standards are achieved. Labels on food to indicate that it is produced in a sustainable way is one way to demonstrate proof. For example, in Belgium , over 2,000 growers market under the Flandria label, where the motto is Quality Vegetables Approved by Nature. In Australia , Freshcare does address grower accreditation to some extent.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank my wife Janet and daughter Nicola for helping to achieve our goals. Without their eagle eyes, we would not be able to be Squeaky Green. We would also like to thank Marylin Steiner and Dr. Stephen Goodwin for all the help they have given us over the years. Thank you to Leyland Minter at OCP.