Work a day on the fields or take on a patronage for method development.
Want to get active and pick your calories, vitamins and superfoods from the soil or the tree yourself? Then you are in the right place!
You usually sign up yourself when you have time. Many people come every week on a fixed day.
Bring your own wellingtons, gloves, work trousers (ideally with side pockets) and clothes that match the weather, whenever you can. Spare clothes for volunteers are on the farm.
We usually cook lunch together for everyone. That does not always work out. Bring a small snack of your own.
Some days the programme is tight, especially before a spell of bad weather or when there is a lot to plant or harvest. On those days there is no time for long one-to-one Q&A. We explain the work done with volunteers so you can follow the connections and the multiple functions in the SlowGrow cropping system.
At SlowGrow, doing and experimenting with new growing methods comes first. Learning by doing: your learning curve rises as soon as you come to volunteer regularly.
Gardening can be hard work. You are responsible for pacing your own effort. Drink enough and take breaks.
Insurance is the participant's responsibility.
Meeting point unless agreed otherwise: SlowGrow, Im Eichhof 1, 8617 Mönchaltorf. Map.
Income from patronages goes above all into developing and applying promising growing methods. It lets us find further ways to combine food production with lasting soil care and species diversity.
Out of curiosity, and trust in natural living processes, we have since 2013 put time, money and materials into learning how to treat the humus layer sustainably.
Make large steps in development possible. Support SlowGrow with a patronage.
You can buy the patronages in our webshop.
CHF 150 / year
Support our soil care: building humus for the future and more root space for the plants. We feed soil life with fresh organic matter. Untreated mulch feeds the soil and makes fine food possible. Along the way we store CO2, need no extra fertiliser and hardly ever irrigate. This patronage supports a method in which the soil is more fertile after harvest than before the crop.
CHF 150 / year
Many big advances began by chance. To give chance a nudge we keep laying out small trial plots. We follow the signals of nature, creatively and by intuition. Careful watching and an open approach have already taught us a good deal.
CHF 100 / year
Cover crops are the key to growing plants without herbicides. They bring many plant families together and root the soil deeply. We are adding another use and trialling edible plants, familiar ones and less familiar ones. This patronage helps develop alternatives to chemical weed control.
CHF 200 / year
In winter especially we are at the drawing board and in the workshop. We build machinery for the growing methods, from a mulch planter for vegetables and herbs to a tool for direct seeding into mulch after a cover crop. Your patronage makes larger technical steps possible. SlowGrow only develops mechanisation that supports soil life.