However, if the Spurlings had not been inventive, even with all their technology, they would have struggled, like many farming families, to make a decent living. In the early days, when the family just grew tomatoes, they used to put a few boxes out the front for passing motorists to buy, "but it was a nuisance interrupting the greenhouse work to sell $2 worth of fruit", says Tony.

So, in 2002 they built a small store in the front of the property, run by Brett, to sell their produce. Their father's wines were added.

"We soon realised there is a whole lot of really good food produced in the Yarra Valley, from gourmet pastas, pickles and prime meat," he says.

"We stocked as much of this as we could as a showcase for local producers.

"In a couple of years, our farm-gates sales went from 5pc of the business to 50pc.

"It has made it a whole lot easier to support two families and four full-time employees."

Now, with their farm gate a seven-day farmers' market, they get about 500 visitors a week.

But not everyone is impressed, such as organic purists.

Plants grown hydroponically cannot be called organic even if the growers avoid chemicals, such as pesticides, but Tony points out that tomatoes and capsicums grown this way use only about one thirtieth of the water needed to grow a similar value of fruit in an open field.

However, it is in the area of non-chemical pest control that the Spurling's business might make it into the history books.

About a year ago they discovered a native mite (Micro smiris) on their crops.

It appeared when they were enduring a plague of sap-sucking thrip, blown in from nearby strawberry farms and the mite began munching on the thrip.

As an added bonus, they discovered it doesn't die off once the threat is consumed as do many other biological controls such as wasps; it simply changes its taste to plant pollen and waits for the next wave of bugs.

In many greenhouses, keen to keep chemicals to a minimum, various insect predators are released as prepackaged eggs to attack specific pests.

Now the mite identified by the Spurlings could soon join the natural predator arsenal.

Tony says their integrated pest-management expert, otherwise known as their "bug man" is preparing to breed them for commercial sale to other pesticide-averse producers.

But it is the success of selling from the farm gate that has surprised them.

"People hear stories of garlic from China being full of cyanide or are worried about what fish from Thailand are fed on," he says.

"It appeals to them to get food from as close as its point of produce as possible and we try to source as much locally as we can."