Grow to Live Weekend Food Gardening Workshop

These days when our food is sprayed, modified and generally tampered with,  the safest thing one can do is ensure a reliable, traceable source of good food.  And the best place for this is your own poison-free garden.

Join author of Grow to Live, Soil for Life’s Pat Featherstone on a comprehensive hands-on workshop where you learn to grow food naturally, working with the rhythm of the seasons and the biodiversity that exists in your garden.

In Pat’s engaging teaching style, you will learn to build your soil, prepare beds, how to choose and plant seedlings, pest control, harvesting and a lot more.

After the weekend you will have the knowledge and skills you need to grow your own organic produce.  Discover just how rewarding it is to pick a selection of dew fresh beans or baby greens for your salads, track the progress of your first pumpkin flower as it develops into an orange orb, packed with beta-carotene and taste the difference.

Course content:

• What you need to start a vegetable garden. Maximum production in minimum space using very little water and all available resources (low input gardening).
• Planning a vegetable garden; choosing the site, laying out the garden.
• Soil profiles and preparation – no till; single and double digging; trenching; sheet mulching; raised beds; eco-circles.
• Successful sowing of seed, thinning and transplanting.
• Planting techniques – seasonal planting, inter-planting, succession planting and crop rotation.
• Container gardening.
• Planting trees, vines and shrubs.
• Basic garden maintenance – watering, mulching, weeding, transplanting, protecting, keeping garden records.
• Controlling pests without poisons.
• Natural fertilisers – teas, compost, vermi-compost.
• Harvesting and what to do with the harvest. Cooking, and using, vegetables for optimum health.