
Soil Assessment: How to know what you're working with
Learn what to look for as you choose or take over your garden plot. This can be perennial or annual plants that you might want to keep if they are assets to the garden that you want to have in the future.
The basics of mapping your garden space, including taking note of traits like soil quality, slope, how you will access your garden, and how you will meet the basic needs of your garden like water sources and security.
Some tools and strategies on how to document your garden, including materials that are helpful and convenient ways to remember what you planted and where.
Assess Your Garden Soil:
Inspect the soil with your hands and your other senses, looking for healthy soil and determining how to tell the difference between the soil particle sizes: Sand, Silt, and Clay.
Taking a look at soil that has been amended.
Learn to assess different materials you find in healthy soil like different insects and types of plant residues.
Benefits and Functionality of Cover Crops.
How and why to keep your soil covered including examples:
Sweet potato, peas, vetch, alfalfa.
The characteristics of Annual Plants, including some visual examples from the garden.
Perennials defined with visual examples and their role in your garden.
The difference between Hybrid and Heirloom seeds explained.
Germination Rate defined.
What kind of soil/germination material to buy for your seed starting trays.
Brief explanation of the different types of materials used in seed starting mixes.
Demonstration and Explanation of how to plant tomato seeds in a seed starting tray with tips and strategies to avoid some common problems/beginner mistakes.
Description of the conditions that your seeds need to germinate and strategies to maintain them until your seeds sprout.
Make a plan and get started!
An Introduction to your new friends, the Pick, the Garden Fork and the Shovel and what garden tasks they are best suited for.
Tips and Demonstration of how to use the garden tools introduced in the last video.
Demonstration and Description of planting style for Lavender.
Detailed description and demonstration of how to transplant a young plant into your garden, including how water and use mulch to minimize weeding.
The differences between leggy and healthy seed starts.
A walk through the garden to with an explanation of how to harvest tomatoes and hot peppers.
Healthy people come from healthy soil!
This class helps you make that connection by picking the right spot for your garden and then walking you through the rest of the garden process with easy-to-understand lessons.
This is the gardening course is the first step for everyone that has ever wanted to dig their hands into the rich Earth and produce healthy, fresh vegetables, beautiful flowers and herbs, if they only knew where to start.
For the basic DIY fresh, organic, vegetable gardener under construction, this course is the start-from-scratch primer for anyone that wants to grow their own tomatoes or anything else. If you have a new community garden plot waiting to be planted but don't know where to start, this is it!
Don't worry about not knowing where to start your gardening journey, just start with me and you will get everything you need!
Here you will find detailed explanations that break the fundamental concepts of expert gardening down into basics that are easy to understand and apply. With video lectures, illustrations and links to other resources for further reading, this course opens the door to the world of gardening for the true beginner.
Take this course if you have two weeks, a weedy patch of dirt or a sunny window ledge, and a desire to have a relationship with the magical plants that also happen to feed us!