Category Archives: seed starting

Learning and Teaching …. It’s Been a Busy Month!

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Just wrapped up our second Whole Systems Gardening Class at School of Permaculture!  It was a delight and privilege to be on the team teaching this 4-day intensive, seed to seed, harvest and preserve garden learning experience.  We combined classroom and hands-on, with seed starting, marked out a mandala-style garden, learned about soil life, built an 18-day compost pile, tasted wonderful fermented vegetables and learned a lot about nutrition …  Truly an experience.  Watch for another class this fall and definitely another next spring!

My teaching schedule has kept me busy – and will continue keeping me busy.  There was the Garden Readiness class at Trinity Haymarket a few weeks ago, and on March 26 I’ll be talking about Companion Planting to get the best results from your garden. And on April 16, I’ll be holding another Straw Bale Gardening class at Trinity Haymarket.

For other venues, I’ll be in Denison for the Culture of Arts Festival, talking about Companion Planting on April 2.

You can catch me at the Arboretum on April 9, discussing Permaculture Basics for the home garden.

AND, on April 15, I’ll be a panelist on urban agriculture at the Sustainable Summit held by Cedar Valley College.

For those of you who know me, you know I can talk gardening until your eyes glaze over.  But I truly enjoy sharing my knowledge with anyone who wants to garden, and garden better.

NOW…  I’ve also been on the road, learning.  I attended the Southern Sustainable Ag Working Group conference in Lexington Kentucky at the end of January (I believe I posted a couple of photos of the permaculture farm I visited). And the second weekend of February brought the Texas Organic Farming and Gardening Conference to Rockwall.  My head is still spinning with all that I learned.  I’ll be passing along knowledge gained as I transcribe my notes.

That’s all for tonight …  Digging in the dirt is good for the soul.  Grow something!

Anita

Community Gardens Are Busting Out All Over!

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potting trashThe last two weeks have been hectic.  The Community Garden Conference in Grand Prairie, sponsored by the Tarrant County Food Bank and assisted by the North Texas Food Bank, was well attended.  I was there with GROW North Texas; we team-taught a seed starting class.  Andrea, the GNT Farmer Advocate talked about soil mixes, while I got my hands dirty and muddy, mixing up the seed starting concoction, and then I lead the “trash talk”.  In other words, how to start seeds by repurposing things like toilet paper rolls and empty water bottles; how to roll a newspaper pot with a spice jar, and how to convert a strawberry clamshell into a mini-greenhouse.  It was lots of fun, and a majority of the attendees took advantage of the hands-on, to plant some seeds and make some seed-starting pots.

DK raised bed

On Sunday I had a chance to visit Divine Kinship’s project in southern Dallas County.  They are working with permaculture instructor Nicholas Burtner to transform a 3+ acre piece of property that is currently grass and cedars.  It has a lot of elevation changes, a seasonal creek on one side, and a variety of soils ranging from caliche to sand.  It’s almost overwhelming all that they have to do to transform the property into a food forest and permaculture scape.  But large jobs are best broken into manageable pieces, and they are setting up raised beds, with plans to start planting in the next few weeks.  The beds are crafted from logs, and filled with wonderful mulch that will break down into incredible soil.  The mulch will also hold water from the rains.

Note in the middle of the bed you can see some reddish bumps with white dots on top.  Those are terra cotta pots, made into ollas, with rocks covering the holes on the top.  I’ll be teaching a DIY olla class, as well as using other recyclables for repurposing soon.