ALL CLASSES OFFERED
BASIC ORGANIC GARDENING 4-PART SERIES
This is a 4-class series designed for beginning gardeners to learn basic gardening skills and techniques in designing and siting a garden, soil basics, cultivating and planting, and ecological strategies in managing the garden.
GROWING ORGANIC VEGETABLES SERIES
This series covers everything you want to know about growing vegetables organically. Topics include the advantages of organic and ecological approaches over chemicals; vegetable garden design; irrigation and drainage; soil fertility, mulches and composts; organic pest control; seeds, transplants, where to get them and how to plant them.
GROWING FRUIT TREES IN SMALL SPACES
These techniques will allow homeowners with the smallest urban lots to grow fruitful gardens of increased variety and beauty. This system, also known as high density orchard, enables the urban gardener to quadruple the variety of fruit they can grow without buying a single square foot of land.
FRUIT TREE TRAINING AND PRUNING 3-CLASS SERIES
This series consists of three classes that will start with a two and a half hour lecture style class designed to teach you the principles of pruning and training your fruit trees. The following two classes will be held at a private home orchard and will teach you to prune all of the basic fruits that grow in the Houston and surrounding areas.
IN THE GARDEN: SPRING VEGETABLE PLANTING
This introductory organic gardening class is hands on at the McGovern Centennial Family Gardens. The foundation for growing healthy, nutrient dense vegetables is healthy soil – structure, chemistry and as important are supporting microscopic soil organisms. We will demonstrate and students will participate in soil building and management, fertilization, composting, mulching and planting with seed and transplants.
BASIC FRUIT TREE CARE AND PLANTING
This class will teach you the basics of fruit tree selection, planting, care, and maintenance. We will cover temperate fruit trees, citrus, and the semi-tropical varieties that are appropriate for our area.
BASIC ORGANIC VEGETABLE GARDENING
This is an introductory class to growing vegetables organically in Houston, with all of its climate challenges. In this class, you will learn how to select the site, build the beds, plant, care & maintain a vegetable garden.
EDIBLE LANDSCAPES
In making the most of our small spaces, it’s a good idea to think about an edible landscape. This class will discuss the basics of good landscape design based on sound gardening principles and aesthetic beauty. Included will be instructions on how to design the basic components of the garden space and how to accomplish much of this through the use of food plants – from traditional vegetable crops to edible flowers, fruit trees and more.
SQUARE FOOT GARDENING
Square Foot Gardening is a simple method for planting seeds in a specific way in a raised bed garden. You will learn alternative methods for making a raised bed, what soils and augmentations to utilize, and then specific planting methodologies which will allow you to maximize your garden’s productivity in a small space.
LOW VOLUME IRRIGATION
A garden that conserves precious water resources is a rewarding investment. Through micro or low volume irrigation, we can eliminate water runoff into the street and water more deeply for healthier root systems. This class will teach design, installation and maintenance of drip and micro-spray systems.
FALL VEGETABLE GARDENING
One advantage of living in Houston is how easy it is to grow vegetables in the fall and winter seasons. Think you have no space for a garden? Not to worry, as many of these vegetables can be grown in containers on a sunny patio. You will learn when and where to plant, soil preparation, seed germination and transplanting a long list of vegetables.
BOKASHI – WASTE NOT, WANT NOT
Stop throwing your food scraps in the trash. Come learn the how tos and the benefits of bokashi and vermicomposting. Bokashi composting uses kitchen scraps of all kinds, including meat and dairy products, mixed with inoculated bran to make compost faster than bin composting. Vermicomposting uses composting worms to recycle kitchen, garden, and specific paper wastes. The worms turn the waste into worm castings that are nutrient rich.
IN THE GARDEN: FALL VEGETABLE PLANTING
This introductory organic gardening class is hands on at the McGovern Centennial Family Gardens. The foundation for growing healthy, nutrient dense vegetables is healthy soil – structure, chemistry and as important are supporting microscopic soil organisms. We will demonstrate and students will participate in soil building and management, fertilization, composting, mulching and planting with seed and transplants.
INSECTARY GARDENS – NATURE’S PEST CONTROL
Organic gardeners depend on beneficial insects as one of our front-line defenses against pest species. Learn to create pocket insectaries that include all of the plants and amenities required to attract beneficials and keep them in your garden. You can create a pocket insectary in a container and move it anywhere you see a pest problem arising.
Permaculture Modules:
SUSTAINABLE LIVING THROUGH PERMACULTURE
Permaculture is a design methodology that focuses on sustainable practices and uses effective principles and processes found in nature to inform design decisions. In a post-Harvey Houston, permaculture principles directly address the ways to be more sustainable and flood resistant in both garden and home design. In this class, the design principles of permaculture are explained, observed and illustrated in a series of breakout sessions at a house and garden remodeled to reflect permaculture sustainability principles.
SUSTAINABLE LIVING THROUGH PERMACULTURE #2
In this classroom presentation, we further explore the use of principles demonstrated in the previous class. We begin to design home sites using permaculture design principles. These connect and integrate food with housing and nature. We also explain permaculture’s approach to sustainability and the series of classes we use to teach it, as well as how students can get the International Permaculture Designer’s Certificate. Prerequisite: Sustainable Living Through Permaculture class 1.
DESIGNING BOUNTIFUL GARDENS THROUGH PERMACULTURE CLASS SERIES
Bountiful Gardens focuses on the design of family gardens in its context of being an element in the design of a home or farm property using permaculture principles. Initially we survey the permaculture of vegetables, fruits, domestic animals and the factors we use to place these for maximum productivity and minimum labor. Later in the course we learn some basic gardening skills along with how to design and build a garden. Water, soil, pest management, garden ecology, and climate are also featured. Prerequisite: Sustainable Living Through Permaculture classes 1 & 2.
DESIGNING OUR GREEN HOMES & COMMUNITIES THROUGH PERMACULTURE CLASS SERIES
In a world of climate change threats and unstable oil producing regions, it is essential that our homes and communities change to become more energy efficient. This course helps us get there. Designing Our Green Homes and Communities is one of five modules in the permaculture design certificate course. No city planning, engineering or architectural knowledge is assumed. Prerequisite: Sustainable Living Through Permaculture classes 1 & 2.
RESTORING NATURE THROUGH PERMACULTURE SERIES
In this module we will combine nature study at area prairies, woodlands, and watersheds with class sessions that explore restoration permaculture and its implications for sustaining our planet.
No ecology or nature training is necessary. Prerequisite: Sustainable Living Through Permaculture classes 1 & 2.