All Classes Offered

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.