- Course Title
- Food Gardening for the Fall and Winter Seasons
Fall is a busy time in Piedmont gardens: it’s time to grow collards and lettuce and build your soil through leaf composting. Ecological gardening can help you create the beautiful, healthy landscape and garden of your dreams, without relying on expensive and dangerous pesticides and chemicals. The class emphasizes compost making, soil building and preparation techniques, cool season vegetables, flowers and herbs. Topics covered include basic selecting, pruning and transplanting of landscape plants (including fruit crops), fall/winter clean-up, ecological disease and weed and pest control. These six fun, hands-on outdoor classes teach you how to succeed as an ecological and organic influenced gardener in our region. Focus is on practical information you can use immediately in your own garden and follows a philosophy of working with Nature as a partner.
Learn to use ecological and organic influenced gardening techniques successfully in a fall and winter garden and throughout the year in Charlotte and the Carolina Piedmont.
1. Introduction to fall gardening
- Check in: introductions, objectives and sharing experiences, field trip to the garden 'lab'
2. Soil building, bed preparation, Alan Chadwick's "double digging" and alternatives
3. Cool season vegetables and flowers for the Piedmont
4. Fall compost making
5. Cool season ecology, weed and pest management and crop harvesting
6. Fall and winter transplanting; care for trees, fruit crops and shrubs; winterizing and garden planning
Method of Instruction
Demonstration, class participation, hands-on learning
Class attendance and participation: Yes
Demonstration of skills: Yes