July 11-16, 2010

In this hands-on workshop our focus is on home growing and small market production. Get really local, take back responsibility by learning to work with the Earth where you live. This workshop will inspire and empower you take the first step or to climb the production mountain.

We cover, and dig into it all, from basics of saving and starting seed; windowsill, roof top and backyard growing, to the secrets of professional growers.  Details that could save you years of frustration, about greenhouse and field production. Learn to grow vegetables, herbs, shrubs and trees in a organic, naturally integrated and inexpensive way.

Two of the most important features of the week are experiencing direct contact with traditional gardening practices as well as with their the long-time practitioners. Here at the Algonquin Tea Farm, as well as at the farms of the growers we visit  a variety of site-specific techniques are used, and while very different, they all manage to find a productive balance with the natural environment they're working with. All these techniques have in common their concern for building the soil and creating naturalized systems of perennial abundance. The Algonquin Tea farm has four acres of certified organic herbs growing, many no-till vegetable garden systems, young fruit orchards, bees, mushrooms, aquaculture,chickens as well as both seasonal, and year-round tropical greenhouses, along with the wild food and medicine plants. One of our visits is a eleven year old forest permaculture site with over seventy species growing.

We will cover:

• No-till  Agriculture
• Perma-culture
• Native gardening
• Forest Gardening
• Polyculture and Shift-agriculture
• French intensive double digging
• Wildculturing

Workshop Costs and Details