Crop Planning and Cultivation, Soil Management

Crop Planning, Cultivation, and Soil Management

A four-week course introducing essential organic agriculture concepts through group lecture, discussion, and observation at Zenger Farm's six-acre field and garden sites.

Saturdays, November 1, 2008 - November 22, 2008

Zenger Farm
11741 SE Foster Road
Portland, OR, 97266

Registration Information

Cost: $35 (All 4 classes).
Drop-in Cost: $10

Class size: 15 participants maximum,
please call or e-mail to secure your place!

3 sections (choose only one):

Saturday 10:00 - 11:30
Saturday 12:00 - 1:30
Saturday 2:00 - 3:30

ryanlee.hofrichter@gmail.com 786-972-1333

Course Descriptions

Saturday November 1: Crop Planning Concepts: Mindful garden design is sensitive to site conditions and the needs of all those connected to your future space. We'll consider which vegetables we're able to grow here in the Willamette Valley and review life cycles, successions, plant spacing, and varietal considerations. We'll also learn the motivations for rotating crops and some common rotation schemes.

Saturday November 8: Crop Planning Exercise: Need 75 heads of lettuce next season? Fine, but how much seed should you order after considering how long the plant holds in the ground, frequency of harvest, greenhouse problems, and thinning? Determining your harvest goals, planting schedule, and seed needs can actually be quite tricky. We'll utilize all of the useful information offered through seed catalogues and our previous week's resources to put together, in groups, sensible plans for major crop types.

Saturday November 15: Vegetable Cultivation: Alliums, Chenopods, Brassicas, Cucurbits, Solanums, Legumes, Umbelliferaes. We'll review some common vegetable plant families and learn how to cultivate the species among them. Weed management and harvest/handling techniques will also be offered in brief.

Saturday, November 22: Soil Management: "Feed the soil to feed the plant" is a basic principle of organic gardening. We can't do justice to this immense topic in just ninety minutes, but an overview of the techniques that organic gardeners use to maintain fertile soil will inspire a few new backyard tricks, I hope. I'll take your questions on composting, proper tillage and bed preparation, balancing nutrients, and cover cropping here in Oregon. If we like, we can take a garden/field walk and assess Zenger's piles and cover cropping strategies.

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