PERMACULTURE GARDENING FOR BEGINNERS, with ADRIAN ROCHE

This four-part practical permaculture gardening course is arranged to help you gain the fundamental knowledge and skills to approach your space in a way that works with nature, for your garden, and for you.

Adrian Roche, our Kelmarna Gardens Community & Site Manager and life-long gardener, will walk you through the basic methods and practices to give you a sturdy foundation for gardening effectively in your space.

Part 2 - SOIL HEALTH & FERTILITY

Sunday 13 June - 9am to 12pm (3 hours)

This second part will focus on the importance of soil and maintaining the health of our soil as the cornerstone of organic and permaculture gardening. How do we create beautiful soil, and what does that mean?

Adrian will begin by guiding you to examine your soil samples and use basic tests to learn more about your garden soil. You will learn about green manure, biodiversity, and promoting beneficial microbes and fungi. You will also learn about the idea of 'no dig' gardening and consider the impacts of disturbing and compacting the soil.

You will also discuss seasonality and simple methods for growing different crops to help replenish the soil and fix nitrogen, and Adrian will cover methods of processing organic matter including composting, worm farms, and bokashi to create fertilisers and liquid feeds for the soil and our plants.

Finally, your group will revisit the three fundamental process that you started in Part 1 (your planted seedlings, sown seeds, and compost pile) to reflect on their progress and check for any changes. Together we'll take note of how things are going, work to address any issues we notice, and will continue to observe and interact with each process over the remainder of the series.

Your homework for the next session (Part 3 - Garden Maintenance & Weed Management), is to bring samples of weeds from your garden. These can be weedy plants that you love, pest plants that you despise, or curious weeds that you simply want to learn more about.

Adrian has been gardening for 27 years, the bulk of which has been at Kelmarna Gardens as lead gardener, site manager, mentor, and general face of the gardens for much of our community. He is driven by a desire to help build a sustainable future for our humanity, which leads him to focus on food production and the role of gardening for connecting people and building community. His philosophical touchstone is permaculture, which feeds his desire to understand the natural world in order to work with, benefit from and coexist within it.