Grow Year Round No Dig Gardening Day Course, with Stephanie Hafferty
Saturday May 18th 2024, 11 – 4pm
Get ready for an abundant growing year on this organic gardening day course at my homestead in beautiful Ceredigion. Learn how to create a productive, wildlife friendly and climate resilient edible garden whatever your space, using different resources – with my time saving, practical and affordable tips and techniques. In May, growth is really picking up and it is peak spring sowing time. The garden is bursting into colour, and there is so much sowing and planting to do. Excitingly, it is a time of change in the polytunnel as the space is transformed from over wintered veggies to summer loving crops. Depending on the weather, it can also be the time that slugs get going, so I’ll be sharing tips for how to discourage these slimy munchers. So that everyone can relax, enjoy the day and ask all the questions they wish, I keep the group numbers for each course a small, friendly size. I’ll help you plan your growing year, outside and in undercover spaces, for year round harvests. We don’t know what the weather will have in store for us in 2024, so I’ll demonstrate different ways to be prepared for different growing conditions, including easy homemade crop protection and indoor growing. Learn different ways of creating a regenerative no dig garden. We’ll explore all of The Half Acre Homestead, including the productive polytunnel, greenhouse, water harvesting systems, experimental mulch beds, perennial veg, fruit bushes and trees, annual veg beds and a lot more – on a hillside, and created by just one person (me!)
The day includes:
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- How to create a no dig garden, easily and affordably
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- How to create a healthy soil ecosystem
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- Different mulches and cover crops, including using green manures
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- Many kinds of compost and their applications
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- Composting techniques for every size of garden
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- Homemade plant and soil feeds
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- Water harvesting and saving
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- Propagation and sowing – including frugal off-grid solutions
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- Keeping plants healthy
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- Crop protection
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- Discouraging unwanted visitors (aka “pests”)
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- Growing undercover – greenhouses, polytunnels, cloches, homemade techniques
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- Maximise growing space with companion planting, interplanting and multi sowing
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- Resilient ways to garden in a changing climate
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- Wildlife gardening, and how working with wildlife increases yields, protects crops and enhances plant health
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- Seed saving
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- Real life solutions for what to do if you’re going on holiday/ working away/ can’t get to your plot for a while
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- Practical hands on activities according to the time of year
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- How to grow fruit, vegetables, herbs and flowers to create your own “larder in the garden”
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- As well as being an experienced grower, I specialise in what to do with what you have grown, and will share thrifty tips to increase your self sufficiency – and save money too.
Depending on the weather and time of year, there may be practical activities too. If you’d like to book a bespoke day course for your group, please contact me. Cost for the day including beverages is £95. Please bring a packed lunch and any snacks you wish to have. Full information here. On some courses I can offer one or two discounted places of £80 for low incomes. Please contact me. Sorry that it can’t be more but I am a tiny business. The course takes place entirely outside in the garden and some of the garden buildings including the polytunnel and outdoor kitchen (an open fronted barn). Situated an easy 10 minute drive from Lampeter, Ceredigion, full details of location are provided when you book. Please read the Terms and Conditions, including the cancellation policy, before booking. Thank you!
