NEW COURSE: POLYTUNNELS FOR GARDENING... AND MORE...

 If you're wondering about whether it's a good idea to get a polytunnel and what's involved in setting one up and managing it this is the course for you...

POLYTUNNELS - GARDENING AND MORE Tickets, Sun 15 Jan 2023 at 11:00 | Eventbrite 

VENUE: Perth Community Farm

Lots of things, tomatoes, cucumbers, aubergines etc etc like plenty of heat. With a bit of planning you can have stuff growing all year round - not bad for Scotland...

WHAT DOES THE COURSE COVER?

!! NEW COURSE DATES - WOODWORK AND GARDENING - NOV 22 TO FEB 23 !!

I have been having a lot of fun running our ALL THINGS SUSTAINABLE COURSES and have had a brilliant response from participants. It feels really good to me personally to be doing something positive in these crazy times... 

I've just put a group of courses up on Eventbrite:
Whole Collection Here

BASIC WOODWORK - PART ONE
the one for complete beginners - women and men welcome, over18's - all hand tools

TWO DATES: SUNDAY 20TH NOVEMBER 22 and SUNDAY 4TH DECEMBER

GARDENING FOR BEGINNERS

easy fruit and veg growing - everything you need to know to get started

SUNDAY 27TH NOVEMBER

FRUIT TREE PRUNING

TWO DATES: SUNDAY 29TH JANUARY 23 and SUNDAY 5TH FEBRUARY 23

!! NEW COURSE - POLYTUNNELS !!

Finally, one of our gardening students asked if we could do a course on setting up and managing polytunnels and here it is:

BRAND NEW COURSE - POLYTUNNELS FOR GARDENING AND MORE

SUNDAY 15TH JANUARY 23

Here's a few photos from this year's and last year's courses,

See you soon, Ian

Gardening for Beginners

Our first Gardening for Beginners course at Perth Community Farm went really well - our gardeners are clutching seeds they've planted and vines and herbs they've propagated. The farm is a brilliant venue for this as we have loads of different plants and ways of growing them for people to see. One of our gardeners is going to be setting up a community farm/garden themselves - excellent how know-how and experience can ripple out.
And great to be doing something that feels really POSITIVE amidst all the doom, gloom and general bonkersness...

We were very lucky to have help and support from Yvonne Bell from the Perth and Kinross Waste Management Team on this course (and on our compost making courses).

Apart from sharing the presentation, Yvonne brought some very useful handouts with her, here's some of the basic guides to growing stuff: the "Growing Food from Seed" series

INTRODUCING THE PLASTIC MAC...

I've been working on a design for a chair made from local and re-used materials for ages... here at last is the MK3 version.

The Plastic Mac in all it's glory - spot the slight Charles Rennie influence

It's made from willow poles from the farm, a reclaimed pallet that happened to be made from some sort of tropical hardwood, some reclaimed ash, also a plastic sheet from recycled bottle tops (thank you Craig Smith of St John's School tech department) and reclaimed bike inner tubes (thank you Mark Woods of the Bike Station).

MUSHROOM GROWING WITH BEA AND MARIO

 I went on an excellent course on Mushroom Growing at Balerno, near Edinburgh, run by brilliant mycologists, Bea and Mario in association with The Planetary Healing Centre. They have years and years of practical experience of growing mushrooms and also of the many other ways in which the kingdom of fungi can help us such as myco-remediation, carbon sequestration and soil regeneration.

Bea and Mario came up to Perth Community Farm to talk about putting on their courses with us, but we just don't have the resources to do that at the moment. So if you're interested in growing mushrooms - and finding out more about the whole fungal kingdom is surely one of the most important and useful things we can do - please get in touch with Bea and Mario via their site: MYCOBEE MUSHROOMS.

MORE COMPOSTING FUN...

 Our second COMPOST MAKING FOR BEGINNERS COURSE was great fun too...

It's really interesting to see how each group of course participants interacts and the sort of questions people ask. This one threw up loads of interesting connections - not suprising really, composting being such a core part of our gardens. You could think of your composter bay or bin as your garden's stomach in a way...

Anyway, please look on the Resources for Courses page on my blog for more about HOTBEDS, COMPOST FOR SEEDS and much more.

COMPOSTING FUN!

 OUR FIRST COMPOST MAKING COURSE AT PERTH COMMUNITY FARM

Who would have thought that compost making could be so much fun...? But that's just exactly what it was, thanks to having a brilliant bunch of gardeners on our first compost making course at the farm, all very enthusiastic and interested in all our gardening adventures as well compost making.

PARTNERSHIP WITH COUNCIL WASTE MANAGEMENT SERVICES

In an interesting development for the farm, I set up and presented the course with lots of help and practical input from Yvonne Bell, Waste Minimisation Officer at Perth and Kinross Council. I hope we do more stuff like this together, I think there's enormous scope for local government to help people explore how to live more sustainably in all sorts of ways. Also, it makes the course much more interesting to have two presenters with their different styles and backgrounds.

We have another COMPOST MAKING COURSE coming up this Sunday and will definitely be putting these on regularly.

COMING SOON

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