At the end of the last World War, 45% of produce eaten domestically was grown in backyards. The only thing now that's stopping us from relocalizing our food supply is a lack of experience and knowledge. This course is your key to taking control of your food supply and growing for yourself.
This practical workshop that will show you how you can start growing your own garden and/or how to further develop your existing garden.
If you've ever wanted to grow a garden but felt overwhelmed by too much information, or if you just don't know where to start, this workshop is for you. If you've been growing a garden for years and struggling with weeds, low productivity, or maybe even too much food ready all at once, this workshop is for you.
Together, we’ll walk through many considerations including:
- How to decide what to grow
- Crops that grow well in your climate
- Seed selection (varieties, volume, open pollinated vs conventional vs organic)
- Crop planning and timing
- Gardening styles
- Site selection
- Preparing your garden space
- Garden layout
- Fertilization
- Irrigation
By the end of the session, you should be ready to set up your garden this spring and have a successful summer full of the vegetables that you love the most.
Visit www.steelpony.ca for more information about Steel Pony Farm
Hi, I’m Mike Kozlowski and I'm obsessed with growing food.
In my early 20’s I was sitting around a cook fire with a family in rural Kenya that grew most of their own food. Getting to know them, I was struck by how far removed I was from food production. They asked me to tell them about my farm and when I told them that I didn’t have one they were confused about where I got my food. I explained that most of the food I ate was shipped from California, Mexico or China. They didn’t understand why we would ship food all over the world when we could grow it at home.
This experience brought up some big questions for me: how could I know so little about one of the basic necessities to life? Why DID we ship food all around the world when we could grow it at home? What was the cost – social, environmental, financial, nutritional, cultural – to this global system? Was there a way to do it better?
This experience led to an obsession with local food production that took me from coast to coast in Canada as I learned from experienced farmers about how they created an alternative to the global food system. Ultimately, it led me back to Red Deer, my home town, where I started Steel Pony Farm. My mission, for the past 10 years, has been to provide nutritious produce to my community while respecting the people, land and ecosystem that I work with.