Home Grown Gardening Classes
Home Grown Gardening Classes were developed to help homeowners learn how to garden and grow food in their own backyards or community gardens. Classes are led by Diane Hollister, North County’s premier gardening instructor, and focus on topics commonly encountered by gardeners in our area. Classes are packed full of information for gardeners with varying levels of expertise.
The Home Grown Community Gardening Classes are held at the El Corazon Compost Facility or the El Corazon Senior Center on the fourth Saturday of each month at 2 PM.
Home Grown 2012 |
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January |
It’s a new year! Time to give your deciduous fruit trees some care and your seeds started for the spring garden. Learn to prune your trees with confidence with a demonstration out in the Senior Center’s orchard. Follow up with a discussion and demonstration of dormant sprays. We’ll also review seed selection, seed starting and seeding mixes. |
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February |
Worms, Livestock of the Urban Farm
Harvest an excellent soil amendment for your whole garden through the simple process of feeding worms your kitchen scraps. Learn all you need to know about the care and feeding of worms. Also, there will be information on how to grow potatoes. |
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March |
Tomatoes, Everyone’s Favorite for the Home Garden
We’ll watch a fabulous video by Lee O’Hara showing how he gets up to 120 lbs. of tomatoes off of each plant…organically! We’ll also discuss variety selection, harvesting, storage and uses. |
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April |
Container Gardening, Growing Corn
Even if you garden in raised beds or in the ground, it’s fun to have some fruits and vegetables in containers to give your garden visual interest. We will discuss special soil mixes and feeding schedules. Our vegetable of the month focus will be on growing and harvesting corn. |
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May |
Watering the Garden, Growing Squash
Getting plants just the right amount of water for healthy growth is one of the greatest challenges of Southern California gardening. We will discuss various drip systems and when and how to water. Our vegetable focus will be on growing the squash family members; cucumbers, summer and winter squash and melons. |
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June |
Summer Care of Fruit Trees, Growing Beans
Summer is the best time to prune to control the size of your fruit trees. We’ll be back in the orchard to talk about all you can do to ensure a great harvest of delicious fruit. The wonderful world of fresh and dried beans will be our vegetable of the month. |
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July |
The Herb Garden and Gifts
Starting an herb garden this month will give you a great Fall harvest just in time to turn your herbs into vinegars, soup blends, wreaths and other wonderful things for holiday giving. |
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August |
Planting your Fall and Winter Garden
Lucky us, we can grow great food all year. Fall and Winter gardens require much less work as watering and insect pressure are less problematic than in the Spring and Summer garden. Broccoli and its extended family, as well as garlic planting will be discussed. |
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September |
Open for Discussion
This month is open to the participant’s choice of topic. We’d hate to have the year go by and not cover something that is really important to our group! |
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October |
Harvest Festival
It’s all about food! Participants are invited to bring in something they love made from their garden’s bounty. We’ll also have a cooking demonstration using all fresh garden produce. We’ll end with celebrating the harvest and enjoying some wonderful food. |
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November |
Putting the Garden to Bed and Caring for Tools
Work is not quite done for the year. This month is perfect for adding a layer of mulch, evaluating the past season’s successes and failures, making some notes and thinking about what you might do next year. It is also a great time to give your favorite tools some care and think about dropping some hints for a new tool or two. |
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December |
No Class-Happy Holidays! |
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