Get Set, Grow!

After the success of our growing workshops last year we were delighted to offer our workshops to the community again.

This year we also offered a 6-week evening workshop programme at The Hidden Gardens.

Giving participants the knowledge to successfully grow their own food at home.

The 10 free spaces on our programme filled very quickly and on Thursday 18 April our programme began.

At the first workshop we learned about planning our growing space, both outside or inside spaces.

It’s important to consider the areas in your space that receive lots, little or no sunshine!

Place the right plants in the right area with the right conditions.

Along with planning we discovered the different types of soil & compost, and when to use them.

The following week we started to learn about sowing and growing vegetables.

We uncovered many ways to propagate plants (creating plants from seeds and cuttings) and which to use when.

There are softwood, semi-hardwood and hardwood cuttings, and you take them at different times of the growing season.

We were then given our first planted seeds and a few seedlings away with us to start our growing journey!

When we returned in Week 3 and 4 we continued to learn about growing vegetables.

We looked at how to ‘thin-out’ seedlings (ensuring your plants have enough room to grow successfully)

How to divide plants to move them into bigger pots (potting-on).

And using different types of structures to support growing plants (canes for support, wigwam shaped stick setups, string guides)

Week 5 we looked at microgreens and focused on sustainable gardening.

Microgreens are basically the seedlings of plants picked early.

They are very nutritious and take as little as 10 days to grow!

Our final workshop we learned more sustainable gardening techniques, how to harvest and save seeds.

You can reuse items like cardboard tubes, plastic bottles, milk cartons and much more as your gardening items.

When harvesting the more you pick the more you encourage the plant to grow!

You can save your own seeds each year and even share your seeds with others! Free seeds, we all love those!

Thanks to everyone who took part in the course. Our next growing workshops start in June. Find out more here.

Please email lindsey@ricefield.org.uk with any questions or to hear more about our project.