Pests and Disease In The Organic Garden will be the subject of my presentation 10AM Saturday August 25th at Heathcote Botanical Gardens in the old house. We will be examining the roles of pest, predaceous and parasitoid insects in the garden. We will also learn to identify them in their various life stages, (egg, larvae,…
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I will be presenting a garden planning class 10 AM Saturday August 11, 2012 at Heathcote Botanical Gardens in the office meeting room in the old house. Participants will make an actual plan on paper. We will learn about choosing a garden location, orientation of the garden, crop successions, preparing gardens and soil, companion plants,…
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On Saturday July 21st 2012 from 9am to 3pm join us for a one-day introduction and interactive experience to learn about permaculture at Heathcote Botanical Gardens in Ft. Pierce with Tia Meer, permaculturalist and founder of Simple Living Institute from Orlando, FL. This workshop will focus on the project of transitioning the annual vegetable garden to a perennial food forest. We will cover permaculture ethics, principals, site survey, and site design and get our hands dirty and put permaculture into practice by designing and installing an edible perennial garden on site.
Starting A Garden Suddenly: 9 am Saturday June 23, 2012 The No Dig Lasagna Layer Mound and The Layer Cake Mound. Learn how to make easy garden beds to grow delicious healthy vegetables in Florida. You will learn how to find the components for the layers, the dimensions for the mounds and how best to…
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Here is the schedule for the classes I am teaching at Heathcote Botanical Gardens thru the spring of 2013. If you click on the link below you can see the pdf poster with dates and times. The composting class has already gone by, however, if there are enough who are interested I would be glad…
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Because of my more conventional horticulture training early on I was concerned with crowding
plants and stunting them. Once I began to study about permaculture forest guilds, and I learned about mycorrhizae and the workings of root networks in the soil, I began to understand why forests work and how we can copy that in our own landscapes.
I want to say thanks to the people who recently hit my donate button after receiving some useful advice. Whether you are one of the people who gave a few dollars, or the one who gave more, every bit counts and I am grateful. Sincerely, Adina
The sweet potato plant has multiple uses in the garden as a root crop, a leaf crop, and a cover crop. All parts can be used to feed livestock as well as people and it is at its best growing in hot dry sandy soil. This is a great permaculture crop for South Florida.
I am back in my own garden again with a vengeance after the permaculture workshop at Heathcote Botanical Gardens. Time is flying and I have begun to consider what I am planting this summer, and when. At 1:00 PM on Sunday February 5 at Heathcote Botanical Gardens I will be presenting a class on what…
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Susana Lein has flown home to Salamander Springs Farm in Berea, KY and I am left with a moment to contemplate her visit and the permaculture workshop she presented at Heathcote Botanical Gardens. I expected the Workshop to fill, and it did, and I expected the class to be interesting. It was fascinating and fun.…
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There is a very good opportunity for continued learning for Permaculture enthusiasts. Permaculture Instructor Susana Lein of Salamander Farms in Berea Kentucky is coming to Heathcote Botanical Gardens to present a day long permaculture workshop. I will be assisting her. There will be a classroom presentation and then participants will be able to learn while…
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In my In The Garden articles about the Lasagna Layer Mounds the garden amendments straw, manure, and alfalfa hay are frequently mentioned. They are the ingredients for the garden mounds, but they are something else as well. Of course we know manure is a waste product from livestock farming or ranching, and we know straw,…
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Fall is the beginning of our cold crop planting season in South and Central Florida. Tomatoes, Peppers, Eggplant, Basil and Beans that were started in August may be getting ready to fruit, and may ripen fruit before our first frost. If you are starting those plants now you will have to protect them from the…
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I met John Rogers at Susana Lein’s Permaculture class at Heathcote Botanical Gardens in February 2011. He was already acquainted with Susana from having attended permaculture conferences with her. We were invited to visit his garden in Melbourne Florida and several other small farms and gardens nearby. John was in the process of transforming his…
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I made a new friend who is not yet gardening and was rather intimidated by it and quite sure it would take him a long time to learn how to grow food. He mentioned to me that he thought he should take a Gardening for Dummies Class, and that what I had to offer was…
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I become a believer around rain. We Floridians have been in a long and exceptional drought since winter (ours is not the only state in an exceptional drought). All anyone here talks about is rain. No conversation ends that someone doesn’t speak of needing rain, with agreement all around. It’s raining and I am grateful.…
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My garden grows beautifully. All I do is feed the soil with lots of organic wastes. I don’t dig, I don’t worry, I don’t fertilize plants and I don’t spray plants. All in all I would say that growing the No Till No Dig Way is an easier, more successful way to nurture a food garden.
At Manure Depot I write about Embracing Our Interdependence With Nature, but I also write with self sufficiency in mind. In contemplating self sufficiency you may as I do come to the conclusion that it is an ideal concept, but a very difficult practical achievement. I personally know just one farmer I would call self…
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For many years I let my gardens fallow over the summer all the while feeling quite sure that there were crops that we could grow here in South Florida in the summer time, but I couldn’t figure out what they were, and I didn’t know who to ask. In order to save you the same…
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My friend Linda from Crazy Hart Ranch was going to attend the SSAWG Conference this year (2011) and she was offering to share her hotel room with me. I checked out the schedule of classes and found that SSAWG had begun to recognize the need to reach out to much smaller urban and suburban farmers. I saw that there was a Permaculture class offered, and a focus group for urban farmers.
