Advanced Market Gardening by Trill Farm Garden on cademy.co.uk

Description

This three part course series will run from Spring to Autumn. It will be broken down into themes relating to Spring, Summer and Autumn, and will involve visits to three market gardens. The course will be held over three lots of two day long get togethers. This lengthened version of the Introduction to Market Gardening course will go into more detail of what is covered through the introductory course. We will have more time to delve deeper into some of the practicalities of market gardening.

SPRING (May)
The first two days in May will start off at Trill Farm Garden and cover some of the following topics:

rotations and crop planning for a box scheme and restaurant sales
propagation
Spring crops (including season extension)
Spring cultivation techniques and bed preparation

The second day will involve a visit to Fresh and Green near Ottery St Mary. Ruth has been growing veg there since 2006 and will talk through her approach to running a box scheme on much sandier soil than at Trill. Fresh and Green is a twelve acre farm, six of which produce seasonal veg, year round for the veg box scheme that she runs. There is 600 m 2 of protected cropping, in the form of polytunnels. Most of the propagation is done on site, direct sown, or in the dedicated greenhouse, and with the exception of ware potatoes all of the vegetables marketed through the veg box scheme are produced by the business. Over fifty different types of vegetables and herbs are grown on a six year rotation, with egg laying chickens, and green manures incorporated into the rotation scheme.

SUMMER (July)
The first of the two days in July will return to Trill Farm Garden and cover some of the following topics:

irrigation
Summer polytunnel production
harvests and sales
Summer cultivation techniques and bed preparation

The second day will be a visit to Pitney Market Garden where Adi and Rita will run through the way that they run their market garden, producing for an onsite farm shop and cafe. They will go through the tools and machinery that they use for field scale production, alongside the protected cropping and more intensive area of the market garden.

AUTUMN (September)
The course will return to Trill Farm Garden again, this time to see how things work in autumn, the change over from summer crops to autumn crops and how we go about this, and a real in depth look at soil fertility and health and the techniques that we use to improve this. The focus will be on the following topics:

the practical things that we do to balance soil health with vegetable production
Winter polytunnel production
Autumn bed preparation (main focus on tunnels)
Growing for autumn crops

The second day of the autumn course will be at Trill Farm Garden focusing on the seed production that we do here and how we integrate that into our market garden to add diversity to what we do and the crops we grow, as well as the income that the business makes.

See more about the course leaders at the Advanced Market Gardening Course page.

If you need accommodation there are plenty of B&Bs locally to us and we can recommend Monkton Wyld Court for simple, but comfortable accommodation with good food (dinner is also available if needed).

Course cost

£180 for each two day block.

There is a 10% discount available to Landworkers' Alliance members and those living within 15 miles of Trill Farm, please contact us with details of your membership to receive the discount code.

One bursary ticket (half price) will also be offered to those who cannot afford the full ticket price. To apply for this please email ashley@trillfarmgarden.co.uk with a little bit about yourself, what you would like to get from the course, and why you think you should be considered for the bursary.

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Advanced Market Gardening

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