Christopher Weeks

It is literally impossible to purchase food (at any price) that's up to the standard of what I grow for my family. I guess I could employ a person to grow what I want using the methods that I want, if I could figure out how to afford that and manage the relationship and so on. But also, I enjoy doing the gardening.

35 hours of quality instruction on better-than-organic garden practices.  

Most Master Gardener courses offer extensive botanical and cultivation information, which is great!   But they also teach that you must use all the bottles and sprayers containing nasty stuff and covered with warning labels, which is not so great - for the gardener or the garden.  

There has never been a course taught through an ecological lens . . .

                    . . . Until now.

In the Garden Master Course, we have taken the very best of the Advanced Master Gardener curriculum and improved upon it.  We have employed biological and ecosystemic methods to eliminate the need for conventional (or even certified organic) pesticides and herbicides.  Gardening for the future!

After years of planning, Helen Atthowe came to Wheaton Labs to teach what I now call "The Certified Garden Master Course."  The class sells out every year.  Demand keeps growing.  So last year we set up some high-quality cameras to see if we could gather the footage to make this class available to more people.

About your instructor:

Helen Atthowe has taught Master Gardener courses for 17 years. Having  studied under Fukuoka Helen has spent the last 35 years learning how to pay close attention to the land.  She applies Fukuoka's farming principles to her commercial organic farms, while also adding and developing her own ecological farming practices. She has hands on experience managing a 2,000-acre organic commodity farm as well as growing permaculture food forests.

Helen has a bachelor's degree in agro-ecology, a master's degree in horticulture, and is working on a doctorate in entomology on how reduced-tillage affects beneficial organism populations and crop biological control. Paul and Helen have recorded numerous podcasts together, and they are among Paul's most popular podcasts.



What the Garden Master Course covers:

Unit 1: Getting Started: How everything is connected

Unit 2: The Roots of a Healthy Plant Community: Understanding soil structure and ecology

Unit 3: Strengthening Your Garden: Managing beneficial insects, pests, and disease

Unit 4: Weeds vs. Garden: Working with plant competition in the farm/garden system

Unit 5: Growing a Diet: Planting, pruning and rotating for long-term success






Get Helen Atthowe's 2022 Garden Master Course in HD Streaming, tiny download , or hd download

I know that you already know Wikipedia exists, so I'm assuming this doesn't work for you, but it's how I'd start and it might be a useful suggestion for anyone reading this down-stream. I'd go to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_history and start reading. Then I'd follow links and links from links and lin...

I think if you make it 10x20 and 7' tall, you just have a center path and climb around on it. It's more than just a garden bed.

And Josh, welcome to Permies from a 'neighbor'!

I use a seed-seive with a bunch of interchangeable screens: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0946BX45M but I can see how dedicated ones would be easier in some regards.

Is there any connection between this substance and the green-sand aluminum casting I did in high school metal shop? (Quick googling didn't turn anything up, but I don't know enough about either context to hazard much of a guess of my own.)

Devin Lavign wrote:On that point I actually knew a guy for 3 years on the West coast, even living with him. Only to find out that he never liked me. While on the East cost within 3 days of knowing someone you know if you like them and you WILL tell them.

What I have figure is that the West coast tends to be polite, even if it ends up rude in the long run. While the East coast tends to be very forward even if it is rude in the short term.

reminds me of a joke I heard 25 years ago:

In Los Angeles, when a stranger says "Hey, how's it going?" it means 'fuck you!'
In New York, when a stranger says "fuck you!" it means 'hey, how's it going?'

Tereza Okava wrote:I moved to a place in Brazil that is known for being even more unfriendly than NYC. You don't talk to anyone you don't know...

Oh, this reminded me of something! In 1979, my folks moved us from Los Angeles -- the only region I had memory of, to suburban St. Louis, MO. On our very first day in the new house, I'd finished my part of emptying the U-Haul and my mom told me to go explore, so I was walking around the neighborhood. Two or three blocks from home, I was walking down the side of a sleepy residential street (there were no sidewalks!!) and a little old lady with a small dog came walking up toward me. So I started crossing the street to get away from the stranger, of course(!). And then the strangest thing I could have imagined happened. She said "hi" and smiled at me. I gaped at her for a second and then ran home. When I told my parents about the encounter my mom laughed and laughed before starting to explain that "things are different out here."

John Weiland wrote:Curious about one other thing.....

B and C here.

The “you guys” thing is weird. I’ve lived on both coasts and up and down the Midwest and that phrase is gender-neutral and inclusive everywhere I’ve been. I wonder if the regionalism is that part of Virginia or maybe just Matt’s prof was being picky.