GROW YOUR OWN FOOD COURSE
🍅 Do you want to grow your own vegetables and herbs, but don’t know where to start?
Grow Your Own Food (and Flowers) 2024 Schedule
Session 1, April 2: Introductions & Course Outline Review
Session 2, April 16: Garden Bed Preparation, Crop Planning and Garden Mapping; Seeding Spacing, Transplant vs. Direct Seeding
Session 3, April 30: How to Build Healthy Soil & Why It Matters
Session 4, May 14: Plant Families & Common Garden Weeds: Understanding Connections in the Garden
Session 5, May 28: PESTS! Who is Eating My lettuce? (and What To Do About It)
Session 6, June 11: Cultivating Biodiversity in Your Garden: Birds, Bees & Bugs to help your garden grow
Session 7, June 25: Perennial Food Plants & Permaculture Basics
Session 8, July 9: Winter Gardening: Timing & Crop Planning for Fall & Winter
Session 9, July 23: POTLUCK CELEBRATION! Come gather in the garden for a long-table dinner celebrating our homegrown food!
Session 10, August 6: Extending Your Harvest: Easy options for dealing with your harvest bounty & extending your food harvest
Session 11, August 20: Seed Saving: The Basics & Benefits of Saving Your Own Seed (Seed Libraries!)
Session 12, September 3: Putting the garden to bed & Community Gardening: Preparing Your Garden for Winter: Cover Crops & Mulches; Exploring Options on Where to Find a Community Garden Space in Vancouver
The Farmers on 57th have the course for you! GYOF provides Spring & Summer biweekly sessions full of hands-on learning. Includes your own garden plot, or join the communal plot group if sharing the tending works best.
Come experience the joy of growing your own organic vegetables and flowers under the guidance of professional grower and educator Alyssa Dawn, who is thrilled to be sharing her passion with you. Together you will plan, plant and tend the gardens, with instruction and support throughout the growing season. Along the way, you’ll learn about garden planning, soil health, seed starting, transplanting, weeding, watering and organic pest management.
Full Course Fee: $395
Includes 12 sessions + optional use of your own 4’x8’ garden plot OR shared use of the communal garden plots
New in 2024: Option to take single or a few classes! We’ve heard that not everyone can commit to the full course - and some of you have also told us you’d like to take just a few classes on specific topics. We aim to serve our community!
Single or Multi-Session Fee: $45 per session / $40 per session when signing up for 3 or more. Add having your own plot to tend for the season for an additional $40 (subject to availability)
All fees include: Session handouts, in-person education + seeds, soil & supplies.
Next start date: April 30th. Until September 3rd.
6:30PM - 8:00PM
Every other Tuesday
Location: Just west of the entrance of George Pearson Centre at 780 West 57th Ave.
Near the corner of 57th Ave & Heather Street, tucked in between George Pearson Centre and the ONNI Sales Centre & Parking Lot.
About Alyssa
Gardening as nature intended, Alyssa Dawn is creative in her approach to urban environments as the proprietor of True Blue GardenScapes. Guided by principles of local knowledge holders, ecology and therapeutic horticulture, Alyssa nurtures clients through the process of creating their outdoor space as a lifelong goal to grow the connections with people and plants in a beneficial manner to health and well-being. Empowering others through education with a commitment to resilient food secure communities, Alyssa Dawn supports the engagement of hands-on and virtual opportunities to develop the knowledge and skills for people to grow, care for and harvest their own food with confidence. Growing with Farmers on 57th since it was a young sprout in 2009, a community of supportive leaders in urban agriculture, Alyssa Dawn herself was born and raised in the forests and shorelines of the Pacific North West. Let’s grow!
