Learn the art of perennial edible gardening through practice. This course offers experience in low-input, low-effort edible gardening in a thriving inner Melbourne garden. Forest gardening, greywater and rainwater harvesting and practical vertical gardening combined into a simple toolkit.
Learn from the successes and failures of a long-running experiment with one of it’s designer/tinkerers - and seasoned forester and perennial gardener, Rafael Schouten.
There is a limit of 10 places to keep things practical and focussed.
The cost of the two-day course is $180, or $100 for just one of the days. Some gardening or horticulture experience is desirable.
Email: rafaelschouten@gmail.com to book.
Activities include:
Day 1: Plants
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Summer/Autumn pruning of fruit trees. Learn pruning techniques, tree growth habits.
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Learn to graft eggplant trees.
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Practise flexible ongoing design: Prune, replant and reorganise for changing conditions.
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Learn to prepare nopal (prickly pear pads) for lunch.
Day 2: Infrastructure (and plants too, of course…)
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Real, low tech “vertical gardening”. Learn about growth and trellacing for an amazing collection of edible vines - grapes, kiwis, hops, yams, groundnuts and chokos. and ad-hoc espalier.
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Learn basic water harvesting and its pitfalls from multiple permanent systems on the site - washing machine greywater with HDPE piping, gravity fed shower greywater with PVC, and rainwater diversion.
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Learn to prepair perrenial vegetables such as stem taro and choco vine for lunch.