The Tower Hill Botanic Garden immersive Foundations of Vegetable Gardening will give you all the needed information to get your vegetable garden off to a good start this spring. Four virtual workshop sessions will provide information for planning and preparing garden beds, sowing seeds, transplanting seedlings, and raising healthy vegetable plants. The fifth session will be a guided visit to the Tower Hill vegetable garden. The goal of this multi-week workshop is the help you have a successful vegetable garden this year!
Session I. May 4, Planning the Garden
A. Choosing a site and selecting crops.
B. Rotation, succession sowing and inter-planting.
C. Design options: beds, rows, blocks.
D. Garden Calendar: When to sow and transplant. Days to maturity
Session II. May 11, Groundwork
A. Bed preparation
B. Fertilizer, lime and compost
C. Crop spacing and support
Session III. May 18, Planting
A. Sowing and transplanting
B. Row covers
C. Irrigation
D. Mulch
Session IV. May 25, Culture
A. Summer crop maintenance
B. Nutrition
C. Insect and disease control
Session V. June 6, A Visit to the Tower Hill Vegetable Garden
A. An opportunity to see a vegetable garden in progress
B. Follow-up questions and in-person discussion
Christie Higginbottom has worked as a costumed interpreter at Old Sturbridge Village since 1981. From 1984 to 2004 she coordinated the historic horticulture program researching, planning and planting the re-created kitchen and flower gardens at the museum’s historic households. She also supervised the Village’s Herb Garden collection, a garden exhibiting over 300 varieties of historic herbs. From 2004 to 2006 she researched and developed a series of self-guided walking trails interpreting people and the environment in the early 1800s. She researched and designed the 2007-2009 exhibit “Taking Root: Gardening in Pots in the early 1800s.” Now retired from full-time work at OSV, she continues to work in costume part-time and to present garden programs for the Village.
Tower Hill members – $150, nonmembers – $175. Register at www.towerhillbg.org
