Boston Flora

Tag: Vegetable Gardening

  • Monday, July 18, 6:00 pm – 7:00 pm – Ask The Experts: Veggie Gardening Panel, Online

    Join the Backyard Growers team for an open-format Q&A to help you successfully grow your own food this year. We’ve scheduled this event for mid-summer so that attendees can bring their questions about topics including succession planting, harvesting, pests, diseases, and more. How’s your garden going so far? Stop in and share your challenges or big wins!

    FREE admission to Backyard Growers Program Participants (e.g. 2022 Community Garden, Backyard Garden & GrowBag Garden) as well as Backyard Growers Community Consulting Clients. Backyard Growers is a not for profit based in Gloucester, Massachusetts.

    $15 General Admission Register through Eventbrite HERE. Proceeds support Backyard Growers’ work building healthy, connected, sustainable communities by teaching people to grow their own food.

  • Tuesdays, May 4 – May 25, 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm, Online, and Sunday, June 6, 10:30 am – 12:30 pm, Live – Foundations of Vegetable Gardening

    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

  • Friday, March 12, 6:00 pm – 7:00 pm (Online), and Saturday, March 13, 1:00 pm – 3:00 pm (In-person) – Extending the Harvest: Growing Early Spring Vegetables

    In this hybrid Berkshire Botanical Garden course, held online and in-person on March 12 and 13, learn how to extend the season’s harvest to enjoy your own garden greens in the early spring months. Friday evening, Molly Comstock of Colfax Farm will lead students through a discussion of successful early planting. The lecture will cover growing undercover, in cold frames and in low polytunnels, as well as crop selection and timing. Saturday, join us on the farm to see these principles in action. Get hands-on experience with proper soil cultivation and learn about a variety of techniques for producing early season crops. For the past ten years, Molly Comstock has been a nomadic farmer, managing farms and growing food throughout the Hudson Valley and Berkshire regions. As the owner and operator of Colfax Farm she uses organic and no-till growing practices and focuses on creating community and connection for CSA members and customers. As a farmer, she strives to foster an environment where people can know and connect with their farmer, their food, the land and each other.

    BBG members $30, nonmembers $45. Register at https://www.berkshirebotanical.org/events/extending-harvest-growing-early-spring-vegetables

  • Gary Pilarchik – The Rusted Garden Web Series

    Goodness knows we are all looking for instruction and entertainment during our enforced period of social distancing, so we suggest a YouTube adventure with Gary Pilarchik, aka The Rusted Garden. This weekly series is set in a Zone 7 garden in Maryland, but since our own New England climate continues to warm, many hints and techniques are just as valid here as there. This series is all about vegetable gardening, and he’s quite an advocate for no dig double shredded hardwood beds. He has a series on seed starting indoors under lights, and direct sowing and transplanting outdoors. Each segment runs approximately 5 – 15 minutes, and you can subscribe at https://www.youtube.com/user/pilarchik

  • Wednesday, March 13, 6:45 pm – Vegetable Gardening for Everyone

    Pepperell Garden Club presents Vegetable Gardening for Everyone with Susan Hammond, Master Gardner on Wednesday, March 13 at 6:45 PM at the Pepperell Senior Center, 37 Nashua Rd, Pepperell. Public is welcome! Free to Pepperell Garden Club members. $5 for guests ($2 for Seniors). For more information visit http://pepperellgardenclub.org/wp/

    Image result for The Vine Garden Plant Outlet

  • Thursday, March 29, 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm – Vegetable Gardening: Planning, Preparing and Maintaining Your Victory Garden

    “There’s nothing like knowing exactly how the vegetables you eat were grown. You can take complete control by establishing your own vegetable garden. And maybe even share with your children the magic of growing their own dinner. What I have learned over the years is that careful planning and preparation can take vegetable gardening from drudgery to fun. So I emphasize the planning of everything from size, location and style of vegetable garden to the need to prepare that garden for success while acknowledging that Mother Nature will always have the final say.”

    After a career begun as a chemist, Betty Sanders found her interests taking her in a new direction—gardening. She studied at the New York Botanical Garden, New England Wild Flower Society, and others on the way to becoming a Master Gardener. Her gardens have been featured on tours by the Garden Conservancy. Betty finds herself increasingly focused on techniques to reduce the use of man-made chemicals in gardening and landscaping. Her current home garden is a grass-free two acres filled with native trees, shrubs and perennials. She is passionate the many opportunities offered by container gardening and as an avid vegetable gardener, is currently in her eighth year of managing her hometown’s community garden. Betty will speak at the Massachusetts Horticultural Society on Thursday, March 29 at 7 pm.

    $12 Mass Hort members, $20 general admission. To register, visit http://www.masshort.org/

  • Saturday, March 11, 2:00 pm – 3:00 pm – Vegetable Gardening 101

    Learn how to grow tasty vegetables in your own yard. Dawn Davies, who plans and cares for Tower Hill’s own Vegetable Garden, will cover the basics of home vegetable gardening for the novice, in this Saturday, March 11 session from 2 – 3. She’ll cover design considerations as well as tried and true vegetable varieties for a beautiful and productive garden. Dawn’s tricks, tips and ideas will save you time, work and money! Free with admission to the garden, but pre-registration is recommended at www.towerhillbg.org.

  • Saturday, July 11, 10:00 am – 12:00 noon – Plan to Harvest: Vegetable Gardening

    Massachusetts Horticultural Society Garden Keeper Susan Hammond will show you how your plan from seed catalogs grows into a producing vegetable garden. She will discuss the unique varieties growing in our educational garden, the techniques used to increase yields, and give you firsthand experience troubleshooting common garden problems. We’ll discuss late season planting, maintenance and harvest. And assess how all that snow affected our gardens. Come with questions!

    The first part of this Saturday, July 11 program (10 – noon) will be held in the Elm Bank Education Building, and the program will end in the Garden to Table Vegetable Garden.

    Susan Hammond is a Lifetime Master Gardener with the Massachusetts Master Gardener Association. She’s been gardening since childhood, with a special focus on edible plants. She is responsible for the Mass Hort’s 6,000 square foot Garden to Table Vegetable Garden, where she enjoys teaching visitors and volunteers about vegetable gardening. Lecture Fee: Mass Hort Members $10, Non-Members $15. Register online at www.masshort.org. Photo from www.sharpercut.com.

  • Saturday, May 16, 10:00 am – 12:30 pm – Vegetables for Small Spaces: Containers, Window Boxes and Raised Beds

    Grow your own vegetables on your porch, patio or balcony all season long. Fresh, delicious and available when you are ready for them, many of our favorite veggies grow happily and productively in small spaces. Learn where to order seed suitable for small spaces, which containers to use, and how to plant, care for and harvest your favorites, then begin your own potted vegetable garden.

    Each student enrolled in this Tower Hill Botanic Garden class on Saturday, May 16, from 10 – 12:30, will receive a Veggie for Small Spaces Garden Kit: vegetable seed catalogs from New England growers, detailed handouts, 2 packets of vegetable seed easily grown in containers, a 14 inch plastic pot, a bag of soil, a tomato plant suitable for a pot and support stakes and ties for the tomato. We’ll plant the tomato in class. All materials included. Please bring an apron and flower scissors to class.

    Betsy Williams teaches, lectures and writes about living with herbs and flowers. A gardener and herb grower since 1972, Betsy trained as a florist in Boston and England. She combines her floral and gardening skills with an extensive knowledge of history, plant lore and seasonal celebrations. Betsy is the author of several books on the uses and stories of herbs and flowers. She has appeared on the Discovery Channel and greater Boston cable stations as well as local and national radio talk shows. Betsy lectures and teaches locally and nationally.  THBG members $65, non-members $80.  Register online at www.towerhillbg.org, or call 508-869-6111.

  • Saturday, April 11, 10:00 am – 12:00 noon – Vegetable Garden Planning

    Want to get more out of your vegetable garden? Come to 62 Summer Street in Boston on Saturday, April 11 and learn about timing, spacing, succession planting and interplanting and leave with a draft of your spring planting plan. This Trustees of Reservations/Boston Natural Areas Network seminar is free, but registration is required by calling 617-542-7696, or emailing mdelima@ttor.org. Image from www.whatishomeimprovement.com.