Wildberry Organics

 

Sustainable Organic Farming in Oregon

Class Descriptions

Garden Planning & Design
Improving Your Soil
Composting
Seeds & Seedlings
Propagation & Planting
Pests & Diseases - Organic Pest Management
Season Extending Techniques
Fruit & Perennial Gardens
Preserving The Harvest

Garden Planning and Design
Basics of Permaculture design. Each element - Part of the whole. Basics of Biointensive Gardening. Put your garden on Paper First. As close to the house as possible. A small, well managed Garden produces more than a poorly managed large one. Plant what you’d like.

Observation – sun, shade, wind
North – south beds
Microclimates
Edible landscaping
Water
Attracting Wildlife
Gathering ideas

Improving your soil
The target IED of soil loss & destruction through modern farming practices and destruction of habitat.

Sand, Silt, Clay, Mineral deposits
PD
Carbon, oxygen, hydrogen
NPK
Water rentention, air, fertility
Soil Samples - Soil Tests Test kits
Biointensive methods build soil up to 60 times faster than mother nature.
Organic matter & humus decay cycle. Beneficial organisms
Worms, compost, green manures
Manure, mulches
Organic fertilizers
Water reduction

Composting

Gardener’s gold
C/N Ration 25/1
Building compost piles
Compost materials
Sheet composting, Green manures
Mulches
Compost tea
Kelp & stinging nettles

Seeds & Seedlings

Saving seed is true independence
Open Pollinated vs Hybrid
Preserving diversity
Seed companies & catalogs
Seed power & viability
Planting mixes – sterile soil
Compost, soil, sand, leaf mold, peat
Perlite, volcanic material
Vermiculite heated mica
Egg shells
Starting seed
Light, temperature, humidity
Germination, Damping off
Feeding,, transplanting

Planting & Propagation

Maximizing methods – interplanting, companions, succession, raised beds, trellis, transplants
Soil tempreture
Water & how to conserve it
Mulch
Propagation: Saving seeds, cuttings, division, bulbs, layering, etc.

Organic Pest Management

Can’t dominate – cooperate!
Methods of insect control which ignore the relationships
between insects themselves is useless.
Pests
Pathogens
Beneficials – pollinators, predators, parasites, birds, bats, reptiles & amphibians
Interplanting & crop rotation
Plants that attract and deter
Hand picking, trapping, row covers
Bird & bat houses, feeders, water

Check back for more Descriptions of these classes...
Season Extending Techniques
Fruit & Perennial Gardens
Preserving The Harvest