Educational Services
Founded as a Hands-On Educational Service, Backyard Groceries strives to incorporate interactive activities into our talks and educational services. We want you to go home remembering what you learned and we find that actually doing it is the best way.
1) Backyard Groceries offers Power Point presentations on a multitude of subjects from Organic Pest Control to Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) and Composting. Providing advanced notice is given Power Point presentations conclude with a hand out and/or game.
2) We are happy to give informal verbal presentations to community groups and social gatherings and informal coaching sessions to private clients. We welcome Q&A during these presentations.
3) Backyard Groceries also offers a series of 1.5 hour coaching classes (see below) to our valued clients who wish to learn and work towards handling things themselves. This is a different service from our informal coaching. Private Clients, Retirement Residences or School Classrooms may select what classes they would like to take part in and we transform that wish into a hands-on workshop! These workshops are more structured than the informal sessions. We try to keep things fun and our staff have experience working with children.
Please Note: We are happy to present to children and run workshops orientated for kids, however, in reality all of us have something to gain being with, working in alignment with and learning from nature. We believe that what we offer cannot wait to be left up to our kids, the change has to start with us!
Many of the skills we teach will be new for most adults and with a plentitude of information to keep your brain busy adult engagement is encouraged.
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Class & |
Subjects |
Activities |
Handouts |
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Seed Starting |
Appropriate Seed Starter Mix, Starting & Caring for Seedlings, Salad Green Varieties and Choices. |
Video of Making Seed Starting Mix, Filling Trays, Indoor Seed Sowing (Kale, Lettuce, Tomatoes), Calculating Monetary Value of a Salad Bed |
Tray. Notebook. Harvest Tracker. |
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Designing Vegetable Beds. |
Cool and Warm Weather Crop Groups, Designing a Vegetable Bed, Companion Planting, Designing for Beneficial Insects and Transplanting |
Transplanting our Seedlings. Constructing Supports, Trellises and Row Covers. |
Cool and Warm Weather Crops, Flowers that Attract Beneficial Insects. |
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Fruit Tree and Planning Overview |
How to care for Fruit Trees in Spring, Planning a Garden Overview. Variety Selection for Colour |
Pruning, Walking around Garden with Design in Mind. |
Forms of Fruit Trees. Design Basics. |
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Soil and Seed Beds |
Soil Types, Seed Beds, Outdoor Watering, Annual Amending of Soil, Intro to Cover Crops, Vegetable Varieties, Cloches. |
Outdoor Seed Sowing. |
Jar for Soil Test, Examples, Soil Type Diagram. |
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Explorations of the Insect Kind |
Bug Identification, Controlling Bug Populations Organically |
Exploring the Insect Garden World. Photography. |
Library Book & Bug Mug Shots. |
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Maintaining the Summer Garden |
Training Tomatoes, Starting Fall Crops Indoors, Beginning to Observe Permaculture in Place. |
Seed Sowing Indoors for Fall. Cutting Tomatoes. |
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Garden Biology 102 |
How does the Whole System Work? Earthworms, Soil Biology, Composting and Mulching. |
Mulching the Garden, Turning Compost? |
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Pest Control and Fertilizing |
Reactionary Pest Control, Plant Deficiencies, Fertilizing (Inorganic vs Organic) and Harvesting Techniques. |
Taking a Look at Deficiency Symptoms. Fertilizing & Harvesting. |
Plant Deficiency Symptoms Handouts. |
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Making Wildlife Habitat |
How to Attract Wildlife to Your Yard. Building Upper Layers of an Ecosystem. |
Bird House, Bat House, and/or Predatory Wasp Habitat Building and Decorating. |
How-to Design for these Houses. |
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Touring the Garden |
Looking at Connections between Plants and Bugs, Reviewing our Design |
Q/A. Applying what we have Learned as we Review Interactions in the Garden |
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Planting Fall Veggie Crops |
Replacing Spring Crops with Crops that Produce in the Fall. Foilar Feeding |
Transplanting using Compost that You’ve Made! Foliar Feeding |
Foliar Feeding Recipes. |
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**Planting Salad Greens and Maintenance of Crops |
Sowing Salad Greens. Trouble Shooting with Warm and Fall Weather Crops. |
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Preparing for Fall |
Season Extension, Crop Rotation, Compost Building. |
Setting up a Cloche. Partial Preparing of Beds and Compost Building(?) |
Vegetable Families. |
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Winter Gardening |
Sprouting & Seed Ordering. |
Sprouting |
Sprouts, Soil and Trays. Catalogues and Related Resources. |
Colour Key: April May June - July Fall
Additional Any-Season Workshops:
Mindfulness in the Garden, Nutrition in the Garden and Yoga in the Garden.
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Additional Any-Season Workshops: |
Mindfulness in the Garden |
Nutrition in the Garden and Beyond |
Yoga in the Garden |
