Grow-Your-Own Food

Canterbury Permaculture Institute offers education through a range of hands-on sessions, presentations, theory-based learning and site visits.

This is a mini-course set within the PDC, focusing on the growing food aspects of the permaculture course

Soil & Water - 8:30am - 4:30pm August 3rd & 4th 

The Nature of Water -  Water in the landscape - How does water interact with the landscape, and how can we direct these interactions to promote biodiversity & support human needs.

Journey of Water - Water collection, filtration and distribution - How can we use our built landscape to collect drinking water, filter it for human use, direct it through our living spaces, and filter our greywater for irrigation in our outdoor spaces.

Earthworks - Designing water flow across and through our landscapes - Learn about landscape scale water management to slow and infiltrate water into our landscape rehydrating the land. We’ll be making models to learn about swales, spillways, road placement, check dams, keylines, keypoint collection dams, catch basins, and river flood prevention systems. We’ll also learn how to build a simple A-frame tool to measure the contours of our landscape.

Infiltration & Soil Substrates - We’ll use simple soil testing methods to test the infiltration rates of soils around the Climate Action Campus. Bring in your own soil & growing mediums from your land to test for soil substrate mixture & pH levels. Complete visual soil assessments.

Soil Structure & Pedogenesis  - The earth depends on a living soil sponge to support all soil based living ecosystems. Learn about soil structure and how it is formed. What is the difference between soil and dirt? And why is it important to the health of our local environments.

The Soil Food Web - Learn about the different life forms that make up soil and how they interact to drive all of the nutrient and water distribution that is needed to keep ecosystems and food systems thriving.

The Soil Food Web Viewed - Using microscopes of different strengths view your soil samples to see what types of life (or none if you have dirt) are living in your soil. View the film of water that covers all soil particles in healthy soil, and watch microarthropods going about their daily life activities.

Soil Succession & Soil Cycles - Now that you have an understanding of soil and water we’ll work through how to use this information in common implementation scenarios and in improving our ability to read the land and understand how to drive or reduce succession using your new soil and water toolkits.

Growing Soil & Food -  8:30am - 4:30pm August 31st- & September 1st

Growing Soil - Learn about the different types of compost, the do’s and don’ts, their benefits, principles and materials needed. Hands-on session building a hot compost pile.

Vermiculture - How to have a successful wormery. Learn about worm anatomy and the best way to care and grow the production, how to set up, care & maintenance, and  the best practice in extracting the soil & worm juice.

Soil Amendments -Learn about the different types available and their benefits and when and where to use each one. Inoculants, EM, Bokashi, Liquid manures, Green manures, Biochar

No-Dig-Beds - Cover the philosophy of how it can make a difference to moisture, building fertility, maximising surface volume and creating great spaces for growing fruit, herbs & vegetables. Hands-on session building the layers needed and how to care and grow the bed over the seasons with different materials to create rich soil life for your plants

Plant Antimony &- In this session we look closely at the structures and systems of plants that allow them to survive, grow, and reproduce, and how each structure has a specific function to help the plant survive in its environment.

Nursery Activities - This covers propagation options from seed, cuttings, layering, diversion, and transplanting. Learn what soils to use and the importance of hygiene, and the best seed saving techniques, storage practices, and seed swapping.

Pests & Diseases - How to care for your plants to prevent pests & diseases, discussing the common problems and what to do if they occur.

Integrated Growing Systems - 8:30am - 4:30pm September 29th & 30th 

Edible Gardens/Landscapes - This covers the basics of backyard food production, introducing different crop growing arrangements, companion planting & seasonal planting options. And what is needed to care for these spaces.

Urban Agriculture - Looking at different options for food production in urban space, how we can provide local fresh food affordably, how to maximise spaces and people's role in community garden and urban farm systems. Plus , what are Food Sovereignty and The Commons about?

Food Forest & Orchard - Looking at the differences between orchards and foodforest, the principles of micro-climate, stacking and succession, along with planting guilds that combine fruit, nut, herbs and vegetables that work in symbiotic relationships to benefit and support the health and vitality of the growing space and each other.

Agroforestry & Syntropic Planting Systems - This is another step up from foodforest system. Introducing large mixed crop varieties, trees, animals and seasonal crops in patterns and rotation for the benefit of the ecosystems and multiple production from the land use.

Wild Harvest - Tour around the local area to see what wild food available, understand their place in the system and the nutritional value they have. Learn why weeds are important from and beneficial uses for ecosystems and human health.

Mushroom Inoculation - Demonstration of the different types of NZ mushroom and their inoculation styles, along with the options for your own homegrown variety to get you started

Design Activities: In small groups we will work on establishing Guild groups - family planting plans - for a variety of fruit trees. Use the 7 layers principle, benefical, accumalative, and replent

Join us...

for all 3 session at $825 or $300 for each of the weekend's if you can't join all 3.

Please let us know if you would like to talk over the payment process or offers.

Payments can be made to

Canterbury Permaculture Institute

Kiwi Bank - Account #38-9023-0112188-01

Particular: GYOF3

Reference: (Your Surname)

For more information or to talk over payment options email Lillee Star

info@canterburypermacultureinstitute.co.nz

This mini course is set within the  Our PDC course

Read more about the Permaculture Design Certificate

If after attending these modules wewould like to join the full course we can give you a discount of the full fee based on the number of modules paid pervious, as well as attending this session for a 2nd time to refresh and deepen the learning... get in touch if you would like to know more