Spring Gardening Classes at City College

The new spring catalog for City College of San Francisco is available, with a full list of horticulture classes offered.

I will be teaching two Saturday morning classes on growing Vegetables and Herbs. Each class is 6 weeks long, and meets from 9 to 1 on Saturdays. From 11 to 1 we have lab, for which we have a big garden and greenhouses. In these fun, practical, thoughtful classes, you will learn what you need to know to grow food in a small or larger garden. We also share recipes and learn how to harvest and prepare food from a garden.

The first class, 111F, runs from February 3 through March 1, and will cover buying seeds and plants, starting from seed or transplanting, salad and root crops, and edible flowers. The second class, 111G, is from April 14 through May 19. In it you will learn how to grow summer crops, as well as how to identify and manage pests by using integrated pest management.

(These classes are two parts of a three-part series. The final class of the series will be offered in the fall. It covers soil preparation, composting, styles of gardening, and the fall/winter garden crops.)

The catalog recommends gardening experience or a basic gardening class as prerequisites for my classes. This doesn't mean you have to have taken a basic gardening class, just that you have enough experience or info that I can jump to the details of the crops without leaving you far behind. If you have been gardening or reading Golden Gate Gardening for a while, that should do it. (We use GGG as the textbook, with plenty of supplemental handouts.)

Check out the City College web site under Environmental Horticulture and Floristry at www.ccsf.edu/schedule for other offerings. The tree care class, which isn't offered very often, will be given next spring, as well as plant propagation and the usual ornamental plant I.D. classes, landscape construction, floristry classes, and many others.