How to get your seedlings going: a class with WNC grower Patryk Battle

Announcement from Carolina Farm Stewardship Association:

February Class: Seedling Production

Saturday February 25, 2012 from 1:00 – 5:15 p.m.

Location: 176 Kimzey Road, Mills River, NC

Instructor: Pat Battle, with Rocco Sinicrope & Jeremy Ghrist

Students will learn the information and resources needed to establish a seedling production area at home. We will briefly examine and discuss the advanced infrastructure our January class created here at Mills River Educational Farm. We will help each individual to strategize practical versions of this infrastructure for their situation.

Students may bring their own seeds, and we will have a limited, but reasonably comprehensive selection to purchase from. Attendees will learn what must be started now and what to plan on starting when, in the future, to insure that they have an ongoing supply of vegetable and flower starts for their gardens/farms. Based on each individual’s time constraints and infrastructure, we will decide what seedlings we can start successfully, and which ones we should plan on purchasing from reputable growers.

All aspects of seedling starting and care will be demonstrated. Attendees will learn about watering, determining if their seedlings need supplemental feeding, and how to accomplish this, thinning, dividing, stepping up and when and how to the harden off their starts. Mills River Educational Farm will supply the materials needed for this class and the students will take up to three flats of starts home with them. We will then have biweekly check in sessions here at Mills River Educational Farm lasting between half an hour and an hour and a half depending on the needs of the class and their starts. Mills River Educational Farm will endeavor to provide space for the flats of those who absolutely cannot develop a space at their homes. This will be on a case-by-case basis as will any attendant fees. As always here at Mills River Educational Farm, inputs and techniques will be National Organic Program compliant.

This four hour workshop will start at 1:00 p.m. until 5:15 p.m. with a 15 minute break with light snack provided. Cost including soil, cell packs and flats, but not seeds will be $30.00. French Broad Food Co-op members pay $25.00.

Register at the French Broad Co-op or at http://www.livingwebfarms.org/#/register/4560350208

For more information, contact Kelly at the French Broad Food Coop at 828-255-7650, or click this link:

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About Jeff Fobes
As a long-time proponent of media for social change, my early activities included coordinating the creation of a small community FM radio station to serve a poor section of St. Louis, Mo. In the 1980s I served as the editor of the "futurist" newsletter of the U.S. Association for the Club of Rome, a professional/academic group with a global focus and a mandate to act locally. During that time, I was impressed by a journalism experiment in Mississippi, in which a newspaper reporter spent a year in a small town covering how global activities impacted local events (e.g., literacy programs in Asia drove up the price of pulpwood; soybean demand in China impacted local soybean prices). Taking a cue from the Mississippi journalism experiment, I offered to help the local Green Party in western North Carolina start its own newspaper, which published under the name Green Line. Eventually the local party turned Green Line over to me, giving Asheville-area readers an independent, locally focused news source that was driven by global concerns. Over the years the monthly grew, until it morphed into the weekly Mountain Xpress in 1994. I've been its publisher since the beginning. Mountain Xpress' mission is to promote grassroots democracy (of any political persuasion) by serving the area's most active, thoughtful readers. Consider Xpress as an experiment to see if such a media operation can promote a healthy, democratic and wise community. In addition to print, today's rapidly evolving Web technosphere offers a grand opportunity to see how an interactive global information network impacts a local community when the network includes a locally focused media outlet whose aim is promote thoughtful citizen activism. Follow me @fobes

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