COURSE DESCRIPTION

Imagine stepping outside your kitchen door and plucking vibrant, sun-kissed tomatoes or crisp, aromatic herbs that you planted and nurtured with the right amount of care and attention. Imagine knowing exactly how your food is grown, free from harmful pesticides or chemicals, and bursting with rich flavor and unparalleled freshness. This online, self-paced course, developed by Dr. Betsy Briju, will help to transform your relationship with food and empower you to create a thriving kitchen garden right in your backyard.

Gardening isn’t simply about tending to plants; it’s about embracing the interconnectedness of the world around us. Beyond the practical benefits, growing your own food is a transformative experience that allows you to explore the deep connection between food, nutrition, and the environment.

In this course, you’ll learn the key steps to establish and maintain your very own kitchen garden, explore how to carefully select your favorite vegetables and fruits, and unearth what plants really need to thrive. Moreover, you will explore how weather patterns and garden planning shape your garden’s success, and the feasibility of embarking on this journey that requires investments of time, money, and effort. The course brings together a vibrant community of gardeners united by a commitment to promote good nutrition, protect the planet, and share the wisdom gained through their collective experiences.

Throughout this course, students will:

• Identify key steps and skills needed to start and maintain a kitchen garden with a small number of vegetables and/or fruits of their choice.
• Explain what plants need to survive and thrive, especially the factors that are of particular importance in a cultivated plot.
• Describe the relationships between and impacts of weather patterns and garden planning.
• Consider feasibility in terms of time, money, and effort.
• Consider cost-effective alternatives to purchasing garden tools and equipment, including reusing and fixing resources already available around the home, locally available materials, and otherwise-wasted materials like food scraps.
• Describe the difference between growing your own food vs. buying food from the market in terms of taste, freshness, and joy.
• Identify and practice techniques for building community and supporting a movement to promote good nutrition, protect the environment, and share wisdom and experience to improve the success of gardens.
• Recognize the likelihood of failures or mistakes, and identify strategies to improve rather than quit.
• Anticipate challenges and consider ways to overcome or avoid them.
• Keep effective records that allow for learning and growth over time. 

This course was created through and is part of :

COURSE-AT-A-GLANCE

The topical overview of the course below provides an early taste of what you can expect as you embark on your learning journey. The course has a total of nine (9) modules.

• Module 1 – Introduction
• Module 2 – The Gardener’s Toolkit
• Module 3 – Planning
• Module 4 – Challenges
• Module 5 – Designing Your Garden
• Module 6 – Harvest and Best Practices
• Module 7 – Implementations & Recordkeeping
• Module 8 – Seed Collection & Storage
• Module 9 – Conclusion: Support & Community Building

AUDIENCE

This course is designed for lifelong learners who believe in ecological thinking in action and who value learning in an intentional community and independent thought. Ideally, it is for farmers and gardeners (seasoned and beginners), students, educators and extension agents, and horticulturists.

COURSE DEVELOPERS – Dr. Betsy Briju

​Betsy’s undergraduate degree enabled her to have a feel for what farmers go through as they plant a crop and wait for rain or wait for the rain to stop. That’s when she decided to be of help to Indian farmers whose livelihoods depend on rain or lack thereof. Although she earned her PhD in Plant Molecular Biology, her passion continues to lie in being a source of information and seeking creative ways to solve everyday problems of farmers. Currently she is an active Master Gardener Volunteer who serves as a link between the research university and the general gardening public. Being a link is how she sees herself in the future. Betsy appreciates that this visioning process enables us to explore how to accomplish the task of helping farmers realize that they are not doomed, but will achieve success in farming even with the constraints they are facing now. Betsy helped formulate the part of the vision that aims at healthy food for the community by suggesting the involvement of women and the bartering of excess crops with neighbors. She also helped prepare the questionnaire for surveying farmers and homemakers. Being a resident of the US for about 14 years, but having been born and brought up in India, she adds cross-cultural perspective to the project.

Disclaimer: 

Course descriptions on this webpage are for informational purposes only. Content may be updated or changed as planning evolves. EcoGather reserves the right to alter the program specifics, including details about course content, instructors, collaborations, field trips, facilities, and pricing, at any time without notice. 

EcoGather’s programming is always subject to adaptive change based on then-current events (e.g., public health emergencies, extreme weather events, service outages, etc.). We appreciate understanding and flexibility when we make adjustments designed to support community safety and care for the places in which we learn. We also thank you in advance for your patience when technical snags beyond our control briefly interrupt access.