Vegetable Gardening Course

What you'll learn

Learn how to make your garden grow healthy, delicious and fresh vegetables with our gardening short courses in Sydney!

Learn to grow your own vegetables in any of your available growing spaces inside and outside of your house, out in the street, and in your local community gardens. This course has a green focus on small-space, inner-city and urban gardening and is happily applied to larger backyards and whole house areas.

There is a whole section of the course aimed specifically at growing vegetables in pots, troughs, and containers, with a definite objective to achieve some high productivity outcomes for small spaces, but overall the course is designed to give you more leisure time, to relax and enjoy more gardening perhaps, and all the other things that happen in life.

There are countless reasons to want to grow your own food at home.

This workshop will teach you the basics so you can understand how to create your very own edible garden at home. From selecting the right plants for the right places; to creating a sustainable food source with a diversity of plants that includes: exotic vegetables, bush food, natives and flowers: this vegetable gardening course will provide you with essential gardening skills that will last an entire lifetime.

We practice what we preach in this course, so come on down to our vegetable garden area, practice growing vegetables, and see for yourself how it all works. We get our (gloved) hands dirty!

Learning outcomes

By the end of this Vegetable Gardening course, you should be able to:

be confident about growing herbs and vegetables
assess the quality of your garden soil
determine the selection of vegetables that will work in your space
cultivate garden soils and select potting mixes for containers
develop a nutrient-rich well-structured soil profile
diversify your fresh food sources
grow vegetables and herbs successfully

Course content

What will be covered in this Vegetable Gardening course?

Practicals

Hands-on experience in college community garden beds
Your garden soil assessment
Planting out seeds & seedlings
Pots and containers - ground rules & pitfalls

Knowhow

Start with a great base: What you need to know about soils and mixes.
Fixing bad soils (sandy soils / clay soils / water-logged soils / unwettable soils)
To compost or not? That is the question!
Inspect your site: Work out where is best.
Trust the process: Containers and pots are different to garden beds.
Drainage: Do you need it?
Water or irrigation: Pick your climate option.
Fertiliser: Just do it.
Weeds vs Mulch: Who will win the Battle for Sunlight?
Composting: Feeds worm farming success!
Which veggies make sense: Grow what where!
Unique edible alternatives: Exotic vegetables, herbs, edible flowers & dwarf fruit trees
Seeds or seedlings: getting seasonal stuff right
Aim high: Don’t waste a good wall — capture and store that sunlight with climbing food plants.
Soak it in: With a rainforest of gardening hints and tips.

Intended audience

Who is this Vegetable Gardening course for?

This course is for people with or without plant knowledge, with or without big enough garden spaces, or with or without green thumbs, or people with problem areas that need fixing up, and they don’t know where to start, or how to do it, and want some help with all that.

Course venue

Rozelle Campus

2A Gordon Street, Rozelle NSW 2039 (corner of Gordon St & Victoria Rd on the grounds of St. Joseph's Church)

Course materials

What to bring to class

Bring in a small resealable plastic bag of garden soil from your garden space for testing and analysis (dig down about 150mm deep)
Gardening gloves (tight fit is better for gardening work)
A face mask (to protect against potting mix/garden soil bacteria like Legionella)
Sharp secateurs (e.g. Bunnings - Bypass Pruner secateurs $3)
Sharp garden snips/scissors or kitchen scissors
Small hand spade tool
One small cleaning cloth
Small bag to carry small pots
Bring in bags of chopped up vegetable food scraps for composting in the college community garden
A sketch pad, pencil and eraser / or tablet
Notepad and pen to take notes / or phone /or tablet
Wet weather gear if required
Sun hat if required

Course testimonials

Angelo said: Physial demonstration of planting and testing.
Bronwyn said: The course was excellent - the tutor was very generous and relatable, tailored the course to the skill of the participants, and we all went home with worked examples, wholesale contacts, and some new skills.
Louise said: Gave greater insight and understanding of what to look for when creating and maintaining a vegetable garden. Really enjoyed it.
Muriel said: Varied information... no question to the tutor went unanswered.
Karen said: Information was very practical & relevant. The tutor was knowledgeable & professional, & the information was presented in a very clear & easy to understand manner. Highly recommended!

Course tutors

Richard Lynch

Richard is a product of career diversity across industry sectors of Photography, Botany, Horticulture, Teaching, Science, Landscape Design & Construction, Open Spaces Management, and Training and...

View Richard Lynch's profile

Classes Online Courses

Vegetable Gardening Course

Sat 25 Feb 2023

1 session, 4 hours total

8:30am - 12:30pm (UTC+11:00)

2A Gordon St, Rozelle

Richard Lynch

When	Time	Where	Session Notes
Sat 25 Feb 2023	8:30am - 12:30pm	C2-3: Training Room - 2A Gordon St, Rozelle

Vegetable Gardening Course

Sat 22 Apr 2023

1 session, 4 hours total

8:30am - 12:30pm (UTC+10:00)

2A Gordon St, Rozelle

Richard Lynch

When	Time	Where	Session Notes
Sat 22 Apr 2023	8:30am - 12:30pm	C1-1: Training Room - 2A Gordon St, Rozelle

If there isn't a class to suit you, please join our waitlist and we will notify you when we have places available. Join waitlist for Vegetable Gardening Course