In an effort to bring back more of the education work The Growing Home was doing when it was initially founded, we are planning a series of workshops and classes throughout the summer.  We are trying to plan two workshops a month: one kitchen related and one garden related.  For this month, we have two great workshops: kombucha brewing and worm composting.

In the Kombucha Brewing workshop, we will be teaching how to make kombucha, which is an ancient fermented tea, thought to have originated in China thousands of years ago.  Kombucha has numerous health benefits, including being rich in vitamins, replenishing intestinal flora, and being sugar free.  The workshop will be held on Sunday, May 20th, from 1pm to 3pm and will include a complete kit to brew kombucha at home.  At $50 it is a real steal.  For more info and to register online, click here.

Our second workshop is continuing with the theme of reducing waste at home that was started with our last potluck lecture.  Everyday in the US, households throw away millions of pounds of food waste.  This food waste is full of nutrients that could feed our gardens, but instead it is left to waste away in landfills.  Our Worm Composting workshop, on Sunday, May 27th from 1pm to 3pm, will teach you how to create the richest compost known to man (worm compost or vermicompost) from your very own kitchen scraps.  The best thing about worm compost is that it produces no smell and can go from food waste to compost in just 2 weeks.  For more info and to register online, click here.

At last night’s potluck we had a great lecture from Anna Cummins of 5gyres Institute.  I met Anna through the Master Gardener program in LA.   Her lecture was very eye opening, and she brought to light several key issues surrounding plastic use in the modern world.  We are definitely going to make an event stronger effort here at The Growing Home to reduce out plastic use after her talk.   The video of the entire lecture is posted above in two parts.

A video about our new rabbits, also known as our Poop Engineers, Stool Generators, Manure Machines.  Look for more videos of this guy and girl later.

In this video, we show you how to prepare the soil of a new garden bed the permaculture way.  All you need is a turning or digging fork.  Let nature do the hard work, and leave yourself more time for relaxation!

Slow Food San Gabriel Valley (Facebook) holds a potluck and lecture that is open to everyone on the 1st Thursday of every month at The Growing Home.  We encourage anyone and everyone to come out to these potlucks and enjoy good food and good company.

Please bring a dish that will feed one to two more people than are in your party.  

We are always looking for good speakers for our potluck lectures.  If you are interested in speaking at the next potluck, please click the button below.

Info for May 3rd:

Lecture
Anna Cummins of 5gyres, On Plastic Pollution in our Oceans

Time

6:00pm to 7:00pm Potluck
7:15pm to 8:00pm Lecture
Location: The Growing Home (directions)
RSVP REQUIRED (see below)

Cost: $2

Coming to a potluck?  Go to our Directions page to find out how to get here.

Can’t make this one? Potluck dates are always posted on our Event Calendar to make it easy to find out when the next one is.

We just wanted to remind everyone that our Growing Good Food @ Home class is coming up this week on Sunday from 1 to 3pm.  The two hour class will cover all the basics of growing healthy, organic food at home, without all the hassle of weeding, watering, and other tedious tasks.  Be sure to make it to this wonderful class.  We have 5 spots remaining, and you can pre-register on our store.  Pre-registered price is $20, walk-ins are $30.  More info on the flyer below.

Last Sunday was great!!! We had nearly 40 volunteers come out to help us build a school garden at Diamond Point Elementary.  We were able to put in four raised beds, and prepare all of the in ground beds for planting.  We had a great time and really want to thank everyone who came out to help.  There is still more work to be done, so we will be announcing another work day soon.  For the time being, look over these two videos we made of the work day and progress we made.

The past two weeks we have working hard to redesign the slope in our side yard.  This area of our garden has been unused as an edible planting space up to this point, except for two fruit trees and a few winter squash plants last year.  We decided it was time to take on this project and make something really special out of it.  We are designing the area as a food forest: a place where you come to forage for food, instead of actively trying to grow it.  Anyways,  below are four videos of what we’ve done so far.

Our previous video showed you how to make biochar.  See the results of using the biochar in this video where we compare the growth of our two potato barrels.

A new video we made about companion planting with our carrot/lettuce bed.