INTERESTED IN ORGANICS?
Learn to Manage Organic gardens through this great course that inspires whilst developing your skills.
Learn the practice as well as the theory behind organic plant culture!
This course shows you how to grow plants naturally using organic
methods. Develop a solid understanding of the principles and procedures
underlying the cultivation of fruit and vegetables by natural
methods. Work with the environment and without the use of artificial
fertilizers or sprays. It is a similar course to commercial organic
vegetable growing, but has more on fruit trees/crops and also
ornamentals in the course content.
-
Learn to grow plants organically and naturally - both ornamentals and crops.
-
Start anytime, study anywhere, anytime
-
Improve your horticultural skills, explore new opportunities in your career, business, farm or garden.
Minimize pest problems, and creating productive farms and healthy
gardens without relying upon artificial chemicals -but all that takes
knowledge, and sometimes a little more hard work.
Through this course you can lay a foundation in the skills needed to be an effective organic gardener or farmer.
Become an Expert at Organic Growing
Learn to grow plants organically and naturally - both ornamentals and crops.
Minimize pest problems and create productive farms and healthy gardens without relying upon artificial chemicals - all that takes knowledge!
Through this course you can lay a foundation in the skills needed to be an effective organic gardener or farmer.
This courses has been developed by a team of organic experts including John Mason (author of Sustainable Agriculture) and Maggi Brown (former Education Officer with Garden Organic /HDRA). It is a very solid training ground for anyone who is serious about growing organic vegetables, herbs or other plants.
Lesson Structure
There are 10 lessons in this course:
-
Introduction
-
Scope and Nature of Organic Growing
-
Definitions
-
Influential People in the Organic movement: Lady Balfour, Sir Albert Howard, Jerome Irving Rodale
-
Different Ways to Garden Organically. Biodynamics, Permaculture
-
Resources
-
Plant Culture
-
Different Cultivation Methods
-
Crop Rotation
-
Green Manure
-
No Dig Culture
-
Not Till
-
Planting into Grass
-
Understanding Soils
-
Physical and Chemical Soil Properties
-
Soil Profiles
-
Identifying Soil Type
-
Soil Structure
-
pH
-
Cation Exchange Capacity
-
Buffering Capacity
-
Soil water and air, temperature, humus, etc
-
Organic Matter
-
Fertilizers and Plant Nutrition
-
Organic Fertilisers; scope, nature, comparing different types of fertilizer and manure
-
Animal Manures
-
Seaweed and seaweed extracts
-
Liquid Feeds in Organics
-
Rock Dusts
-
Management
-
Importance of Soil
-
Cultivation Techniques and their affects on soil
-
Cover Crops
-
Using Cover Crops
-
Green Manures as Cover Crops
-
Nitrogen Fixation
-
The Rhizobium Bacteria
-
Mycorrhizae
-
Composting
-
Compost Bins
-
What can be Composted
-
Carbon Nitrogen Ratio
-
Compost heap conditions; cold and hot heaps
-
How to build a compost heap
-
Using Compost
-
Water in the Soil; infiltration, retention, when to water, period of watering
-
Pests and Diseases
-
Pest and Disease Prevention
-
Management Techniques; early intervention, using predators
-
Allowable inputs
-
Understanding Plant Problems
-
Disease Lifecycles
-
Review of Disease Types and their management
-
Viruses
-
Review of Pests and their management
-
Review of Environmental Problems and their Management
-
Companion Planting
-
Nutrient Accumulating Plants
-
Mulching
-
Scope and Nature
-
Mulching Materials
-
Living Mulch
-
Weed Management, preventative measures, other weed control methods
-
Seeds
-
Organic Seeds
-
Reproduction
-
Pollination and preventing cross pollination
-
Choosing Seed Plants for Vegetable Crops
-
Collection, cleaning, storing seeds
-
Sowing
-
Vegetable Growing in your locality
-
Site Selection
-
Planning the Crop
-
Getting the most from a Vegetable Plot
-
Sowing Vegetable Seeds; outdoors, indoors
-
Transplanting Seedlings
-
Crowns, Offsts, Tubers
-
Selected Vegetables, their culture, production, harvest, etc
-
Broccoli
-
Brussels sprouts
-
Beetroot
-
Silverbeet
-
Cabbage
-
Capsicum
-
Carrots
-
Cauliflowers
-
Celery
-
Chicory
-
Cucumbers
-
Egg plants
-
Kohl rabi
-
Leek
-
Lettuce
-
Onions
-
Parsnips
-
Potatoes
-
Pumpkins
-
Radish
-
Spinach
-
Turnip
-
Tomatoes
-
Fruit Growing in your locality.
-
Establishing an Orchard; site, climate, water
-
Designing an Orchard
-
Soil Management for Organic Orchards
-
Winter Chilling, Pollination and other fruit set factors
-
Choosing Fruit Varieties
-
Temperate and Cool Climate Fruits Review
-
Review of Tropical and Sub Tropical Fruits
-
Vine Fruits
-
Berry Fruits
-
Nuts
Each lesson culminates in an assignment which is submitted to the school, marked by the school's tutors and returned to you with any relevant suggestions, comments, and if necessary, extra reading.
Aims
-
Explain the concepts and principles of organic growing, including the common techniques used in organic growing systems.
-
Explain the concepts and principles of organic growing, including the common techniques used in organic growing systems.
-
Determine soil management procedures, which are consistent with organic growing principles.
-
Determine soil management procedures, which are consistent with organic growing principles.
-
Determine soil management procedures, which are consistent with organic growing principles.
-
Explain how pests and diseases are controlled using organic growing principles.
-
To determine appropriate mulches for use in different organic growing situations.
-
Determine the appropriate use of seed propagation, in organic plant culture.
-
Plan the production of an organically grown vegetable food crop
-
Plan the production of an organically grown fruit crop
Want to know more about this course?
We love discussing our students' educational needs with them before they enrol - that way they are more likely to enrol in a course that best suits them - now and into the future. To make contact: click on the 'Talk With An Expert' box at the end of this page.
What is Organic Growing?
Organic plant growing is the production of plants without the addition of artificial inputs such as chemicals that have been artificially manufactured or processed. This includes herbicides, pesticides and fertilisers.
Organic growing has increased in popularity over the past ten years due to the increasing awareness of safety in the garden and on the farm and the desire to produce food that is free from chemical inputs. For decades, farmers and growers have relied upon chemicals to control pests and diseases in order to produce crops for sale. Unfortunately it is only recently that we have become aware that many of those chemicals can sometimes cause health problems to humans, as well as long-term damage to the environment such as soil degradation, imbalances in pest-predator populations can also sometimes occur. As public concern grows, these issues are becoming increasingly important. However the organic grower or gardener should understand that not all organic practices always guarantee a healthy environment, over-cultivation for example can also lead to soil damage. Organic growing practices should aim to ensure quality of both the environment in which we live and of the produce we grow in our gardens and on our farms.
A growing interest in more environmentally sustainable gardening methods offers the chance to provide the general public the quickest, safest and most enjoyable organic garden practices. This course will lead you through these practices and guide you to develop and maintain your plot, large or small.
Organic growing of plants works with nature, rather than against it. It recognises the fact that nature is complex and accordingly endeavours to understand interactions between plants, animals and insects. It therefore encourages the gardener for example to learn about the life-cycle of pests and to use this knowledge to control them. It also recognises that the use of chemicals has to be replaced with labour and management. Organic gardeners/growers have to manage pests rather then eliminate them. They need to be vigilant and have the ability to recognise problems and act quickly to minimise the spread of both pests and disease. They may also need to accept some insect damage to the plants they grow as inevitable. How to manage pest and disease problems in an organic system is covered in detail later in the course.
TIPS FOR NATURAL PEST CONTROL
Chemicals kill pests and diseases effectively, but there can be problems if you don't use the right chemical or the right method. There are of course other ways to control pests and diseases; but other methods rarely give the complete control that chemicals do. Never the less, the preferred option these days is usually to use a combination of control techniques. The concept is that:
- Nothing is over used to the detriment of the environment; or to the extent that pests "get used to the
method", hence build resistance.
- Each different technique weakens the pest or disease that little bit more. The overall affect is a better
control.
- Expensive controls (eg. some costly chemicals) are used in limited quantities, keeping costs lower.
This idea of using a combination of different control techniques which each contribute to the overall control is sometimes called "IPM" or "Integrated Pest Management".
The different methods of control can be divided into five broad categories listed below.
a/ Cultural - this involves growing practices that reduce problems, such as reducing humidity to
reduce disease, keeping a plant healthy to enable it to problems, etc.
b/ Biological - this involves using natural mechanisms to control problems, such as pests eating other
pests, or plants repelling or deterring development of pests and diseases.
c/ Physical - this method involves physically interfering with the pest or disease, such as squashing
an insect, cutting off diseased tissue, trapping insects, enclosing the plant in a protective cage
or net.
d/ Chemical - using chemicals that kill or interfere with problems. In natural gardens, the use of
chemicals is limited to those that are derived from 'natural' sources, such as plant extracts (e.g.
pyrethrum, neem oil), or rock dusts (e.g. sulphur).
e/ Legal - this involves governments making and enforcing laws, such as quarantine, or even
banning of specific plants known to increase the spread of harmful pests or diseases.
BIOLOGICAL CONTROL
There are 3 main approaches to biocontrol. These are:
1. The introduction of parasites and predators, where natural enemies are introduced to control exotic pests, as in the case of Cottony Cushion Scale, which was introduced to California, from overseas, without it's natural predators.
2. Conservation of existing natural enemies by changing spraying programs (we can't always just stop spraying. We need to build up the natural enemies to a useful level first) such as using selective chemicals or by changing when we spray, as some insects are active at different times of the day, and by reducing the rates of the chemicals that we use. Another method of conserving natural enemies is to change the way in which you crop your plants. This can be done by such methods as staggering planting times to reduce the impact of having a crop all at one stage when it may be more prone to attack or infestation; by the use of companion plants; by increasing crop diversity, by mixing crop species and by maintaining ground cover in orchards to promote parasite habitats.
3. New natural enemies can be developed by scientists growing larger numbers of predators or parasites, or by adding additional numbers of natural enemies collected or purchased from elsewhere. Producing and marketing biological control agents has now become a major business in Europe and the USA, with small scale activity also in Australia, for example Biocontrol (Company name) in Warwick, Queensland, who produce predatory spider mites for control of red spider.
Other approaches, to biocontrol, that are being actively researched are the development of plants with increased resistance to pests and diseases; the use of natural chemicals such as hormones or sex scents to either attract (to a trap or away from plants), repel or kill these types of problems; the use of sterile insects to upset reproductive cycles and the use of plant derivatives, such as pyrethrum, as pesticides.
AFTER YOU GRADUATE
This course explores all of the fundamental principles and concepts that underpin organic growing. As a graduate, your ability to learn ad apply organics in different soils, climates, and with different types of plants will be greatly enhanced. No course will ever teach you everything about organics - that takes a lifetime of learning, but with this course behind you that lifetime of learning will become possible.
- Some graduates may work in horticulture, in nurseries, in gardens or elsewhere.
- Some may start a business, others may use what they learn to grow healthier.
- Others will find work in allied industries (e.g. supplying organic products and services, teaching, consultancy, marketing, etc)
- Learning about organics does not stop when you finish this course either; some continue to learn through experience and reading, others through networking and perhaps ongoing studies. As your knowledge develops further, your opportunities will continue expanding. With the foundation you put in place here; that ongoing development should continue as long as your passion continues.
Through this course you can lay a foundation in the skills needed to be an effective organic gardener or farmer.
ENROL or Use our FREE Course Advice Service to Connect with a Tutor