Workshops

FOR PERMACULTURE COURSES – PLEASE CLICK ON THE PERMACULTURE TAB

SHORT WORKSHOPS (3.5 hours  – $50)
(small groups of 12 people max)

All workshops come with detailed notes, and we stop for morning or afternoon tea, which is provided.  Course content is covered below under each workshop heading – scroll down for details.

Biodynamics and Moon Calendar Workshop (Spring/Summer/Autumn)
This half-day afternoon workshop covers an introduction to biodynamics for the home gardener. 

  • Look at the various Biodynamic preparations and find out what they do for our soil and plants
  • Understand the right times of the month to put the preparations on the soil/plants
  • A practical preparation 500 stir and application in the permaculture garden at Korito in New Plymouth.
  • An introduction to the biodynamic moon planting calendar and how it is used to find the best times to sow seeds, transplant, make compost, put on fertilisers and sprays and prune and chop firewood.
 

Chook Dome Building Workshop (Spring/Summer/Autumn)

Learn how to construct a chook dome:

  • Using recycled materials such as plastic pipe and electrical conduit with chicken wire and tarpaulin,
  • Using tools efficiently
  • Simple design which is large enough to house 3 chooks comfortably to move around your garden weeding, fertilising and laying eggs!

Cement/rock wall and herb spiral building Workshop (Spring and Autumn)

This half day workshop teaches you how to:

  • Mix cement by hand
  • Create a base to build from
  • Use rocks to build low, non structural walls around the garden  They can be used to retain borders, build raised beds and create different shaped spaces around the garden to grow things in.
  • Create a low herb spiral
  • Demonstrate how how other materials can be incorporated into the walls to add colour and texture

Propagation Workshop (winter)
Learn to propagate productive plants for your garden, and take them home.  Propagate using a variety of methods:

  • Hardwood cuttings
  • Semi-hardwood cuttings
  • Root cuttings
  • Stolons
  • Layering
  • Seeds – scarification and stratification

A mix of theory and practical propagation where the workshop participants get their hands dirty and propagate a number of productive plants such as:

  • Comfrey
  • Rhubarb
  • Fig
  • Elderberry
  • Chilean guava
  • Pineapple sage
  • Mints/herbs
  • Alpine strawberries
  • Lemon verbena

Participants will then be able to propagate their own material at home, as well as go home with 20+ propagated plants during the workshop

Pruning workshop (winter)
Learn to prune a variety of productive fruit trees:

  • Apples
  • Pears
  • Plums
  • Citrus
  • Feijoas

Workshop participants will learn about:

  • Equipment
  • Techniques
  • Apical dominance
  • Shapes
  • Timing of pruning
  • What to prune
  • Identifying fruiting buds
  • Tying down

Workshop participants get hands on experience of making pruning cuts, deciding on tree shapes, pruning, and tying down.