Carolina Campus Community Garden announces spring workshops

By Arlene Medder, Employee Forum delegate

As part of The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill community, the garden also has education as part of its mission. One method is to hold workshops.

The first workshop of the new year was held on February 22, 2015, with a full list of attendees. It was taught by Greta Lee, a certified permaculture instructor, and Claire Lorch, the CCCG garden educator. The workshop covered what vegetables to plant for a spring garden, when to start planting, as well as protecting plants from freezing and getting more harvest from a small growing space. There were twenty-one participants, most of whom were new, or fairly new, to gardening.

A composting workshop will be held on Wednesday, March 18th from 3 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. at the Carolina Campus Community Garden. It’s a free workshop and will cover composting food scraps, what to compost, and what not to. It will be taught by Muriel Williman, the Orange County waste management educator. She will also demonstrate the ease of starting vermicomposting, or worm composting. The class will be held rain or shine so people should dress appropriately.

Another workshop in March will be on growing shiitake mushrooms. It is also free. This is a hands-on workshop, preparing eight logs for the Carolina Campus Community Garden. Aaron Moody, a geology professor who grows mushrooms on the side will be leading. It is scheduled for Sunday, March 22, 2015 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. at the Carolina Campus Community Garden, with March 29th scheduled as the rain date. No experience is necessary and children are welcome. Participants also get to sample shiitake mushroom dishes. It is requested that if you have one, to bring a charged cordless drill, bit size 5/16 or 8mm.

There will also be family-oriented workshops on honey bees. Anne Cabell, one of the CCCG’s beekeepers, will be giving a tour of the honey beehive on Sunday, April 19, 2015 from 2 p.m. to 3 p.m. and again on Sunday June 7, from 2 p.m. to 3 p.m. If it rains, it will be rescheduled to Saturday June 20th. The workshop is free and will take place at the honey beehives at the Carolina Campus Community Garden. Bees are responsible for pollinating approximately a third of the world’s food as well as producing one of the sweetest treats.

For more information please contact Claire Lorch at clorch@email.unc.edu. More information about the garden can be found at http://uncgarden.web.unc.edu/ .

Photograph courtesy of Clare Lorch.