Fall is here, but that doesn’t mean gardening season is over. Wildsight and the Cranbrook Food Action Committee’s next Edible Gardening workshop, running September 16th and 17th in Kimberley and Cranbrook, will teach locals how to keep the harvest going through fall and into the winter. Extend Your Harvest, the third and final workshop in this year’s Edible Gardening series, will give local gardeners options to protect crops from the cold and tips for hardy crops that thrive in our climate.
“With our cold climate, it can be tough to eat fresh from the garden for more than a couple months” said Wildsight and CFAC’s Shannon Duncan, “but with a little bit of protection from the elements, you can be eating fresh salad much later than you might think.”
The one and a half hour workshops will give details on row cover options, including frames and materials, cold frames, repurposed cloches, mulching, and ways to combine multiple layers of protection for maximum effect. Plant varieties that do well in local late-season conditions and timing for late season harvests will be covered, along with some tips for planning a long-season garden for next year.
“With the right varieties and timing you can harvest fresh veggies even when there is snow on the ground and the temperatures are below zero” said Duncan. “As usual, wisdom from local experts will be shared throughout the workshops.”
The workshops will also cover seeds: how to save tomatoes and other seeds for next year from this year’s plants, which ones you can eat from your garden, and how to plant them this fall for a jump start next spring. As always, the Edible Gardening workshops are hands-on in the garden, so participants will get practice building a variety of cold frames, constructing a row cover tunnel and fermenting tomatoes to save their seeds.
The workshops run from 6:30-8pm on Tuesday, September 16th in Kimberley at Wildsight’s Open Gate Garden on Rotary Drive and in Cranbrook on Wednesday, September 17th from 6:30-8pm at CFAC’s Public Produce Garden on 18th Avenue North between 6th and 8th Streets. The workshop cost is $10 with a work trade option available and registration is online at Wildsight.ca/Garden or by calling 250-427-7981.