Cultivating Futures – Pedagogical Vegetable Gardens

In Cultivating Futures, we believe the future depends on what we cultivate today!
Let’s create an organic vegetable garden everywhere and cultivate a more sustainable future? Today is the day! The future is in our hands, we just have to cultivate the right seeds. Will you join us spreading seeds of change?

As Eckhart Tolle reminds us “We depend on nature not only for our physical survival. We also need nature to show us the way home. We got lost in doing, thinking, remembering, anticipating. We have forgotten what rocks, plants, and animals still know. We have forgotten how to be where life is: Here and Now.” With this training, we hope to inspire you to get “hands-on” the vegetable garden and rediscover this connection with nature that we are losing more and more in this industrialized world. Did you know there is even a name for it ? It’s “Nature Deficit Disorder”.

May we inspire you to create an organic vegetable garden wherever you can, on a window sill, on a balcony, in a classroom, at a school or in your community. As Janet Kilburn Phillip wisely tells us “There are no gardening mistakes, only experiments”. The important thing is to start cultivating and watch the seeds germinate and nature flourish. Let’s cultivate together?

Objectives:

- Awaken teachers' and educators' environmental awareness so that they can act as facilitating agents for students, inspiring the participation of the educational community in the use of vegetable gardens in a school environment;

- Encourage the use of the school vegetable garden as an open learning lab, pedagogical, dynamic, participatory and multidisciplinary resource.

- Provide participants with the technical and practical knowledge in the field of organic horticulture, aiming its integration in an educational context:

- Contextualization of urban / school gardens in organic production mode;
- Organic horticulture in an educational context;
- Importance and functioning of plants;
- Types of soil; Nutrients and fertilization deficiencies;
- Composting techniques; Green adubation; Crop rotation;
- Biodiversity in the garden; Pests and diseases;
- Plant protection:
o Good practices;
o Auxiliary animals;
o Auxiliary plants and consociation of cultures;
o Treatments;
- Organization and materials of the garden;
- Preparation of the soil and construction of beds;
- A vegetable garden anywhere (even if you only have a window sill);
- The vegetable garden calendar;
- From seed to plant - sowing and plantations;
- Sexual and asexual reproduction (vegetative multiplication);
- Taking care of the vegetable garden:
o Watering;
o Maintain (eliminate weed plants, mulching, weeding, staking, pruning, defoliation, etc.);
o Protect;
- Harvesting the fruits of our work;
- Cultivation specifications for each plant.


Methodology

Instead of a theoretical discourse, we consider that a “hands on” - based approach is much more successful. Considering this, the participants will experience an action-oriented and practical activities based course, with “hands-on” activities. Throughout this course, participants will be able to learn firsthand experiencing different places in Lisbon developing organic vegetable gardens projects. They will be able to share their experiences and discuss how to implement a vegetable garden with their students.

We believe the future depends on what we cultivate today! Will you join us spreading seeds of change?

Certification: a certificate of attendance is presented to participants at the end of the course.

Course Length: 5 days (extendable to 7 days)

Contact us and we’ll design a course just for your group.

Course Fee:
5-day Course = 350 Euros
7-day Course = 490 Euros

Accommodation and meals are not included

Place: Lisbon – Portugal

Send Registration to: info@cultivatingfutures.eu

PIC = 895403315
OID = E10249761
Full legal name: Cultivating Futures, Lda.
Legal Address: Rua Professor Eduardo Cortesão nº18 6ºE, Lisbon, Portugal