Market Gardening: From Soil to Sales

Three days of inspiring talks, practical workshops, and delicious seasonal meals, all delivered by the FarmED team in collaboration with the Kitchen Garden People, FarmED’s resident community supported agriculture growers.

Looking for your route into farming and curious about starting a market garden? Perhaps you already have land and are looking to diversify your output? Or maybe you’re already running a market garden and are searching for new ways to improve your business. Whatever your starting point, by the end of this course you will have learnt how to:

• Effectively plan a cropping schedule and rotation
• Utilise best practices for propagation and crop establishment
• Improve soil health
• Select appropriate tools and machinery for your scale
• Manage weeds and pests agroecologically
• Build an effective team
• Harvest, process and market your produce
• Recognise important business considerations for market gardening

This course has been designed for horticultural growers, farm apprentices, new entrants, farmers, and land-owners. However, our courses are open to all so please get in touch if you'd like to know more.

Tickets

We offer tiered pricing for our courses to cater for learners with different budgets. Please see the ticket prices below.

All tickets include three days on-site training, refreshments and seasonal lunches.

If funding is a barrier to you, we can help. We have a small bursary pot which we can use to help fund or part fund course fees and other expenses for those that will benefit most. Click here for more info: www.farm-ed.co.uk/bursaries

GREAT Farmers

As part of the GREAT project (see www.greatglos.co.uk) we can offer subsidised places to existing and aspiring farmers, growers and advisers in Gloucestershire to the suite of regenerative agriculture and agroecological transition courses at FarmED. To book, please select the GREAT ticket option below. You will be asked for a few eligibility details including evidence of your involvement in regenerative agriculture and your potential impact in Gloucestershire.

About the course facilitators

Emma Mills is co-founder for the Kitchen Garden People, the Market Garden CSA based at FarmED which grows veg for the centre plus 120 families per week. As well as growing copious amounts of nutritious veg, she also manages the CSA share scheme as well as the weekly volunteer sessions. When Emma's not in the field she coordinates school education events at FarmED.

Matt Dale is head-grower at the Kitchen Garden People. Matt is a veteran in the Oxfordshire Organic scene, with over 24 years experience growing food and caring for livestock organically. He was head grower at the award-winning Coleshill Organics, and previously ran North Aston Dairy. He’s been a staple character at the East Oxford Farmers’ Market where you can find him most Saturdays.

Dan Betterton co-founded the Kitchen Garden People with Emma where he grows a diversity of on-field and covered crops from seed to harvest. He previously worked at North Aston Organics, and Sandy Lane Farm Shop, providers of organic vegetables and veg boxes. He was also a founder of Cultivate a market garden and local food shop, recognised for its distinctive veg van which sells food directly from local farms to various locations.

Other details

If you require more information please email sophie@farm-ed.co.uk.

Your booking is safe. If we cannot run any element of the training face to face due to Covid restrictions, you will be refunded, or you can switch to an alternative course/date.