On Saturday, graduates of St. Lawrence County’s first Seed to Supper gardening course gathered at the Learning Farm to receive their garden kits and to watch Master Gardener Ken Kogut demonstrate how to build a raised bed with a hoop cover.
Seed to Supper is a 6-week comprehensive beginning course focused on low-budget strategies and partnership building for new gardeners. The curriculum was adapted by Cornell Garden-Based Learning from resources created by the Oregon Food Bank and Oregon State University Extension.
Throughout the spring, 15 participants met weekly on Zoom to learn from St. Lawrence County Master Gardeners about planning, planting and maintaining a food garden as well as using its bounty. Despite the limitations of teaching the course online this year, the instructors were able to convey a wealth of information and to break up the lessons with demonstrations on growing microgreens, effective watering, and comparing soil types. Early on in the course, Master Gardeners consulted with participants on their garden maps, prompting responses like this one from Wajira: “Thank you so much everyone for your time. I made changes to my garden map based on your valuable advice. I have already seeded okra seeds inside near the window. I am so happy to tell you some of them have germinated!”
In addition to planning and delivering a successful course, the Master Gardeners were also instrumental in creating garden kits for each participant. The kits were a group effort and included vegetable and herb seedlings grown by Ken and Carolyn, seeds carefully divided up from a bulk order by Juli, and buckets of potting mix prepared by Louise. Juli also compiled a beautiful book of recipes for each participant to take home and enjoy. The enticing seasonal recipes include Chimichurri, Oven Roasted Carrots, and Curried Summer Squash Soup.
There were many expressions of gratitude from the group as the course drew to a close, including this, from Breyne: “Thanks! I feel that I will be successful this year after taking this course, and I am grateful for all the time you and others put into making this happen.”
And from Kriston: “Thank you to all the master gardeners for hosting a wonderful Seed to Super course. It was great to really learn more about the science and more information about planting a garden in general. I really wanted to know more about crop rotations, companion plants and soil and this course really did a great job with helping me plan better for my gardens this year. The materials were easy to read and I will use them year after year as a reference.”
CCE hopes to offer this course annually and has already begun accepting donations for next year’s garden kits. If you would like to contribute or if you work for an organization we could partner with for hosting classes or recruiting participants in the future, please reach out to Erica at ENL2@cornell.edu.
Erica LaFountain is Community Horticulture Educator and Master Gardener Coordinator for St. Lawrence County. She has a background in organic vegetable farming, gardening, and orcharding and has a homestead in Potsdam, NY.