Following up on our extremely popular primer on “Growing Your Own Food” offered in 2011, this year we present another season-spanning series on edible gardening. The classes are designed to take your gardening endeavors to the next level, offering special topics such as elegant kitchen garden design, cultivating and preparing edible flowers, growing shiitake mushrooms, selecting heirloom varieties, and saving seeds.

This series, available as individual workshops, is perfect for people looking for creative ways to enrich their kitchen gardening experience this year. To sign up for  any of the upcoming classes below, please follow the links from each title.

THE CLASSES

Saturday, March 17
Beyond Tomatoes and Cukes: New Foods to Try in Your Maine Garden This Year with Brendan McQuillen
When:      9 a.m.-noon
Where:    Bosarge Family Education Center, Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens
Price:       $30 members, $37 non-members (pre-registration required)

Ready to expand the variety of choices from your kitchen garden? Lettuce and radishes are all very well, but did you know that some of your other favorite foods like garlic, artichokes, eggplant, asparagus, sweet potatoes, arugula, and parsnips can be grown right here in Maine? Brendan McQuillen of Morning Dew Farm in Newcastle will teach you how to bring more variety to your kitchen garden. Bring an open mind and learn some resources, tips and techniques for growing some new foods at home this year!

Brendan McQuillen has been farming at Morning Dew Farm in Newcastle for 10 years, growing a wide variety of MOFGA-certified organic vegetables. He is committed to preserving the unique flavors of heritage vegetables in danger of being lost in an age of commercialized agriculture. He has just returned from Oaxaca, Mexico, with a trove of indigenous pepper seeds which he plans to share with midcoast Maine.

Saturday, April 14
Growing Food Artfully: Kitchen Garden Design with Ellen Ecker Ogden
When:      9 a.m.-2 p.m.
Where:    Bosarge Family Education Center, Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens
Price:       $50 members, $60 non-members (pre-registration required)

A kitchen garden goes beyond the simple straight rows of a vegetable garden to combine art and food in ways that enhance the experience of growing food. In this program that begins with an illustrated lecture and concludes with a hands-on workshop, Ellen Ecker Ogden, co-founder of The Cook’s Garden seed catalog and author, will share with us her journey from basic back yard to elegant European-inspired kitchen garden designs. Participants will learn skills that will allow them to create a unique design to match their own landscape or renovate their current garden to make it more inviting. Through a series of photographs and color illustrations, participants will be inspired to re-think how to plant and design the vegetable patch, with an eye towards formal design, color, texture and culinary purpose. Finally, with graph paper, pencils and photos or your kitchen garden, we’ll take a closer look and brainstorm ways to turn yours into a productive and beautiful edible landscape.

Ellen Ecker Ogden is a food and garden writer, kitchen garden designer and  author of four books, including her newest, The Complete Kitchen Garden, featuring 15 theme gardens and 100 recipes for the vegetable gardener who seeks creative ideas and organic techniques for growing their own food.  As the co-founder of  “The Cook’s Garden” catalog, she is dedicated to growing ornamental edibles and is a featured speaker at national flower shows, botanic gardens and garden events throughout the U.S. She has been a guest on the PBS show “The Victory Garden” and HGTV as the “baroness of basil.” She designs private gardens and holds workshops on kitchen garden designs and techniques throughout the U.S.

Saturday, May 12
Growing Shiitake Mushrooms at Home with David Dow
When:      9 a.m.-noon
Where:    Bosarge Family Education Center, Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens
Price:       $30 members, $37 non-members (pre-registration required)

Growing shiitake mushrooms is a fun, healthy, and very tasty endeavor!  Just ask David Dow, who’s been cultivating, cooking, and sharing shiitake mushrooms from his backyard farm in New Brunswick, Canada, for nearly ten years.  Shiitake mushrooms, best known for their rich flavor and immunity-boosting properties, can be grown at home with a few soaked birch logs and some spores. David will present the basic techniques and supplies, provide practical advice for cultivation, and even share methods for preserving and cooking. 

David Dow, EdD, of Red Roof Farm in Grand Falls, New Brunswick, is a long-time educator and a garden, mushroom and food preservation enthusiast.  Former executive director of the Maine Lobster Institute, he is now the tribal planner for the Aroostook Band of MicMacs. His increasingly popular shiitake-growing workshops have been presented at the Falls Brook Centre for sustainable community demonstration and training and other venues in Canada. 

Saturday, June 2
Vegetable Gardening in Challenging Spaces with Irene Brady Barber
When:      9 a.m.-noon
Where:    Bosarge Family Education Center, Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens
Price:       $30 members, $37 non-members (pre-registration required)

Maine’s beautiful landscape offers some challenges for vegetable gardening, particularly along the coast with ledge, clay and limited sunlight. There’s still hope!  Vegetable gardening can be achieved in some of the most troubling areas. Landscape designer and horticulturalist Irene Barber will present solutions for growing an edible garden that offers ornamental aesthetics to your property – no matter how challenging. Leave the class armed with information and tools to apply to your individual garden spaces.  Please bring pictures of your intended or existing garden plot for Irene’s suggestions and feedback if you’d like!

Irene Brady Barber is currently both a landscape designer for Cosmic Stone & Garden Supply and a seasonal horticultural educator at Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens. With a background in communications: human behavior and in horticulture studies, Irene is presently working to complete a professional certification in the field of horticultural therapy, which is the focus of much of her teaching at the Gardens. Irene specializes in edible and accessible gardens.

Saturday, July 7
Growing and Preparing Edible Flowers with Courtney Locke
When:      9 a.m.-noon
Where:    Bosarge Family Education Center, Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens
Price:       $30 members, $37 non-members (pre-registration required)

Incorporating edible garden flowers into your meals is an elegant and tasty way to enliven dishes and bring a splash of color to your plate. In this class, experienced market grower Courtney Locke will show examples of beautiful edible blossoms to grow in your Maine garden. She’ll also demonstrate the steps required to germinate and grow edible flowers and share recipes for salad with nasturtium, calendula, and borage blossoms; cheese-stuffed squash blossoms; candied violas and pansies; lavender-infused butter cake; sautéed daylily buds; and more. Your flower garden has never been so delectable!

Courtney Locke is best known to our members as the Gardens’ administrative assistant, but did you know that she is a lifelong, second-generation flower grower? Before coming to the Gardens, Courtney and her husband, Greg, owned and operated Apple Creek Farm, a perennial and herb nursery in Woolwich, Maine, and supplied area farmers’ markets, including Damariscotta, Bath, Brunswick and Augusta. When she’s not at her desk at the Gardens, Courtney can be found in her flower and herb gardens from April through November, dawn to dusk.

Tuesday, August 21
Preserving Tomatoes: Making Sauces and Salsas with Kathy Savoie
When:      5-8 p.m.
Where:    Kitchen Garden Cafe, Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens
Price:       $30 members, $37 non-members (pre-registration required)

Looking for ways to enjoy the bounty of locally grown tomatoes year-round?  Join Kathy Savoie to learn about the basic do’s and don’ts for home canning and freezing of tomatoes.  This hands-on evening workshop will help you learn the latest USDA recommendations for home food preservation to reduce food-safety risks and increase your access to one of our favorite local foods year-round!

Kathy Savoie is the food preservation specialist for the University of Maine Cooperative Extension in Cumberland County.  She also directs the “Master Food Preserver” program.

Saturday, September 8
Selecting Heirloom Varieties and Saving Seeds with Neil Lash
When:      9 a.m. – noon
Where:    Bosarge Family Education Center, Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens
Price:       $30 members, $37 non-members (preregistration required)

Heirloom vegetables are traditional, open-pollinated cultivars. Learn all about these interesting and culturally significant varieties, how to get them, and which ones are appropriate for our climate.  Showing examples from right here in Maine, Neil Lash of the Heirloom Seed Project will describe the importance and benefits of seed saving, with tips and techniques on how to save seeds yourself. 

Neil Lash teaches horticulture and is the director and cofounder of the Heirloom Seed Project at Medomak Valley High School in Waldoboro, which grows, harvests and sells more than 800 heirloom seed varieties.  This award-winning program selects seeds for their historical and genetic significance. In 2011, seeds from the project were sent to 32 states and several historic gardens.