Welcome to Module 2 – Gardening Basics: Garden Maintenance and Composting
We'll start by looking at composting and worm farms which both provide a natural boost to your plants. After that, we’ll look at the most common tasks that you’ll carry out in your garden. Finally, you'll learn how to get the most out of your garden by developing a plan before planting.
As you work through the online resources, continue to work in your garden and post your weekly journal updates. Your work in the garden is an opportunity to try out as many of the new things you are learning as you can! Use your journal posts to reflect on what you have tried and how it's going or went.
Video resources
If you haven't yet, consider purchasing the optional video companion to this course, The Market Gardener's Toolkit. There is more information about this in the Course Overview. We also recommend The Permaculture Orchard: Beyond Organic for additional support on your learning journey. You can purchase each for US$7.50 for digital downloads.
Time to complete this module
You should plan to complete this module in 40 hours.
Assessment outline
To finish this course, you need to complete two assessment tasks:
- Assessment 1: Garden Journal 02A1 – explain what you’ve been doing in the garden each week and upload photos to show your mahi (work) and the state of the garden.
- Scroll down to the bottom of this module now and read the Assessment,so you know exactly what information to include in your Garden Journal.
- Assessment 2: Written Test 02A2– complete a 20-question scenario assessment to show your understanding of basic garden care, maintenance, and composting activities. You may complete this when you have finished the learning in this module.
Remember, we’re here to help!
It’s okay to make mistakes. When we make mistakes, we can learn from them by thinking to ourselves, “what went wrong?” and “what can I do differently next time?” In fact, these are the kinds of questions and answers that should be written in your Garden Journal.
If something doesn’t make sense, or you’re unsure what to do next, ask a peer using Messaging on the Online Campus, check the forums for others that have asked the same questions, or get in touch with your Tutor. You can send them a message on the Online Campus or get in touch via email.
While the course is designed for you to work independently, please don't be afraid to ask questions.
Words and what they mean
As with Module 1, you’ll find the glossary of terms near the end of the module. You may like to jump ahead and download the terms now so you can start to build out your resource of terms for this module.
