Sustainable Foods, Farm & Gardens   

Herbs are a traditional source of nutrition and healing. Participants in this class will explore the impact of ancestral plants, sources of materia medica, ethical and sustainable foraging techniques, as well as recipes for building a home apothecary. Participants will engage in on-campus plant walks to discuss bioregional, cultivated, and seasonal plants. Includes hands-on workshops.

Note:   (No class on March 23)

This three-part course is for those thinking about keeping bees, or in their early years of this fascinating hobby. Beekeeping 101 will detail how to get started and fundamental bee biology. This will likely be a virtual course, with the link sent to all registered participants the day before the class begins.

This second part of the course will (weather permitting) be hands-on in the college apiary. We’ll hopefully install a package and a nuc, split overwintered colonies, and evaluate hive health each week.  We’ll also cover pests, diseases, swarming, splits and integrated pest management with the goal of teaching successful beekeeping for SW Michigan.

Do you want to lower your carbon footprint and make your own organic fertilizer in one simple process? Learn to compost! Composting is the process for recycling wastes like kitchen scraps and grass clippings into an organic soil amendment that will help your garden retain moisture and support beneficial microorganisms. Vermiculture composting uses worms to recycle food scraps and other organic material. These two methods are a great alternative to putting food and yard wastes in landfills, where they generate methane. Join us in this 2-part series to learn the basics of composting at home, and to become familiar with the variety of composting systems. The first class of this series will be a classroom-based component at the Food Innovation Center, and the second class will be more of a hands-on experience with multiple composting systems at the Western Michigan University’s Gibbs House. 

Fairy Gardens have been cultivated in Ireland, the British Isles, Germany, France, and Scandinavia since druidic times, and are still very popular today in the Celtic regions of Europe. Especially popular in Ireland, fairy gardens serve as passageways that enable fairies to join the human world; they’re also an excellent way to add a bit of whimsy and mystery to your garden. This course teaches you how to design and create your own traditional fairy garden using natural items like cones, acorns, and twigs. You will learn which plants work best in your garden (and which plants fairies prefer!). You will be provided with a pot, soil, gravel, plants, and items to make your garden come to life. 

Prerequisite: Eco-Friendly Landscape Design 1.0 is required for enrollment. 

This three-day course is the second in a two-part series and will give you additional hands-on experience designing your eco-friendly home landscape. Students will 1) revisit the design principles, 2) review right plant, right place concepts, 3) enhance their drawing and design skills, and 4) visit local residential spaces with a professional designer. These experiences will enable students to feel confident structuring a design plan works for their space and local ecosystem. One class session will be offsite so students can gain hands-on experience measuring and evaluating outdoor spaces.

This fun and informative class will focus on how beneficial insects in the yard and garden help protect your plants from damaging pests.  We will take an up close and personal look at lacewings, lady beetles, “true bugs' ', mantids, and others. These insects serve as predators of aphids, thrips, and caterpillars, just to name a few.  The course will be a combination of hands-on and classroom learning and at the end of the day, you will take home a packet of seeds for plants that will help you attract predators to your garden. Attracting guardians to your garden could be part of your Integrated Pest Management program – and - it’s fun to see them in their ecological habitats.  Come join us!

Intro to Nut Production will help landowners decide if nut production is right for them. We will provide education on various nut varieties that grow in Michigan; walnuts, hazelnuts, chestnuts and pecans.  We will go over their uses, common pests, tools, equipment, and offer a taste test of nuts and value-added products.

Come join us in learning about growing your own gourmet mushrooms from locally available materials! We will grow oysters, shiitake, winecaps, and more. Students will learn how to procure substrates and create good environments for mushroom growth. We will also discuss how to use coffee grounds and other composted material as substrates for mushroom growth.  Some mushroom identification is practiced during this course as well. Come ready to learn about the savory mysteries of fungal farming. Students take home different inoculated mushroom media at the end of each session.

Whether you are tending a half-acre, a few raised beds, or some pots on your patio, you can learn how to design your garden to produce an abundant yield of both food and viable seeds for planting next year! In this hands-on workshop, we will examine a variety of garden designs, plant the seed garden at the Food Innovation Center, and workshop participant garden plans. We’ll help you decide which seed crops will do best in your garden and teach you what you need to know to steward those crops to a successful seed harvest.

ValleyHUB is a farm, food hub, and education center based at the Food Innovation Center at Kalamazoo Valley Community College. The Urban Farm at ValleyHUB showcases a range of sustainable agricultural practices. The five-acre site includes an indoor grow room, a heated greenhouse, outdoor raised beds, and two passive solar hoophouses. The Food Hub is a licensed food processing facility equipped to produce fresh-cut fruits and vegetables at a range of production scales. Join us on this *FREE* tour to explore our beautiful site, and learn about our programs and practices.

ValleyHUB is a farm, food hub, and education center based at the Food Innovation Center at Kalamazoo Valley Community College. The Urban Farm at ValleyHUB showcases a range of sustainable agricultural practices. The five-acre site includes an indoor grow room, a heated greenhouse, outdoor raised beds, and two passive solar hoophouses. The Food Hub is a licensed food processing facility equipped to produce fresh-cut fruits and vegetables at a range of production scales. Join us on this *FREE* tour to explore our beautiful site, and learn about our programs and practices.

Join us in revealing many of the ways to make more food with less from home! In an era of climate change and energy decline, we will benefit from being more involved in producing our own food to ensure access to the most nutritious and life supporting meals. The secret is that it can be fun and easier than you think to care for your family, friends and city’s ecology. Come join us in learning to make simple gardens (indoor and outdoor), planting perennial food crops, foraging wild edibles, preservation and fermentation of crops, raising urban livestock, cheese making, composting and mushroom cultivation. A class for all ages and all scales of land access.