COVID Secure Policy

For all our course attendees we will ensure you are in a safe environment for you to enjoy the day.

• We have conducted a Homeacres Courses risk assessment as per government advice.
• We have limited the number of attendees to 10 people to ensure we can keep to the social distancing guidelines.
• You will be asked to use the hand sanitiser available outside of the house as soon as you arrive. If you prefer, please bring your own.
• There are good hand washing facilities with soap and disposable paper towels. Biodegradable sanitising wipes are provided for extra hygiene in the bathrooms and other communal spaces.
• Lunch will be prepared on site by our professional chef and served by one person.
• Please bring your own water bottle which you can replenish here.
• We provide tea and coffee mid-morning, all cups are hot washed. Sugar is provided in single sachets.
• When possible, lunch will be served outside and we will eat outside.
• Contactless payment facilities are available for purchasing books.
• The house and bathroom will be cleaned thoroughly before you arrive.
• Please bring your own face coverings to wear inside.
• If you have any of the COVID-19 symptoms such as a fever, dry perisistent cough, shortness of breath or loss of taste and smell then we ask you to contact us so that we may offer you an alternative date.

The Courses

Learn from Charles about growing all kinds of vegetables and many fruits too, productively, healthily and with less effort. I explain and show you the great methods I have evolved, using no dig and organic principles.

Both day and weekend courses are available at Homeacres garden in Somerset. They include lunches, so if you have dietary requirements, please say this when booking.

• To book a course, scroll down and click on a date you want, to bring up a new page with “Add to basket” tab for payment by card. The price includes 20% VAT.
• We sell course vouchers which the recipient can redeem at their convenience
• Ideas for accommodation are at bottom of this page

10.30am to 4pm £195, includes refreshments, VAT & a feast of homegrown vegetables.

We start with the principles of no-dig growing, how it saves so much time, for harvests as good as if not better than in dug/tilled soil. You see how to create a productive garden, even when a beginner, and how to be on top of weeds, including couch and bindweed. Experienced gardeners learn time-saving methods to increase the growth and health of their plants.

Gardening is often made to sound more complicated than it is, especially with regard to feeding plants and coping with weeds. I empower you with understandings of the methods you see at Homeacres, which you can then adapt to your own garden. Homeacres is a quarter acre market garden and a field lab too, there is loads to see and learn from.

Day Course Curriculum 

Getting started – clearing grass and weeds by mulching rather than digging.

• Making soil clean of weeds – a prerequisite to having time for creative work.
• Different composts and manures, when and how to use them for best results.
• Different ways of making compost, what ingredients work best. There is plenty to see in the heaps here!
• A look at Homeacres’ trials and comparisons – dig/no dig, fork/no dig, non-rotation, and different composts.

Sowing and propagation – directly in modules, pricked out, or into surface compost. We look at examples.

• Seasonality and timing of sowing for strong, healthy, growth.
• Energy influencers: the moon, biodynamic preparations, copper tools.

Growing

• Uses of fleece and mesh to speed growth and protect from pests.
• Reducing slug numbers, protecting crops from other pests.
• How and when to pick crops for healthier, long lived plants.
• Advice on polytunnels – size to use, orientation, and what to grow in them.
• Advice on fruit, especially apples, with different varieties now in their eighth year.

We start at 10.30am, so please arrive a little before; and we finish around 4pm. The day includes lunch made from Charles’ vegetables both stored and growing.

Food is prepared in a local kitchen, Covid certified. It would be too time consuming to sterilise Homeacres kitchen for the food preparation. At least we can offer tea and coffee, cups hot washed first.

Many ask for Steph’s recipes and she has written a book The Creative Kitchen, available on her blog.

Two-day courses £390, includes all refreshments, lunch made from Homeacres produce, VAT.

The course is about understanding the simplicity of no dig methods, and learning to use that knowledge to garden more efficiently and economically. The main contents are below, but days 1 & 2 often overlap.

The weekend works for both gardeners and market gardeners, often we have a mixture of both. It’s such a beauty of no dig, how you can scale up or down when familiar with the principles I teach.

One difference with the day course is having more time to get to know the other participants, and new friendships or networks often form.

This comment is from a market garden in NE England:

Weekend Course Curriculum 

Day 1 – Costs and benefits of creating an undug growing space – 10am-5pm

• Setting up an area for market growing: how big, how quickly, mulching inputs.
• Maintaining productive soil without cultivation, key to healthier growth with less weeds and better returns.
• Weeding, often the Achilles heel of soil cultivators. No dig, no weeds – the details.
• Growing in tunnels and undercover, including use of fleece and pest-protection covers.

Day 2 – Details for good growing – 9am-2.30pm

• Propagation – composts, seed inc. seed saving, trays, sow or prick out, watering, hardening off or not. Heating a propagating space, a look at hotbeds.
• Time needed proportionate to costs and returns for different vegetables, depending on local market.
• Finer points of both growing and picking salad leaves, currently the only profitable crop for smaller growers.
• Tips for selling in less time and the importance of continuity. How to describe your growing to the public.

For accommodation on Saturday night, check out the local B&B’s at bottom of this page. I can’t offer accommodation here any more, because of Covid.

Food and refreshments are included. lunch is made from Charles’ vegetables, so you enjoy a taste of the season’s finest.

In the process of adding dates, current availability will appear below.

I also run courses at other venues, such as West Dean College, Sarah Raven’s Perch Hill nursery, and in town halls or private gardens.

Mail me via the Contacts page.

If you have already booked a course and wish to inform us of any dietary or other requirements, please email us [email protected] at least 4 working days before the course date.

All dishes are plant-based (vegan), the bread is 100% rye sourdough, and fresh-ground in my mill. There is a pat of butter too!

Please select from the below dietary requirements:

• Vegetarian or vegan
• Gluten intolerant
• Nut intolerant
• Serious food allergy, please specify

Friends and family are welcome to attend a course in your place, please provide us with the name and dietary requirements.

We can offer transfers to an alternative course date, provided we have been given enough notice (subject to availability). Notice needs to be 28 days, see next paragraph.

Due to the limited number of places at our courses, we are unable to refund purchases unless you give enough notice to enable a resale. If you are unable to attend and let us know more than 4 weeks before the date, we will resell your place. In this case, we can offer you a refund, less a £20 charge + VAT to cover time on admin and the loss of income from Paypal/Sagepay fees.

If due to Covid-19 you are subject to a local lockdown or there is a full lockdown the we will offer a further date in the future or offer a refund.

If for unforeseen circumstances we need to cancel a course, you will be contacted and given the option to transfer to another course of the same value, or to receive a refund of your payment.