Pam Dawling | Mother Earth News FAIR

Pam Dawling has grown vegetables at Twin Oaks Community in central Virginia for 28 years, feeding 100 people from 3.5 acres. She’s the author of Sustainable Market Farming and The Year-Round Hoophouse. She’s a contributing editor at Growing for Market magazine, a workshop presenter, and a weekly blogger on www.SustainableMarketFarming.com.

Pam will be speaking at the Mother Earth News Fair Online.

Workshops

Check It Out!

Winter Cover Crops for Gardeners

Select cover crops to sow in fall to smother weeds, feed and improve the soil, and prevent erosion. Choose reliable cover crops for your climate and crop rotation, and plan when to sow them for best results. Join Pam Dawling to learn about winter-killed cover crops, hardy grasses, legumes, and how to undersow in growing food crops.

Winter Gardening

Speaking At:

Mother Earth News Fair Online

Tasks, Harvests, and Perennial Crops Plans

In this session, we gather up loose ends and make a month-by-month task list to keep us on track purposefully all season. We'll also whet our appetites with a list of crops we plan to harvest, and a system that ensures we don't neglect the fruit bushes.

Garden Planning

Speaking At:

Mother Earth News Fair Online

Packing More In: Interplanting, relay planting, double cropping (follow-on crops), season extension, succession plantings

This workshop describes several ways to increase the productivity of your garden by squeezing in more crops, both space-wise and timewise. We also look at a step-by-step system for ensuring you never have too many zucchini or too little sweet corn.

Garden Planning

Speaking At:

Mother Earth News Fair Online

Maps, Crop Rotations, and Harvest Schedule

Measure your garden space and consider the main crops you want to grow so you can figure out a crop rotation that will take care of the soil and your crops. This information will enable you to draw up a list of what you can harvest when - the best approach to what to plant!

Garden Planning

Speaking At:

Mother Earth News Fair Online

How Much to Grow of What: Plant spacing, seed storage, inventory, and orders

This workshop will set you up with a seed order that fits your needs, neither too much nor too little, nor the wrong things. You'll also learn how to store seeds well, and which ones will still give good germination next year.

Garden Planning

Speaking At:

Mother Earth News Fair Online

Growing Transplants and Scheduling Seedlings

This workshop provides the information you need on equipment and scheduling to grow sturdy transplants. Raising hundreds (thousands?) of small plants with a manageable work flow can bring hours of enjoyment, leading to months more of enjoyment later in the year.

Garden Planning

Speaking At:

Mother Earth News Fair Online

Garden Goals: How to plan? Which crops to grow?

In this introduction, Pam Dawling talks about thinking ahead, before the start of the garden season. Knowing what you hope to do, where and when, will help you be calm, well-organized and successful, retaining the lessons from your experience from one year to the next.

Garden Planning

Speaking At:

Mother Earth News Fair Online

Contingency Planning: Making your garden the best possible and using records to make next year better

In this round-up workshop, Pam urges us to prepare for surprises and gives cameos of aspects that also deserve attention, such as soil health, cover crops, compost, sustainable pest and disease management, DIY weather-forecasting and cold weather crop protection.

Garden Planning

Speaking At:

Mother Earth News Fair Online

Calculating Sowing Dates to Meet Your Harvest Dates: Schedule your outdoor planting

In this session, Pam explains how to work back from the dates you want to harvest, to determine when to sow, and create an outdoor planting schedule. We will weigh the pros and cons of direct sowing and transplanting, and start to consider ways to ensure continuous supplies of crops that can be planted more than once during the year.

Garden Planning

Speaking At:

Mother Earth News Fair Online