Your First Organic Veggie Garden

From Seed to Table, Learn How to Grow Your First Veggie Garden, Naturally

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Heya, I'm Stacey - Mama to alll the things at Coghlan Cottage Farm in Canada's Fraser Valley.

For nearly 20 years I've been growing my own food. I'm a certified Master Organic Gardener, Renegade Farmer, Writer and Slow Lifestyle Educator.

I believe that gardening is an act of joyful of rebellion. It's a way for regular folks like you and I to give the agricultural industry that values profits over people and the planet a good old poke in the eye.

Saving seeds, planting a garden, sharing rebelliously with our community - all of these things are acts of resistance in a broken and hurting world.

Whether you're concerned about climate change, food insecurity, global monopolies or just really love a good homegrown tomato sandwich, I'm here to get you started on your own organic vegetable garden (even if you kill all the things!), with a good dose of humour and joyful rebellion along the way.

Sound like fun? Let's dig in!

What the heck is Holistic Gardening?

Check out the video below for an introduction to a Holistic approach to growing food with Farmer Stacey.


 

In this NEW version of the course, updated for 2021, you'll learn all the basics to get you growing right away.

  • Learn to Grow Naturally - in harmony with nature
  • Start Seeds Indoors
  • Build Your Soil Ecosystem
  • The Best Crops for Small or Shady Spaces
  • Gardening Ideas for Kids
  • And More

What you'll get:

Me, Farmer Stacey, as I am. If I could invite you to the farm, I would. This is the next best thing to us spending a day hanging out in the garden together.

Hands-on, practical advice to get you growing, regardless of space or budget.

Course runs over the course of the growing season from March 1 to August 22, 2021. Move at your own pace.

NEW for 2021, we'll be meeting online for virtual Q&A's where you can pick my brain and ask all those burning gardening questions. ( I know you've got 'em! No question is too strange, silly or stupid - I've heard 'em all. )

Six monthly meetings online Sunday's at 9 am PST.

What won't you get?

Attitude, pretension or overly-complicated answers to simple questions.

We're not talking NPK or technical soil-chemistry here. Just practical gardening wisdom from a woman who knows what it is to juggle a garden and you know, life!

Fancy-pants production and complicated delivery. I'm making this course as I move through my own growing season here on the farm. (Part of it was filmed during the initial lock down in 2020, right before my own adventure in the Covid ward of our local hospital, which is why those of you in the 2020 crash course were left off at transplanting. It took me the rest of the growing season to recover.)

You'll find me as I am - no makeup, kids in the background, imperfect but present. My pride and vanity matter a lot less than empowering y'all to get growing!

So please join me. Let's dig in.

Monthly Online Workshop Dates for 2021

Meetings held Sundays at 9 am PST.

Can't make it? No problem, submit your question ahead of time and recordings will be made available.

  • March 21
  • April 18
  • May 16
  • June 20
  • July 18
  • August 22

First Module of Online Learning Content goes live March 1, 2021.

 
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Course Curriculum

Here's a few of the things we'll cover in Your First Organic Veggie Garden.

  • What is Natural Gardening?
  • Getting Started : What & Where to Grow - including veg for shady gardens or small spaces
  • Equipment & Setup
  • Seeds Demystified : GMO vs Hybrid vs Open Pollinated vs Heirloom
  • Soil Health & Ecology
  • Seed Starting Indoors
  • The Growing Season : Weeds, Water, Pests & More
  • Deep Dives into our Favourite Veg
  • Putting the Garden to Bed for Winter

The course will unfold right along with you over the course of the growing season. We will check in live each month to troubleshoot, review the material, answer any questions and encourage one another.

First module goes live March 1.

 
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Frequently Asked Questions


When does the course start and finish?
The course runs March 1 to August 31, 2021. In addition to the course material (which you're free to move through at your own pace), we'll be meeting once a month over the course of the season for online workshops. Each workshop will cover a specific topic. Workshops are held Sundays at 9 am PST on March 21, April 18, May 16, June 20, July 18 and August 22.
How long do I have access to the course?
Access to the course is available March 1st to September 30, 2021. You're welcome to download or print any of the course materials along the way - they're yours to keep.
What if I am unhappy with the course?
We would never want you to be unhappy! If you are unsatisfied with your purchase, contact us in the first 30 days and we will give you a full refund.
I don't have a big yard - will this course work for people with only a balcony or windowsill?
YES!! You can grow food just about anywhere with a little bit of creativity. We will cover tips for growing in apartments, balconies and city lots.
I kill all the things! Is this course suitable for complete newbies?
We are going to start right at the beginning with the absolute basics. Even if you've never gardened before you'll have all the info you need to get growing right away.
How is the course delivered?
I had initially planned to make a traditional online course - you know the drill, me yacking over informative slides along with video, handouts and six live online Q&As. Although as a farmer I've spent sweet little time on Zoom these past months, I know most of you haven't been so lucky. Soooo instead of plonking you down in front of yet another screen for the bulk of the course, I've decided to make it primarily audio. That way you can listen as you do something else, wash the dishes or maybe even while you're out in the garden! There will still be plenty of video content of course, but I'll try to keep presentations to a minimum.
 
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Why grow your own?⁣

As I've been working away in the background the past few weeks on the content for the course, I've realized just how much of why gardening is so central to my life is pretty philosophical!⁣

Hehe. Who'd have thunk kale = philosophy. But there it is.⁣

Gardening for me, especially growing my own food, is activism. ⁣

Yes, activism.⁣

Is that strange? Maybe. But in an age of perpetual rage, impenetrable social divisions and lukewarm clicktivism passing as true civic engagement while the world literally burns around us . . .

The choices we make in our daily lives matter. A lot.⁣

I take my family to protests, write my elected officials, always exercise my right to vote and all the rest. But my true activism? It's right here. In the garden.

Saving seeds. Nourishing my community. Empowering others to do the same. Doing my little bit to shift the stubborn belief we cling to that someone else will come to save us.⁣

Whether it's racial injustice, the yawning chasm between rich and poor or our wounded planet - each of these massive challenges require that we face them - each day in our daily lives - where we are, with what we have. ⁣

But it doesn't have to be all about doom and gloom, no matter how dark the moment may seem. Choosing joy and hope in the face of darkness is the ultimate act of rebellion. Planting a seed is the ultimate act of faith.

"The root goes down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we're all like that." - Fulghum

Do not doubt that our actions matter. ⁣

The answers to our problems won't come from the board rooms or public chambers. They lie round our kitchen tables, in the cool shade of our gardens, with mothers and fathers and keepers of seeds and we are more powerful than we can imagine. ⁣

We are the ones we've been waiting for. ⁣

Won't you join me?

 

Only by growing some food for yourself can you become acquainted with the beautiful energy cycle that revolves from soil to seed to flower to fruit to food to offal to decay, and around again. You will be fully responsible for any food that you grow for yourself, and you will know all about it. You will appreciate it fully, having known it all its life.

- Wendell Berry


Your Instructor


Stacey Langford
Stacey Langford

Stacey is The Mama to alllll the things at Coghlan Cottage Farm.

Over 10 years ago she traded her life of high-heels and pencil skirts for gumboots and chicken poop and never looked back.

Stacey now lives and works on a historic five acre farm in British Columbia's bountiful Fraser Valley. She lives with her hubby, Jeff, their two littles and an ever-growing menagerie of naughty farm animals.

Stacey is a Certified Organic Organic Master Gardener, Renegade Farmer and Slow Lifestyle Educator.



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The Land We Are On

I would like to acknowledge that my family and I live and farm on the traditional, ancestral and unceded territories of the Stól:ō, Coast Salish, Wsánec and Kwantlen First Nations.

We are grateful to the First Nations people of BC for their leadership in protecting the land and water, especially in their work to stop the Trans Mountain Pipeline and the Site-C Dam. As a white family descended from settlers, we are committed to supporting these efforts as well as the dismantling of colonial systems of oppression both in our activism and monetarily via support to grass roots organizations and legal funds.