Sally Nex

Self-Sufficient Veg Gardening

  • Recommended

    $200

    Includes personal feedback and tuition. More

  • $75

    Learn in an online classroom with no more than 20 classmates. More

Course Description

Expert vegetable gardeners Sally Nex will teach you how to grow vegetables in your garden all year, including winter vegetable gardening and plant ideas. As you learn you'll be designing your vegetable garden and producing your own planting plan.

Choose Expert option for personal feedback from Sally on your vegetable garden design and planting plans.

This course takes you right through the growing year, and explores the best ways to make the most of your garden so you can enjoy home grown fruit and vegetables, no matter what the season.

Sally will teach you crop and vegetable selection, successional planting, managing your land and garden and ways to avoid the ‘hungry gap’ in early spring. You'll also learn how to manage pests and disease and keep your vegetables and plants healthy.

Wether you're just getting started with growing your own vegetables or looking to expand the amount of vegetables you grow, Sally's course will teach you how to plan your garden and plant choices.

You'll learn:

  • how to eat vegetables by season
  • planning the right vegetables to grow in your garden
  • timing your vegetable harvests
  • how to keep your vegetable plants healthy
  • which vegetables to grow and harvest in winter

Excellent on-line course with stimulating assignments and extremely useful expert feedback - Mr J

Time to complete this self-sufficient vegetable gardening course:

Every student is different but in general we think the whole course will take around 13 hours 45 minutes to complete including:

  • Video lessons: 1 hour 45 minutes in total
  • Course notes: 30 minutes per lesson
  • Assignment: at least 2 hours per lesson
  • Interactive classroom time: 15 minutes per lesson
  • tutor feedback review (Expert level): 15 minutes per lesson
  • The course includes:

    • On-demand video lessons - presented by Sally Nex
    • lifetime access to the video, notes and interactive class
    • flexible classes - join and learn when and where you like
    • downloadable lesson notes
    • practical (optional) vegetable garden planning and planting projects
    • access on your mobile, PC, Mac or laptop
    • small interactive online classroom chat online to students from around the world

    Ready to get started?

    Just add the course to your basket above - choose the 'Expert' option for personal feedback from Sally on your vegetable choices and garden plans.

    Any questions? Contact us by clicking on the orange speech symbol - we'd love to hear from you.

    CPD Accreditation

    Course activity has been accredited by the CPD Standards Office (CPDSO). The course equates to 13 hours, 45 minutes of CPD learning.
    The CPD Standards Office. CPD Provider: 50276.

    Course outline

    • The Self-Sufficiency handbook

      In this lesson you will cover the basics of becoming self-sufficient.

      How much land do you need to be self-sufficient (less than you'd think); what you'll need to get started and ways of getting more land if you don't own much yourself.

      You will also learn about managing your time and how to eat with the seasons to plan the perfect veg-growing year.

    • Keeping It Growing

      The secret of self-sufficiency is to keep a steady harvest of something to pick every day of the year.

      This lecture is all about getting the timing right, planning your sowing so you never go short, with sucessional sowing (and never have too much of a good thing, either).

      You'll learn how to choose your veg varieties cleverly so you get the longest possible harvest, as well as some good tricks for coaxing extra crops from your space, giving you even more to pick, with clever techniques or using the space under slower-growing crops.

      We'll also be looking at how to look after and boost your soil and some more advanced techniques and growing methods to keep your crops healthy and guarantee the very best results.

    • What to Grow

      There's a bewildering range of vegetable varieties out there, so this is your guide through the maze of choice you'll need to make to ensure your veg garden is well stocked every day of the year.

      I will pass on my recommendations for really high-cropping, long-lasting vegetables no kitchen garden should be without.

      And you'll discover some less commonly-grown veg which give spectacular savings and liven up your dinner menu, from artichokes and asparagus to perennial onions, yacon and traditional heritage varieties.

      Include sweet, juicy fruit and aromatic herbs in your day-to-day harvest and your year of plenty is complete: learn which it's worth growing, and how.

    • The Winter Veg Garden

      Most gardeners retreat indoors with the first frost – but if you're putting something on the plate every day of the year, winter is as important a season as any.

      In this lecture we'll look at how to beat the cold and grow a spectacular harvest of winter crops, from gorgeous crinkly kale to fat Brussels sprouts for Christmas lunch. You'll learn how to extend the seasons at both ends so you start as early as possible and pick till the snow lies on the ground.

      You'll also find out how to face up to the biggest challenge the year-round veg grower faces, the Hungry Gap in early spring

    Choose how you want to learn

    • The Expert option

      Recommended

      Develop your learning further with marked assignments and personal tuition from Sally Nex

      • Start course whenever you like
      • 4 weeks tutor access for personalised assignment feedback & coaching
      • 4 assignments marked by Sally Nex
      • Certificate of completion and CPD hours
      • Online classroom with up to 20 classmates
      • 4 lessons with expert videos & notes
      • Group chat & direct message with tutor & classmates
      • Lifetime access to videos, notes & classroom
      Learn more
      $200
    • The Peer option

      Discover the benefits of group learning in an online interactive classroom of no more than 20 people. Get the most from shared knowledge and community study

      • Start course whenever you like
      • Practise what you learn with your peers
      • Online classroom with up to 20 classmates
      • 4 lessons with expert videos & notes
      • 4 course assignments
      • Group chat & direct message classmates
      • Lifetime access to videos, notes & classroom
      Learn more
      $75

    New
    Buy this course for a business or group

    You can now buy this course through your business or organisation for individuals and groups up to 20

    Gardening classroom - how it works

    • Start anytime

      Watch video tutorials led by expert tutors

      Watch video tutorials led by expert tutors
    • Test yourself

      Practice what you learn with inspiring assignments

      Practice what you learn with inspiring assignments
    • Personal tuition

      Get assignment feedback from expert tutors

      Get assignment feedback from expert tutors
    • Share ideas

      Collaborate and chat directly to classmates

      Collaborate and chat directly to classmates

    Meet Sally Nex

    Sally Nex - Gardening

    In 2006 she left 15 years as a journalist on BBC radio, television and World Service to devote her time to horticulture. She is qualified in horticulture to RHS Level 3, and has a planting design diploma from Capel Manor College.

    Green Books
    Sally Nex started growing her own veg over 20 years ago with a few bean plants in a city garden, just to see if she could. A few years of eating astonishingly good, fresh, organic food for (nearly) free and she couldn't get enough of it: her veg-growing habit got well out of hand and after running out of space in the garden, she graduated to an allotment. Over the next six or seven years Sally became completely self-sufficient in fruit, vegetables and herbs, feeding her own family of four year-round as well as looking after several other people's fruit and veg gardens as a professional gardener.

    Sally now gardens an acre of windy hillside in Somerset, south-west England, where she is gradually winning the battle of the brambles to carve out a large and slightly unruly kitchen garden. Her self-sufficiency now also extends to eggs and lamb from a gorgeous little flock of Dorset Down rare breed sheep.

    Sally studied horticulture and design at Capel Manor College in London and Bicton College in Devon, and also writes extensively about all things to do with gardening, though mostly about growing things you can eat. She has regular slots in Gardeners' World magazine, The Garden, Grow Your Own magazine, and The Guardian. Her work has also appeared on the website/app intoGardens, as well as Which? Gardening, Kew Magazine and Period Living.

    Sally gives regular talks all around the south-west of England (and occasionally further afield) and is a keen blogger and twitterer. As well as her rather intermittent personal blog, The Constant Gardener, she also writes about her kitchen gardening exploits for online plant retailer Crocus. And most years she spends a week or two running around behind BBC camera crews as a horticultural researcher at the RHS shows, including Chelsea and Hampton Court.

    www.sallynex.com

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    Awards & Accreditations

    • CPD Accredited (provider 50276)
    • Good Web Guide
    • Red Herring Winner
    • Education Investor Awards 2021 - Finalist
    • Royal Horticultural Society
    • Digital Education Awards 2023 Winner for Digital Health and Wellbeing Learning Product of the Year
    • Digital Education Awards 2023 Winner for Adult Home Learning Product of the Year