Cultivating Compassion and Connection

My Experience with the Online Learn Veganic Gardening Course

Sarah with watermelon grown in Los Angeles

Sarah with a watermelon grown in her Los Angeles garden

I am a long-term vegan who loves to grow food. I started creating my first vegetable garden in 2009 in Los Angeles. I quickly discovered that many people think manure is essential for growing vegetables. I worked with a small company that helped me create my organic vegetable garden but was horrified when they said they wanted to spread manure regularly. I said I didn’t want manure but they didn’t have any other suggestions and at the time my internet search only came up with ‘chipped branch wood’ which I had no idea how to source on the westside of Los Angeles. I muddled along by carefully reading the ingredients lists on the back of compost bags in the garden center. In the US the source ingredients are listed and I was saddened to find things like chicken manure, bone meal, feather meal and fish meal on the lists. Whenever I found a product that didn’t have animal ingredients, I did a happy dance and stocked up. Eventually I got my own compost bins and started producing my own black gold, encouraging my neighbours to contribute their scraps too.

Fast forward to 2021 when I discovered the first Learn Veganic online gardening course and signed up to participate. I wish this had been available back in 2009. Meghan Kelly and Stéphane Groleau have created this fantastic course to help new and experienced gardeners learn all about veganic techniques. The course features seven weeks of online classes which can be viewed live or replayed at your convenience. Each class has comprehensive course notes which expand on the topics covered in the video and include numerous links to online resources and other explanatory videos. The class is suitable for anywhere in the world but does not include any specifics about growing in particular climates. They encourage you to research the
specifics for your own region, such as first and last frost dates, and what grows well in your region.

A highlight for me was the weekly Q&A session which was available at two different times to accommodate people in different time zones. Meg and Stef hosted the video meetup where we were encouraged to ask questions about our specific issues, chat with other participants, share pictures of our gardens and discuss our gardening highs and lows. It was great to get specific advice from Meg and Stef as well as brainstorm ideas and learn from the experiences of other vegan gardeners. I really enjoyed connecting with people from all over the world. As a vegan gardener it is easy to meet people who garden but it’s not easy to find people who garden veganically. The weekly Q&A gave us all a chance to feel normal about discussing ways to fertilise our gardens without animal products, and to not feel like weirdos when talking about ways to deal with pests without killing them.

Harvests from Sarah’s Los Angeles garden

Sarah’s UK Greenhouse

I’ve enjoyed this class so much that I’ve taken it three times. I keep learning each time and most importantly I relish the opportunity to connect with other vegan gardeners. A few of the many things I learned about are:
• How to grow potatoes using just hay
• Different recipes for creating potting soil
• The self-fertilising garden
• How to make compost on a balcony
• Carbon/nitrogen ratios
• Plant-based sources of fertility, such as hay, leaves, seaweed, comfrey, nettles, green manures and many more
• Plant families and their characteristics

One of the great things about this course is that you learn there are many ways to create a garden, from no-dig, to lasagna gardening to the Ruth Stout method, permaculture and self-fertilising gardens and even growing on balconies and in pots. Learn Veganic introduces you to all of these methods, gives you resources to find out more and encourages you to try methods that suit your own situation. As a result of the course, I tried some new techniques. I started doing ‘chop ‘n drop’ and I made liquid fertiliser from nettles and comfrey. I also tried mixing up my plant types to create a polyculture rather than sticking to the more rigid rotation regime I had been using before. I loved the resulting look of my garden which seemed more natural, and also a bit messier (in a good way).

In the last year I’ve moved from Los Angeles back to the UK, my home country. I’ve been lucky enough to move into a house with a large greenhouse and many raised beds. I’ve applied many of the techniques I learned on the course, especially as the beds really needed some nutrients. I’ve had to learn how to source vegan materials here, which is hard when bags don’t detail their source ingredients as they do in the US. I talked with Meghan during the Q&A and she helped me find sources of veganic compost and other fertilising options available in the UK, which she had learned about from other UK course participants. I’m experiencing different pests and the much shorter growing season so taking the course again has been beneficial. Now I’m learning about frost dates and slugs which didn’t trouble me in Los Angeles where it was always warm and I could garden year-round.

Whether you are a new gardener or an experienced gardener the Learn Veganic course is a great way to learn and connect with other vegan gardeners. The course materials are available for a year and I find
myself referring back to them frequently. There’s also a Facebook group for all previous participants where we can share our successes and failures and ask questions. I highly recommend joining the course.

The next Learn Veganic course will be starting in early 2024. You can get all the details by joining the newsletter at www.learnveganic.com.