Home Garden Expert Course AHT101

Create your ideal garden.! Become the gardening expert of your family with this comprehensive home gardening course. This course contains hundreds of pages of notes, hundreds of photos and illustrations, and (for the online & CD version) large numbers of automated self assessment tests. Eight units each comprising 2 or 3 lessons. Each lesson involves both reading and practical work. Want to know more about gardening?

Whatever your reason for gardening, this course will help you to garden more efficiently and effectively.

There are 8 lessons involved in this course. Each lesson is made up of 2 or 3 parts.

Lesson Structure There are 8 lessons in this course:

1. Basic Plant Identification & Culture
   • Plant names, planting, transplanting, tools & equipment.
2. Soils & Nutrition
   • Soil structure, nutrition, composting, soil building, drainage, fertilizers.
3. Pests & Weeds
   • Identifying problems, sprays, biological control, weed identification & control.
4. Landscaping
   • How to design a garden, rockeries, native gardens, traditional (European style) home gardens.
5. Propagation
   • Propagating materials, seed, cuttings.
6. Lawns
   • Turf varieties, laying a lawn, lawn care.
7. Indoor Gardening
   • Hardy indoor plants, container growing.
8. The Kitchen Garden
   • Vegetable gardening, fruit trees, herbs.

Each lesson culminates in an assignment which is submitted to the school, marked by the school\'s tutors and returned to you with any relevant suggestions, comments, and if necessary, extra reading.

Aims

• Identify plant health problems and know treatments.
• Know the plant naming system and how plants are classified.
• Understand the effect of soil structure and texture on plant growth.
• Understand plant terminology and planting methods.
• Understand plant pruning requirements and methods
• Know plant nutrition requirements
• Understand soil conditions and when they require improvement.
• Recognise a range of pests and diseases and the methods of control.
• Recognise a range of weeds and know various control methods.
• Know a range of garden styles and the history behind them.
• Have knowledge of landscape construction techniques.
• Understand the elements and processes of landscape design.
• Understand various propagating techniques
• Propagate plants by various methods
• Understand the soil preparation and requirements to establish or renovate a lawn
• Know lawn maintenance requirements.
• Understand requirements, including environmental and nutritional aspects of growing plants indoors (including hydroponics and greenhouses).
• Know how to select plants suited to growth indoors
• Develop knowledge of vegetable growing procedures and requirements.
• Have knowledge of a range of fruits and berries suited to the home garden
• Have knowledge of a range of commonly grown herbs and flowers

What You Will Do

• Read notes written and supplied by staff of this school
• Watch instructional video
• Test and name different soils
• Mix inexpensive potting mixes
• Make compost and explain how you made it.
• Learn how to identify plants effectively.
• Explain step by step how you would go about planting shrubs in your own locality.
• Explain how to transplant and transport plants from one propertyu to another.
• Determine the tools required to do gardening for a property, using a limited supply of money.
• Explain characteristics of soil, including: Soil Structure, pH and Nutrient Deficiency
• Describe how to fertilize a lawn
• Explain how to improve drainage in a soil that is too wet for plants to do well in.
• Explain how you would improve a specified soil
• Identify a nutrient deficiency
• Observe and identify different categories of pest and disease problems in growing plants.
• Compile a weed collection with pressings or illustrations of different weeds
• Compile a plant collection with pressings or illustrations of different weeds
• Describe how environmental problems affect plants
• Recommend ways of controlling different types opf problems in plants, using both natural and chemical.
• Observe and evaluate different types of gardens.
• Survey a garden in order to prepare a garden design.
• Apply a systematic procedure to landscape design, in order to produce a concept plan for a garden.
• Explain mistakes have you observe in the design and construction of different rockeries
• Build a simple cold frame and us it to propagate plants.
• Prepare propagating mix which would be suitable for striking most types of cuttings.
• Propagate different plants from cuttings.
• Prepare a plan for sowing annual flower seedlings over a 12 month period.
• Evaluate and explain a lawn seed mix from the packaging of that mix
• Observe different lawns and recommend their treatment
• Explain how to establish a lawn
• Observe and evaluate the condition of different indoor plants.
• Recommend the treatment of different indoor plants.
• Prepare lists of indoor plants for different applications.
• Find an indoor plant which needs potting up & pot it up.
• Plant a vegetable patch.
• List fruit, nuts & berries most suited for growing in your locality
• Observe the way in which herbs are used commercially (eg. in medicine, cooking etc)
• Explain why crop rotation is used in growing vegetables