Here's a five day intensive online course, aimed at the home gardener looking to get started with some basic skills. I'll be taking sections from my comprehensive 10 week course called 'Foundations of Edible Gardening' to give you some essentials to get you started at this time of year.

Thursday: DIY seed raising mix. planting seeds.

Friday: Container gardening, DIY potting mix, transplanting seedlings, tools for growing from seed at a home scale.

Saturday: Composting on a home scale: tips to optimise and use more of the soil you make.

Sunday: Worm farming, in-ground worm farming.

Monday: No dig gardening (lasagne gardening, keyhole gardening, hugelkultur)

Over the five days we talk about choosing what to grow for your garden in September, October, November.

[If you can't make it to all the Zoom sessions, there will be a link to watch it afterwards]

We'll also use a private Facebook group for Q&A.

The great thing about a private Facebook group is that you can post videos and photos of your own garden, and get to know other people in the class, connecting you with like minded people.

If small enough, this group could live on as a gardening mastermind group - each person supporting everyone else, sharing their successes, and even doing some seed swapping by post.

What you will gain from this course: start growing salad greens, herbs and veggies in your own garden, learn to make your own compost, and get ideas on how to transform your garden waste into healthy soil.

What you need for this course: I recommend the following list of items. Having them available at the beginning of the course means you can 'work' on each section as we cover it.

• a list of the food you'd love to grow
• seeds to plant
• I'll teach you where to get raw ingredients for seed raising mix and potting mix, but you might like to start off with some commercial seed raising mix, just to get going straight away.