2023 DATES JUST ANNOUNCED!
2023 Workshop Dates:
March 1st – Agroforestry workshop at Red Butte Farm in Paonia
March 4th & 5th- Agroforestry workshop at CRMPI
May 6th – Greenhouse Design
May 7th – Forest Garden session
June 3th – Greenhouse Design session
June 4th – Forest Garden session
June 17th – Greenhouse Design session
June 18th – Forest Garden session
All Saturday workshops will run from 9am to 5pm and include lunch and dinner. Sunday workshops will run from 9am to 4pm and include lunch and an afternoon snack.
Saturdays – Greenhouse Design and Maintenance Course:
This workshop will teach you how to grow your own food year-round, even tropical fruits, using Climate Battery technology. Learn the intricacies and design of greenhouse growing with an emphasis on perennial polyculture and making the most of your space. Discover how you can stack functions to make your greenhouse more effective and efficient. Or, if you don’t have a greenhouse, just come to see how this low-tech greenhouse design produces papayas, pomegranates, and other tropical goodies at 7,200 feet above sea level.
This workshop offer hands-on instruction in the many aspects of greenhouse design, installation, and maintenance. Taught by Jerome Osentowski, founder of the Central Rocky Mountain Permaculture Institute in Basalt, CO, instruction will include:
- a tour of CRMPI
- hands-on forest garden and greenhouse work projects
- forest garden and greenhouse design (including commercial greenhouse design and climate battery technology)
- installation and planting schedules
- maintenance and water systems
- vermiculture
- food harvesting and food processing.
CRMPI is blessed with four greenhouses, each with its own unique design and focus:
–Phoenix is the largest and features year round growing of fruiting papayas, pomegranate, a variety of citrus, and a mix of tropical perennials and annual vegetables
–Mana is the next largest and features year round growth of Mediterranean plants such as fig, olive, mulberry, and rosemary
–Shree is a supplemental greenhouse featuring a rotating variety of annuals
–CORE is a retrofitted hoophouse style greenhouse which houses annuals in the summers and keeps our nursery trees warm in the winters
Whether you’re interested in growing tropical fruit, just doing season extension, or creating a more healthy, sustainable, low maintenance, and productive home garden, these workshops will give you what you need to know!
You’ll also have a chance to explore CRMPI’s full range of permaculture design installations, including a 16-kilowatt PV system, a Sunny John composting toilet, a passive solar home, extensive water catchment, and a gray water system.
Come get your hands dirty in our 30 year old, one-acre outdoor and indoor edible forest garden!
Sundays – Edible Landscaping Course:
This workshop offer hands-on instruction in the many aspects of high-altitude forest garden and greenhouse design, installation, and maintenance. Taught by Jerome Osentowski, founder of the Central Rocky Mountain Permaculture Institute in Basalt, CO, instruction will include:
- Designing and maintaining a forest garden
- Developing the forest from groundcover to vines to overstory
- Building soil with vermiculture
- Integrating plant guilds with animal livestock to promote biodiversity and fill essential ecological functions
- Successful companion planting for the high Rockies
This is a unique opportunity to spend time in the second oldest food forest in the United States, a 35-year-old, high-altitude forest garden at CRMPI.
Tuition
Tuition costs $150 for one day or $300 for both days and includes meals and curriculum material.
To reserve your spot in the course please register here and pay your tuition by check (mail to CRMPI; PO Box 631; Basalt, CO 81621). We also accept payment by PayPal (to jerome@crmpi.org) but we must ask you to please add a 2.9% surcharge to cover the fees we are charged for electronic payment methods. Use the link below for payment through PayPal
CRMPI does reserve the right change dates or cancel for any reason at any time. We will be happy to refund or find a mutual solution in the event of changes or cancellations.