Imagine stepping into each new month of the growing season with a clear plan, practical skills, and the confidence of knowing exactly what to do in your garden and your kitchen. This class series brings together the best of both worlds: thoughtful, hands-on organic vegetable gardening lessons from Willi Galloway, author of Grow Cook Eat: A Food-Lover’s Guide to Vegetable Gardening, and approachable, delicious cooking instruction from the Portland Cookshop team.
Whether you’re brand-new to gardening or already a skilled gardener, you’ll learn tips and techniques for growing the best tasting food—and how to cook food that makes you even more excited to grow. It’s seasonal, delicious, community-minded, and designed to deepen your relationship with the food that sustains you!
Class Overview
This seasonal, garden-to-table series invites you to engage fully with your food—from the moment it sprouts in the soil to the moment it’s served on your plate. Each session features a hands-on garden lesson tailored to the season, followed by a cooking class focused on techniques that help you make the most of your fresh produce, whether you grow it yourself or pick it up at the farmer’s market.
Garden: For our first session we will plant the seeds (literally!) of our garden season together. We’ll stroll over to the Cookshop garden plot to plant fava beans, a delicious and versatile crop that produces both tender greens and hearty beans. Back at Cookshop, you’ll learn how to keep a garden journal, plan a productive small-space garden, choose reliable vegetable varieties for the PNW, and source seeds from trusted local companies.
March through June topics:
March: Salads 101
April: Herbs & Edible Flowers
May: Some Like It Hot — Growing Warm-Season Crops
June: Simple Trellises & Summer Garden Maintenance
What to expect:
Our first class will be on a Sunday morning (so that we have some daylight!), with the remaining 4 classes on Thursday evenings from 6-8pm.
Price is per person, and includes all 5 classes.
Dates:
Sunday, February 8th
Thursday, March 12
Thursday, April 9
Thursday, May 7
Thursday, June 11
We will have some optional, add-on classes on August 13th and September 10th. More info to come!
About our instructor:
Willi Galloway is a master gardener and writer, and has been planting seeds of regional nourishment her whole life. Since working as the west coast editor of organic gardening, to learning from Hmong refugees planting traditional foods in urban gardens, she has been in love with vegetables since planting peas alongside her mother as a little girl.
Her books, Grow, Cook, Eat and Veggies for Breakfast are invitations to eat more vegetables, more often, and create an approachable method to growing and cooking with seasonal, local produce.