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Book an Adult Workshop

Gain new skills and knowledge with the Compost Education Centre! Learn more about our classes. Looking to register for one of our public workshops? Click here.

We are happy to come to your organization and share knowledge about the topics listed below. Online options are also possible, and workshops can be delivered to your group on Wednesdays through Saturdays. Daytime offerings are preferred, but evenings are also possible.

Custom workshops are also available. Please be in touch using the form below to share what you are looking for. Composting Basics, Worm Composting, and Soil Life workshops can be shortened for a one hour-long “lunch and learn” format.

Workshops

Growing Indoor Microgreens and Sprouts

$265 · 1.5 hrs
Do you wish you had a mini garden all winter long to harvest from right in your kitchen? You can! Come learn the ins and outs of microgreen growing and sprouting in your home so that you can have nutrient dense greens all year round, rain or shine, cold or hot.

We’ll cover:
- helpful equipment
- difference between microgreens & sprouts
- how to grow these tender greens (seed selection, timing, care)
- nutrition benefits
- troubleshooting
Since the equipment and skills are similar, we’ll also spend some time learning the specifics of how to grow healthy vegetable seedlings for your garden.

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Practical Tools for Measuring Soil Health

Contact for price quote · 1-2 hrs
Learn simple techniques for analysing your soil quality through this hands-on workshop

We’ll measure the physical and biological quality of soil using the following practical tools you can also use at home:
- Soil texture test
- Soil aggregation test (slake test)
- Water infiltration rate
- Earthworm count
- Rizosheath assessment
- Nodulation of legumes
Knowing these details can help inform next steps for stewarding your soil, and provide important baseline information for your gardening journey.

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Composting for Businesses

Contact for price quote · 1 hrs
Join us for an eye-opening discussion on how businesses can tackle food waste and composting practices!

Are you a business owner or employee of a business in the Capital Regional District on Vancouver Island that creates a lot of unavoidable or avoidable food waste (think – vegetable trimmings, spent coffee grounds, past due food, plate scrapings, employee lunch time waste etc.)? Do you have a good system of avoiding this food waste or composting the unavoidable food waste? If you’re curious about these questions – attend this free webinar to learn more from the Compost Education Centre about what is possible at your business. Learn the possibilities for:
- Avoiding food waste in the first place
- How to process all sorts of food waste in a sustainable, affordable, responsible way
- Explore different options for onsite, and offsite composting
- Saving money
- And understand why it all matters
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Cultivating Healthy Soil in the Garden

Contact for price quote · 2 hrs
In this workshop we’ll explore the basis of all life on earth: Healthy Soil! We’ll explore what soil is made of and the vast importance of soil microbes. We’ll answer these questions and many more:
- What is soil made of and why does soil chemistry matter for growing healthy gardens?
- What is the function of beneficial soil microbes?
- What are some gardening methods that can help my garden thrive with beneficial soil microbes and healthy soil chemistry?
- How can I compost like an expert, mulch like a superstar and build soil organic matter every day of the year?
- Check out on site composting operations in the demonstration gardens: Earth machines, hot compost, tumblers, sheet mulches and worm bins! Together we will build a compost pile.
Come learn why soil is so important for plant growth and how to build incredible soil.

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Yard-Free Composting

$200 · 2 hrs
We’ll cover options that are available for composting without a yard. Surprisingly, there are many, and we’ll discover the benefits and drawbacks to each so you can determine the system that is right for your life & home. We’ll learn about:
- countertop electric food dehydrators & “composters”
- private food scrap pick up, municipal food scrap pick up & proper use of greenbins
- bokashi composting
- worm composting
Bring your questions, we’ll have time for Q & A.

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Sustainable Site Tour

$175 · 1-1.25 hrs

We offer guided tours during which participants will gain an in-depth understanding of the many ecological gardening techniques and processes at work on the Compost Education Centre’s site. Topics covered include attracting pollinators, permaculture guilds and food forests, organic vegetable growing, soil stewardship and rainwater harvesting.

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Planning Your Year-Round Veggie Garden

Contact for price quote · 2 hrs

Here in Victoria good planning makes it possible to harvest produce from our gardens during every month of the year. Knowing when to sow seeds is important. But it’s just as crucial to know when and how to transition one crop to another. This presentation will show you how to plan to grow year-round, care for your soil, protect your crops in winter, and we’ll even touch on pests and diseases!

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Soil Life: Really Important Tiny Lives

$200 · 1-2 hrs

The soil under our feet is teeming with a web of microscopic life, whose complex interactions support all other terrestrial life. Healthy soils feature an intact and diverse microbial food web, which sustain nutrient cycles and maintain soil structure. We’ll finish by discussing the most effective ways to steward this living medium, and come away with aan inspired understanding of the intricate ways life in the soil, supports all life on earth.

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Worm Composting

$200 · 1-2 hrs

Everything you need to know about starting up and maintaining a worm bin compost system, also known as vermicomposting. Perfect for small space composting and apartment living, or in addition to other composting systems you already have started at your home. Vermicompost is every gardener’s dream as a finished soil amendment, and serves as a fast, easy food waste diversion tool. 

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Advanced Composting

$200 · 1-2 hrs

Advanced Composting aims to broaden the scope of participants’ knowledge of composting methods. Topics covered will include dynamic accumulators and hot composting, compost tea, in-situ composting methods and humanure.
Composting Basics

$200 · 1.5 hrs

What is the recipe for compost success and why does composting matter? This workshop will explore the answer to these questions, and will offer instructions on what it takes to produce an amendment for your garden that is rich in beneficial microorganisms and nutrients! We’ll cover the 6 factors for composting success, how to choose the best composting system for your needs and how to increase the rodent resistance of your compost pile.