Above: A new grant is enabling the Southborough Library to bring back Blackstone Valley Veggie Gardens for more gardening workshops. (see image credit note*)
With help from Southborough Rec, the Southborough Library is bringing another free virtual workshop series to the community. The “DIG IN! Garden Information Series” will offer workshops twice per month. Each is presented by the Blackstone Valley Veggie Gardens.
The sessions kickoff next week, with four of them scheduled for evenings in November and December. Anyone 12 years or older can participate over zoom, but pre-registration is required and limited.
Scroll down for the series details and registration links.
The series is funded by a $10,000 grant from Library Services & Technology Act distributed by the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners. The programming is just part of how the funds are being allocated. A press release also shares:
In addition to programming, the Southborough Library also plans to develop a new community garden on the front lawn of the library grounds. Initially starting out as a local Eagle Scout Project, the library’s community garden will help to augment the successful new initiative: the Library Seed Exchange. The library also hopes to have mobile “gardening kits” available to check out in Spring 2021.
You can read the full press release with more grant details here.
BVVG and others have held workshops at the Library related to gardening in the past. Several of those were captured by Southborough Access Media and are available on their YouTube channel. Scroll down for those details.
Each of the following upcoming sessions will take place from 7:00 – 8:00 pm on a Monday. Below are the registration links and Library descriptions (plus additional detail from BVVG):
Healthy Garden Recipes – November 9
“Prepare healthy meals with the ingredients from your backyard garden!” (BVVG promotes that participants will learn to cook using “healthy garden goodies.”)
Indoor Growing – November 23
“This brand new presentation covers the basics & challenges of growing things inside.” (BVVG promotes that participants will learn to grow ornamentals and edibles from the comfort of their own homes.)
Sustainable Gardening – December 7
“Become a more efficient gardener by learning how to elongate your growing season and maximize your output, all while preserving resources.” (BVVG promotes that the session will also teach you how to save seeds, sell your excess, and let your garden really work for you. If that “excess” refers to the seeds, I’m guessing the Library staff would prefer you donate them to the Seed Exchange program.)
Indoor Seed Starting – December 21
“There are so many more varieties of vegetables than what the garden centers offer! We’ll show you everything you need to know to take advantage of this.” (BVVG promotes that participants will learn to start garden fruit and veggie seeds under lights.)
If you are interested in the above series, you may also be interested in the linked SAM videos of past gardening workshops at the Library. The following were also run by BVVG:
In addition, the Library hosted a hands on workshop on cleaning and storing seeds (courtesy of the Open Space Preservation Commission). You can watch that here.
Those of you with green thumbs may also enjoy presentations SAM captured that focus on supporting pollinators. You can find those here.
*Updated (5/24/21 8:52 am): I was alerted about a purported copyright issue on another post where I used images from the BVVG Facebook posts. To ensure there aren’t any issues here, I removed the photos initially posted to illustrate each workshop.
