Oakland library presentations on feeding your family from your garden March 16, 23, 30

OAKLAND – Will Bonsall will present a series of informative talks on successful gardening at the Oakland Public Library. Bonsall was the keynote speaker at the Common Ground Fair in 2015. He is a farmer, author and director of Scatterseed Project, and co-founder of Grassroots Seed Network.

After working as a prospector, draftsman, gravedigger, hobo, musician, logger, artist and copy machine repairman, Bonsall became a homesteading farmer. He and his wife, Molly Thorkildsen, and their two sons tend Khadighar in Industry, Maine – a unique example of veganic gardening, i.e., maintaining soil fertility sustainably without animal manures. They focus on self-sufficiency, growing a wide range of vegetables, fruits, grains and legumes using extensive terraces, solar-powered irrigation, intensive (not raised) beds and ramial chips (chipped branches of deciduous trees).

Bonsall has gone far beyond homesteading, however, by founding and directing the Scatterseed Project to help preserve crop plant diversity and more recently by co-founding the Grassroots Seed Network. His first book, “Through the Eyes of a Stranger” (Xlibris 2010), is a futuristic eco-novel. His second, “Will Bonsall’s Essential Guide to Radical, Self-Reliant Gardening” (Chelsea Green, 2015), covers his in-depth knowledge of growing food in novel ways – expressed with his irrepressible humor and thoughtful philosophy about ways to help ourselves economically and nutritionally while also helping the environment – our “garden without borders.”

The schedule for the three part series is as follows: At 4 p.m. Thursday, March 16, the discussion will focus on more food from less space, a group of techniques using the garden’s vertical dimension effectively, companion planting, intensive wide bed spacing, using both ends of short seasons, and more.

At 4 p.m. Thursday, March 23, the discussion will focus on sustainable fertility: maintaining your garden’s tilth without importing lots of stuff from elsewhere. Composting, home-grown mulch, green manures (even when you haven’t enough space), and accessing the minerals that are already there (without mining).

And the last in the series will be held at 4 p.m. Thursday, March 30. That discussion will be on seed saving: whether you have some special variety that isn’t always available in the marketplace or whether you just want to cut costs, it helps to know how. Discussion will include maintaining purity, maturing-processing-storing seeds. Overwintering biennials for seed (like carrots, onions and kale).

All presentations are sponsored by the Library and offered free of charge.

Bonsall’s book, “Essential Guide to Radical, Self Reliant Gardening” will be available for purchase.

All presentations will take place at the Oakland Public Library, 18 Church St. in Oakland. For more information, call 207-465-7533.