The Climate-Friendly Kitchen Garden  Course Starting March

The Course for 2024 is full!

The Climate-Friendly Kitchen Garden Course offers practical, hands-on skills in urban gardening, cooking, composting, and basic building skills. This 8-month course will guide participants through the seasons, teaching them how to start their own garden, cook with seasonal ingredients, reduce waste and energy consumption, and build a supportive community.

​The course is designed for city dwellers seeking to implement positive changes in their lifestyles. It provides practical skills in sustainable food practices, exploring the impact of food production and ways to reduce it, with a focus on taking concrete action in even the smallest of spaces of city life.

WHAT IS COVERED IN THE COURSE

Urban gardening: How to start and maintain a small-scale garden, even in limited spaces like balconies or garden; planning a garden; how to choose the right plants for your space; companion planting and crop families; starting plants from seeds: Everything that you need to know to start and maintain your own garden!

Climate-friendly cooking: Plant-based cooking with seasonal, locally sourced ingredients; reducing food waste; fermentation; exploring the world of beans and new vegetable varieties; discovering the joy of food.

Sustainable food production: Understanding the impact of food production on the climate, and ways to reduce it; how to garden using climate-friendly methods

Sustainable lifestyle: Tips and tricks for reducing consumption, including resources (like energy and water), as well as for reducing waste

Composting: Learn how to compost at home and explore different composting methods suitable for an urban environment, such as Bokashi composting, Hot composting, and Worm composting.

Basic upcycling skills: How to mend clothing, and make basic DIY building projects using shared tools

Building a learning community: Sharing skills, resources and experiences to support fellow course participants and De Kaskantine community in making positive changes; learn how to apply all of the above skills also on a community level in the future, if you so desire

Materials We Provide You:

• Lunch (we will cook and enjoy it during the course!)
• Organic seedlings and seeds for your garden in the Spring, Summer, and Autumn
• Notebook to create your very own gardening journal with helpful handouts to take notes and plan your garden
• Online platform to continue your offline learning experience with fellow course participants at your own pace
• Access to small library of climate, cooking & gardening books
• Gardening gloves 

Additional Benefits:

• Option to volunteer in the garden to practice skills like gardening, composting, and building (available 2x per month)
  
• ​After each course meeting, get 3 hours of access to Kaskantine workshop space to work on your own DIY project, such as building and mending
• ​Membership to Compost Club, Kaskantine's neighbourhood composting program - bring us your food scraps!​

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Access to private online platform

Our private scoby platform provides a digital community hub, free from distractions, that extends the offline learning experience. Course participants have their own personalized space where they can access resources and exchange information with each other. The platform is accessible on both desktop and as a mobile app.

Format of the course:

• The course takes place one Saturday each month and lasts for 5 hours from 9.00-14.00, which includes time for lunch.
  
• During the 5 hours, the course covers gardening and cooking topics relevant to the current season we are meeting in.
• The course does have a theoretical component, but is mainly focused on practical skill building and activities.
• After the class, participants have the option to stay at Kaskantine  and use shared tools and materials to work on their own DIY projects, like building something or using the sewing machine.
• Participants can also sign up to volunteer with the gardening, composting, or building working groups, which take place twice a week, to gain experience and practice if they'd like. 
• The course runs from March to October, and is taught by instructors with extensive experience on the the topics covered. 
  

Course Details

Location: Kaskantine, Handbalstraat 1, 1062 XK Amsterdam
Language: English
Course Size: Limited to max. 10 Participants
Dates & Times: March 30, April 6, May 4, June 1 July 6, August 3, September 7, October 5  from 09:00-14:00

• At the final course meeting, we'll make pizza, and participants can invite family & friends to celebrate what they have learned. 

Cost: 480 Euros (paid by March 18th, 2024)

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De Kaskantine: an off-grid learning environment 

De Kaskantine is an experiment in going off-grid, relying on solar energy and rainwater. Participants will learn about alternative resource management methods from upcycling building materials and collecting rainwater to producing solar energy.

While the course focuses on what participants can do on the household level (their very own urban homestead), de Kaskantine serves as an example of a modern homestead and gives you an idea of how sustainability and self-sufficiency can be on a community level.

As you'll see throughout the year, we are as a result highly dependent on nature. For instance, we need solar energy to generate electricity, and we need to collect rainwater for most of our water supply. 
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Instructors

The founders of De Kaskantine, Menno and Betty, will lead this course. With the help of volunteers, they have moved and rebuilt the project three times including the restaurant and transformed a former football field into a thriving garden, all the while with the aim to build knowledge and expand community-based projects.

While they believe that we need a system change, they understand that empowering individuals and communities with knowledge and skills is crucial in combating climate change. Their passion for climate-based solutions and learning is at the heart of their desire to create a hands-on, practical course for city dwellers to take tangible actions, both personally and in their community.

Along with Betty and Menno, there will also be guest instructors, who are experts in their respective fields and who will also bring their own passion to the class.

How to sign up

The course begins on March 30th, 2024, and enrollment is available through the provided form below. If you haven't visited Kaskantine before, please join our information day in February before signing up for the course. However, if you're already familiar with our initiative, have previously participated, visited the location, or are confident in your decision to participate, feel free to sign up immediately. Please indicate your preference on the form. The course has a capacity of 10 participants.

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FAQs

What is the Climate-Friendly kitchen course about?

The course covers practical, hands-on skills in gardening, cooking, composting, and basic building skills, and focuses on sustainable food practices from growing to cooking to composting. The course aims to help participants understand the impact of food and energy use and waste production and create a more sustainable lifestyle.

Who is this course for?

This course is for city dwellers who are looking to make changes towards a more sustainable lifestyle in a supportive community, with a focus on gardening, cooking, and composting. ​

is this course suitable for advanced gardeners?

No, this course is designed for beginner gardeners to gain the skills for their first years of gardening. ​

Do i need to be a vegan to be in this course?

This course is for vegans and non-vegans alike. During the course, we will be cooking plant-based meals that do not feature animal products, however during the course, we will discussing the Planetary Health Diet, developed by the EAT-Lancet Commission, which does feature a small amount of animal products, should you want to consume them. ​

Do i need to have access to a garden currently to join this course?

It would be beneficial to have some space to garden, whether at home even in a few containers, or in a rented plot elsewhere, so that you can apply what you are learning on a daily basis and observe your garden throughout the seasons. However we do understand that there may be some people who would like to first learn theory in preparation for when they one day have a garden. That is fine too, and they may find it then beneficial to apply their newly gained knowledge during our optional volunteer workdays. Kaskantine however does not offer garden plots for participants. ​

Is this a permaculture course?

No. While we will give an overview of different gardening philosophies, we are not a permaculture course. ​

​YOU WANT TO GARDEN, BUT THE TIME ISN'T RIGHT, OR YOU LIVE TOO FAR AWAY, OR...?

If this course is not quite the curriculum you are looking for, or the course times are not quite right, or we are not conveniently located for you, consider checking out some of these other Amsterdam gardening courses:

• Get Down, Get Dirty 
• Wildernis Plant and Garden Workshops
• Basiscursus Moestuinieren