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FutureLearn

How to Grow Healthy Plants

BBC via FutureLearn

Overview

Expand and protect your garden

On this three-week course from BBC Gardeners’ World, you’ll discover how to create new plants yourself without having to buy them and what to do when things go wrong.

Learn basic methods for sowing seeds and taking cuttings

There are a few different ways that you can raise new plants. You’ll start this course by learning the basic methods for cultivating plants in different ways. You’ll cover the optimal techniques to sow seeds, as well as dividing and taking cuttings from existing plants of different types.

Discover how to water plants effectively without damaging them

Plants are delicate things and each different type needs certain environments and specific care in order to grow. With the wrong input, it’s quite possible to kill plants with kindness by overwatering or overfeeding.

This course will guide you through watering plants effectively and the different watering needs of plants. You’ll also learn how to properly feed plants and the maintenance that each type of plant needs to thrive.

Explore the many plant diseases and pests

Unfortunately, there are a variety of pests and diseases that can damage and even kill plants. That’s why it’s important to know the methods to prevent pests and the techniques to manage disease if it occurs, all of which you’ll learn in this course.

You’ll also discover how to nurture your plants and stimulate lush growth through pinching, training, and thinning. Finally, you’ll explore the need to observe plants regularly and learn how to respond to their needs. This includes key maintenance techniques such as pruning, trimming, and deadheading.

This course is designed for anyone with an interest in gardening who wants to learn the best way to grow and care for all kinds of plants. It will be useful to every kind of gardener, whether you’ve gardened before or not.

Syllabus

  • Keeping your plants alive
    • Watering plants
    • Feeding plants
    • Protecting plants
    • Pinching, training and thinning
    • Pruning, trimming and deadheading
  • Growing new plants
    • Why raise new plants
    • Growing plants from seed
    • Growing plants from cuttings
    • Dividing plants
    • Layering plants
  • How to avoid common gardening problems
    • Has something gone wrong?
    • The gardener and plant problems
    • Pests, diseases and root causes
    • What you've learned

Taught by

David Hurrion

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