Events & Classes

There is a whole world of edible plants that are perennial that can be grown in St. Louis while producing year after year. This class will cover the best perennial vegetables for spring harvest. This is when perennial vegetables shine with all sorts of edible greens, shoots, flowers, and stems ready to harvest before annual vegetables are ready. These are great crops for schools as they are ready for harvest before the end of school.

This class will be co-taught by Jessica Blessing-Patterson of DIG Annuals and Perennials and Dean Gunderson of SEED St. Louis. It will be held at DIG Annuals and Perennials where you'll be able to see many of the plants we will discuss.

A limited number of plants that will be discussed during the class will be available for purchase by class participants at the end of the class.

This class is free, but you must register. Spots are limited!

Gardening with youth, particularly in a school garden, comes with its own set of rewards and challenges. While summer is a prime time for garden growth, upkeep can be challenging when schools are closed. This class will explore a variety of strategies to leverage your community throughout the school year and keep your garden beautiful during the growing seasons.

Discover how to beat the heat of summer gardening, and learn techniques that will keep your tomatoes and other summer crops flourishing. Adults. Registration required. Participants will receive Zoom information via email immediately after registering. A recording of this virtual program will be posted to the St. Louis County Library YouTube channel within three business days.

This is part of a composting class series in partnership with Table to Garden, Willoughby Farm, and Seed St. Louis. Attend all four of the core classes and receive a voucher for a free registration Specific Topic class. More details are listed at the Register link below.

Bin Systems: This class covers outdoor systems that sit on the ground and are enclosed. 3 bin systems, Subpods, Earth Machines, and simple ways to make others.

Cost: $12 per person
Location: Willoughby Heritage Farm, 631 Willoughby Ln, Collinsville, IL 62234

All of our summer seedlings are sold as individual plants and many of them are winners from our variety trials! Annual vegetables will be $3.50 each and perennials $6.00. We will have a planting guide available at the sale for you to take home. There will be summer seed packets and Seed St. Louis merch available for sale. We will also again have flowers from Dig Annuals and Perennials as well as sweet potato slips! The seedlings include tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, and more of your summer favorites. Learn more about the specific varieties at the link below.

We will accept cash, credit, Apple Pay and Google Pay for payment. Please note that the sale will be just two hours from 9:00 - 11:00 am! It will be located outside at our Carriage House building at 3815 Bell Avenue, St. Louis, MO 63108. Free street parking is available all along Bell. Please bring your own tray or box if you are able!

Our gardens and orchards are ecosystems and we can boost the services they provide, their health, and their sustainability all at the same time. Learn how to make some small changes to your design, including adding the right plants, to greatly increase the habitat for pollinators, beneficial insects, and birds to help your garden and orchard thrive.

This is part of a composting class series in partnership with Table to Garden, Willoughby Farm, and Seed St. Louis. Attend all four of the core classes and receive a voucher for a free registration Specific Topic class. More details are listed at the Register link below.

Vermicomposting: Worm bins make indoor(and outdoor) composting easy because worms and their friends do much of the work. In this class, you will learn how worms can eat your garbage and turn food scraps into a powerful soil amendment for your gardening needs.

Cost: $12 per person
Location: Willoughby Heritage Farm, 631 Willoughby Ln, Collinsville, IL 62234

This is part of a composting class series in partnership with Table to Garden, Willoughby Farm, and Seed St. Louis. Attend all four of the core classes and receive a voucher for a free registration Specific Topic class. More details are listed at the Register link below.

Compost Tumbler: Give it a spin! Tumbling composters are fully enclosed outdoors composting systems that are great if you are composting primarily food scraps or a small amount of material in general. Spin your food scraps and leaves into "black gold" with little physical effort.

Cost: $12 per person
Location: Willoughby Heritage Farm, 631 Willoughby Ln, Collinsville, IL 62234

We are the nonprofit partner for Alpine Shop's April Al-Pint Night! Alpine Shop is an family-owned specialty outdoor retailer serves almost every type of outdoor enthusiast from backpackers, climbers hikers, campers, paddlers, and cyclists, to snowboarders, skiers and adventure racers. We are their nonprofit partner for their April Al-Pint Night at their Kirkwood location at 440 N. Kirkwood Road, Kirkwood, MO 63122 which will run 6:00-8:00 p.m. The entrance fee is $10 for which you will receive a commemorative cup and 2 beers from their craft beer partner. They'll have some good tunes, raffles, and friendship all around!

Faced with a multitude of urgent environmental concerns, how can we inspire action among young people? Research has shown that many of our most committed environmentalists today were not children imagining catastrophic futures, but children living in relationship with the world around them, free to explore and play in beautiful and wild places. Gardens are great places to not only help heal our planet, but also to develop a loving relationship with our common home and an appreciation for its gifts. In this class, we offer tips on organic and sustainable gardening practices as well as ways to foster joy, wonder, gratitude, and hope with youth in the garden.

Learn about the many ways to utilize items that would otherwise end up in a landfill in the garden or orchard! Discover ways to repurpose things in order to grow food and save money and resources while doing it. Participants will receive Zoom information via email immediately after registering at the link below. A recording of this virtual program will be posted to the library's YouTube channel within three business days.

One of the most important parts of gardening is planning and it's critical if you want to have food from the garden for all four seasons. In this class, we will tell you our favorite crops and varieties that mature fast, tolerate heat particularly well, or store well in order to expand the harvest season and increase how long you can get different vegetables from your garden. We will also will teach you how to plan for succession planting so you can have a consistent supply of crops.

This class is in partnership with Giving Grove and Food Well Alliance: Grapes are exciting and tasty fruits to plant and can grow in many USDA Hardiness Zones! However, keeping this vine fruit well-maintained and healthy can be intimidating.

Join us as we learn from Program Managers Fred Conrad (Food Well Alliance in Atlanta) and Dean Gunderson (Seed St. Louis) as they discuss different grapes from Muscadine (V. rotundifolia) to hybrid species. You will learn basic facts and maintenance and get recommendations on what to consider. In this free virtual workshop join orchard stewards from across the country to learn skills together that can be used locally.

This program is part of the Partners for Native Landscaping Webinar Series.
Explore the leading edge of growing food as sustenance for wildlife and humans alike during this panel discussion and learn about gardening food while restoring our ecosystem. Adults. Registration required.
Panel Moderator: Jean Ponzi, Missouri Botanical Garden's EarthWays Center
Panelists: Dean Gunderson (Seed St. Louis), Dr. Nadia Navarrete Tindall (Lincoln University), Matt Lebon (Custom Foodscaping)
Hosted by the St. Louis County Library and the Partners for Native Landscaping. Click the link below to watch the recording.

This is the most important time to prune your fruit and nut trees! Why prune? It helps prevent disease, improve fruit quality and quantity. Come and learn from Dean Gunderson, Chief Programs Officer here at Seed St. Louis, the basics of how to prune them properly so you can keep your orchard growing strong. This class is in partnership with the St. Louis County Library.

Registration required. Participants will receive Zoom information via email immediately after registering. A recording of this virtual program will be posted to the St. Louis County Library YouTube channel within three business days.

There are so many people talking about all of the things they have for gardening that it can be overwhelming to know what is actually worth it and what is unnecessary. This class covers why you might want or not want a raised bed, berms, in ground garden, various tools, different types of watering, and a lot more. Watch the recording at the link below.