Bountiful Branches sale and class makes growing food accessible

BROWN COUNTY – Growing your own food can be a money saver, a fun hobby and a great way to make nutritious food more accessible, but many struggle with knowing where to start.

On April 16, at the Brown County Central Library Auditorium, there will be a free-to-attend ‘Bountiful Branches’ mini class that will teach how to properly grow edible perennials.

This class will be hosted by local nonprofit New Leaf Foods with expertise taught by NWTCs Lab Assistant and Garden Manager Dillon Wiest.

The class is a lecture that was started to support the Bountiful Branches plant sale where a variety of fruit and nut trees are sold by New Leaf Foods. In doing this sale, there needed to be a class to help teach people how to plant, take care of and know what to use the plants for.

Perennials are plants that come back every year, as opposed to annual plants that have to be replanted every single year.

Although perennial plants can take longer to grow, taking about two years, they can be more beneficial in the long run.

“It’s a trickle by year three and a flood of produce by year five, if the birds and chipmunks don’t get to them first you will have more nuts and berries than you’ll know what to do with,” said Wiest.

“Planting annuals feeds you later this year, planting perennial trees feeds you in five years that will feed you for the rest of your life, your children and your grandchildren. I hope we can learn to do that more, to build not just for our own lives but for everyone else in the future” said Wiest.

During the Bountiful Branches mini class, Wiest will also explain how to protect your plants from animals, how to properly plant them and all the do’s and dont’s.

“One of the biggest mistakes is planting your bare root trees too deep or too shallow because both can kill them,” Weist said.

Wiest will also elaborate on the types of perennials and the different factors that go into planting them like watering, sunlight and soil texture, along with answering any questions people may have.

With the NWTC Sustainable Agriculture Program shutting down, Wiest plans on running more classes for free to the public to help people learn how to grow their own food.

“Food access is incredibly difficult. If you’re living paycheck to paycheck or don’t have a car, healthy food is not accessible or it can be expensive or out of reach. By throwing perennial plants in as many peoples back yards and front yards as we possibly can, we’re just trying to keep people healthy and not hungry,” said Wiest. “You can do so much in your backyard, you don’t need acres, you need just 200 square feet.”

The class is free to attend and will be from 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m., accessible to join both in person and online. For more information on registering for the class, buying or learning more about perennial plants, go to newleaffoods.org.