Beginner Farmer Training program:
Empowering Emerging Urban Farmers
ECO City Farm’s free, 10-month Beginning Farmer Training Program is designed to help beginning farmers learn the information and practice the skills they need to farm. Our program includes comprehensive, practical, hands-on experiences; one-on-one mentoring; and a well-tested, graphics-rich, culturally-appropriate curriculum. Our curriculum covers all of the crop production, resource management, and administrative skills needed for graduates to roll up their sleeves and start farming.
The program will begin on January 7, 2026 and end on October 24, 2026.
We especially encourage the applications of advanced beginners with 3-5 years of progressively more challenging experience growing food who want to become commercial urban farmers. We are looking for candidates with the sufficient free time and capacity to spend at least one week-day, Wednesday evenings, and every Saturday morning learning to farm.
WHO IS ECO CITY FARMS?
ECO City Farms is a nonprofit urban teaching and learning farm in Prince George’s County that grows great food, farms and farmers in ways that protect, restore and sustain the natural environment and the health of local communities. We’ve been farming in PG County for over fifteen years.
SHOULD I APPLY TO THIS PROGRAM?
Consider applying if you:
- Have 3-5 years of growing experience – our 2026 program is aimed at advanced beginners.
- Are interested in learning to grow primarily vegetables and culinary herbs in an urban or semi-urban environment, with additional learning opportunities focused on bees, composting, and perennial fruits.
- Are able to commute/carpool to our Edmonston and Bladensburg farm sites (4913 Crittenden St and 6100 Emerson St, respectively), Urban Farm Incubator (601 Watkins Park Dr), and a variety of farm sites in/around PG county.
- Are excited to work closely and build relationships with members of your cohort, past cohorts, ECO incubator farmers, and ECO staff.
- Want the opportunity to collaborate with a small team of other trainees on growing food in a group plot in our beginning farmer high tunnel.
- Can make a 10 month commitment to attending at least 80% of program activities.
WHAT TOPICS WILL THE PROGRAM COVER?
Our program covers the following topics in depth over the course of the season, via a combination of classes and hands-on workdays. Each of these lessons include acknowledgement and discussion of historical and contemporary social, economic and cultural circumstances that inform our practices, and the challenges that the intersecting realities of racism, capitalism, and gender inequities continue to present to beginning farmers.
- Nursery management: Managing potting mix composition, temperature, light, and water in a closed environment to propagate seedlings for transplant. This includes soil blocking and using trays to seed.
- Compost making: Compost pile creation and management in an urban environment, including bin systems, ASP systems, vermicomposting, and windrows.
- Farm systems management: Macro areas of systems design and implementation, including record-keeping, crop planning, irrigation system design, certification requirements, harvest and post-harvest procedures, crop rotation, and food safety.
- Marketing and finances: Farm business planning, marketing and communications, and financial recordkeeping.
- Infrastructure and tools: How to use and maintain hand and power tools, hoop houses, low-tunnels, farm machinery, irrigation equipment, cold storage, silage tarps, row covers, and insect netting.
- Soil health: Fostering resilient soils, including the use of cover crops, taking and interpreting soil tests, using organic amendments, implementing no-and minimal tillage practices, using crop rotation, using crop diversification, mulching, and more.
- Crop health and maintenance: Caring for plants from seeding to termination, including basic botany, pest and disease management, transplanting and direct seedling, weed management, and cultural practices (ex. trellising, season extension, harvest practices, and more).
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
The 2026 program application period has been extended until November 14, 2025 at 11:59 pm. Applicants selected for an interview will be notified in November for decisions made by mid-December.
Our cohorts are made up of people of all ages. There’s no formal age restrictions for this program, but we ask that applicants consider their capacity to commit to this program alongside other commitments (e.g. school).
No, there are no formal degree or certificate requirements for this program. We are looking for participants with 3-5 years of growing experience. Workshops or trainings in agriculture will benefit your application.
This program is almost entirely in-person. Capacity to attend in-person is necessary to be accepted into the program. We believe that the best way to learn about urban agriculture is through hands-on experience. The in-person environment is also central to developing community amongst the cohort.
No. For the previous 9 years of ECO’s Beginning Farmer Training Program, we have partnered with PGCC to offer a credited version of this course, AGR 322 Food Sovereignty: Growing Urban Farmers and Farms. Unfortunately, ECO is no longer receiving the federal funding that has made this possible. This year, we will not be offering the course through PGCC.
For more information, send an email with “BFTP 2026” in the subject line to program staff at econewfarmer@gmail.com.
