Course 02 · Beginner
Choosing a Tree and Creating Its Growing Environment
Match a tree to a place you can really offer it: read your site's light, seasons, and shelter, find out what a tree needs before you buy it, and settle a new tree in well.
- 8 interactive lessons
- 2 quizzes
- About 2.5 hours
- Certificate of completion
Preparation: Course 01, How Trees Work, especially its lessons on leaves and needles, photosynthesis, and growth cycles.
Free to read. Create an account to save your progress and earn the certificate.
What you will be able to do
- Evaluate a growing site: its light, temperatures, shelter, water access, and the time you can give it.
- Identify what you need to know about a tree before you acquire it, and where to find reliable answers.
- Recognize unsuitable growing arrangements and choose a proportionate correction.
- Choose healthy, useful starting material for a stated goal, budget, and timescale.
- Establish a manageable arrival, observation, and care routine for a new tree.
Already caring for a tree?
Start with the lessons that matter this week.
These lessons explain the biology behind the most common first-week problems:
Course outline
Section 1
Matching a tree to a place
Read the place you can offer, find out what a tree needs, decide between indoors and outdoors, and measure the light a tree would really get.
- Lesson 1: Start with the place you can grow16 min
Which trees could thrive in the place you can actually offer?
- Lesson 2: What to find out about a tree15 min
What must you find out about a tree before you can look after it?
- Lesson 3: Indoors or outdoors?16 min
Where should this tree spend the year, and how do you move it there safely?
- Lesson 4: Light: exposure, duration, and measurement16 min
How much light would a tree really get in this spot?
- Quiz 1: Matching a tree to a place12 min
8 scored questions · 80% to pass · untimed, open book
Section 2
Setting up a good start
Work with heat, wind, and humidity, choose healthy starting material, set up containers and a workable space, and bring a new tree home well.
- Lesson 5: Temperature, air movement, and humidity16 min
Why can two spots a few steps apart feel like different climates to a tree?
- Lesson 6: Choosing healthy, useful starting material16 min
Which tree is the best start for what you want to learn, and how can you tell it is healthy?
- Lesson 7: Containers, equipment, and a workable space16 min
What does a new tree's container and setup need to do, and what can wait?
- Lesson 8: Bringing a tree home16 min
What should you do in a new tree's first hour, first week, and first month?
- Quiz 2: Setting up a good start (synthesis)18 min
12 scored questions · 80% to pass · untimed, open book
How completion works
- Read and explore. Take the lessons in order or jump to what you need. When you finish one, mark it complete.
- Pass the quizzes. Each of the 2 quizzes is untimed and open book, passes at 80%, explains every answer, and can be retaken as often as you like. Your best result is saved.
- Earn your certificate. When every lesson is complete and every quiz is passed, your Certificate of Course Completion is issued automatically and appears on your dashboard.
The certificate records your coursework. It does not certify hands-on technique or the readiness of any particular tree.
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