Hello everyone. My name is Alex Sanders. I am the Assistant Director of the Grow Appalachia Garden Project at Project Worth Outreach, located in Menifee County, Kentucky in northeastern Kentucky. I hope everyone is well.

Things are well underway for our second year in Grow Appalachia. We are still recruiting gardeners as we approach our target goal of 35 families. We hope to reach that goal by March 19, 2013. We have already had three participant’s meetings in Menifee County. The latest meeting was held on March 11, 2013. It was well attended , with about 40 people in attendance. Gail Mills lead a class on gardening planting and our special guest was Courtney Jenkins, an agent from the Menifee County Extension Office. She also spoke on garden planting and passed out charts that suggested when to plant certain vegetables.. We started handing out seeds to our participants that have received the results of their soil samples.

This year we have expanded to a neighboring county, Rowan County. A lot of interest has been shown and we  already have 28 families agreeing to participate the Grow Appalachia Garden Project. Things are moving a little slower in Rowan County. We have had only one meeting, an informational one, and our next meeting will be on Tuesday, March 19, 2013. We have partnered with Helping Hands Food Pantry and Sustainable Morehead Community Garden. Many thanks to Angela Rowe of Helping Hands Food Pantry for all the hard work she has done to recruit gardeners. I would like to say a word of thanks to Carolyn Franzinni and Molly Carew of Sustainable Morehead Community Garden for all their hard work in finding us and making all the arrangements a location to hold our meetings. On March 19, 2013 we will hopefully end our recruitment in Rowan County as Sustainable Morehead will hold a sign-up gathering during our meting as well as a pot luck dinner. I’m sure looking forward to that.

I hope everyone is off to a good start to the 2013 gardening year. I know Project Worth Outreach is expecting a very successful year. Good luck to all.