Brian here –

With the Spring Equinox on the horizon, Grow Your Own will be commencing its first set of 2015 workshops starting March 17th at 5PM!  It may be frozen outside, but thanks to our new partners at the Virginia Highlands Community College Greenhouse, we’ve been able to start our transplants early – we now have 2 varieties of onion and 3 varieties of lettuce growing in flats inside and will be ready to give out in early April.

This will be my last time writing for you as an AmeriCorps VISTA for ASD’s Grow Your Own program; my term ends today and I am headed to Johnson City!  I will be working with Build It Up East Tennessee, who has recently been awarded a GA grant; I’m helping to coordinate their gardening mentorship program – so I’ll still be blogging on here, just from a different place!  It has been a pleasure working with Deni this past year; she has taught me so much in such a short amount of time and given me the gift of growing education plus a passion for the craft.. I cannot imagine where I would be without her today; thank you Deni!  

Now, the growing season is about to commence and GYO is expanding in 2015; we are hoping to reach 40 families this year, will be having a constant GYO table at Abingdon Farmers Market, and our goal is to harvest 20K pounds this year!  Please “Like” us on Facebook here to follow us on our journey as we teach more Appalachian families how to grow their own food!  For details on our first workshop, click here.