Our workshop series on advanced gardening techniques and food preservation methods is about to kick off this coming week. On Thursday June 4th from 4:30-6:30pm we will be hosting a workshop on how to freeze and dehydrate your garden goodies at:

The Appalachian Center for Economic Networks, Inc. (ACEnet)
94 Columbus Rd.
Athens, OH 45701

See the Facebook event page for more details here.

 

In other news, things are really taking off at all of our community gardens in Athens County! After a series of workdays for cleaning up the gardens and getting new and returning gardeners signed up and started gardening, it looks like there’s going to be a lot of delicious, fresh, healthy food growing. Here are a few shots of how things are looking:

Chauncey Community Gardens:

They're planting and growing some fresh healthy greens and getting the warm-season vegetables started.

They’re planting and growing some fresh healthy greens and getting the warm-season vegetables started.

 

The garden will soon be 40% larger!

The garden will soon be 40% larger!

We just built two new raised beds and hope to have them filled with soil and compost soon.

We just built two new raised beds and hope to have them filled with soil and compost soon.

 

Nelsonville Community Gardens:

We have several new gardeners signed up. We’re getting them settled into their plots and started planting!

Glouster Community Gardens:

Lots of weeding and raised preparations. We recently received a very generous donation of leaf compost from Greenleaf Landscapes of Athens, OH, and are looking forward to incorporating that into the beds to build up some nice fluffy and fertile soil. I’m currently in the process of asking around at sawmills in the surrounding area to find a donation of some suitable boards for re-building the dilapidated siding of the raised beds. Pictures and updates to come!

Eastside Community Gardens:

Some basic maintenance on the pathways between the beds, mulching and adding in compost. It’s looking as though about 1/4 of the beds in this extra-spacious garden will be vacant this year, so we’ve ordered a few hundred sweet potato slips to fill in the extra space. They should make for a nice low-maintenance cover crop of sorts that we can harvest in early autumn and have as a nice big boost to our Donation Station endeavors!

Southside Community Gardens:

They’re filling up the garden plots with tasty vegetable of all kinds! We’ve already encountered some pesky critter damage to some plots of lettuce. The war on groundhogs has begun!

There was a weedy and thorny honey locust tree in the middle of the garden, so I hacked it down to open up some more sunny space for gardening.

There was a weedy and thorny honey locust tree in the middle of the garden, so I hacked it down to open up some more sunny space for gardening.

 

Let’s get gardening! Grow, food, grow!