Kathy Smith
Big Ugly

The Lincoln County Grow Appalachia program held a great workshop on March 11, 2017. The topics for the workshops were PLANNING & PLANTING. We had a full house of about fifty people to attend. Returning participants and new ones, completed necessary paperwork and drew out their garden plans for the year, showing what their gardens would look like, the size and what they would be growing. Jenny Totten came to Big Ugly and presented to the group and talked about garden planting. We had each gardener to complete a survey choosing what vegetables they would like and Jenny went through each of them and talked about each of them, explaining what vegetables grow best together and which ones are better planted by themselves. Some of the vegetables that Jenny went over were, lettuce, cabbage, tomatoes, tomatoes, peppers, carrots, okra, kale, turnips and radishes. The gardener’s also talked about which vegetable grow best in our area. They enjoyed sitting around and talking about why they enjoy gardening and the best things they like to grow and process. I’ve never seen and heard so much excitement from a group of people. They are very excited about growing gardens. It’s something you don’t hear very often.

Attendees at Big Ugly workshop.

Attendees at Big Ugly workshop.

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Tony Smoot, who will be taking care of the Boone County program, attended the workshop and brought ten of his participants. They are very excited to have the program and eager to get started.

Gardeners were excited to be able to send in soil samples for testing. A report is sent to them and it outlines what, if any, the nutrients that need to be added to their soil before they start their gardening.

I would like to thank Brittany Dalton, Kathy Cook (KC), Jenny Totten for taking time out of their day to see that the workshop was a success. A special thank you to Bert Blevins for doing all the brute work and seeing that everyone had fertilizer loaded into their vehicles. We couldn’t have done it without each of you.

Filling out gardening information at Big Ugly workshop

Filling out gardening information at Big Ugly workshop

At the end of the day, gardeners walked away with an abundance of information, vegetable seeds and fertilizer. Seed potatoes are onsite. Folks were contacted and have been coming to pick those up, as well.