Things are swinging into high gear at St. Vincent’s Mission in the month of June!
We’ve got the irrigation system up & running on our Community Garden and things are growing by leaps &  bounds!  (Not that we haven’t had plenty of rain for the last 3 months.)  This irrigation system was generously donated by a group of volunteers & it’s a really nice set up alongside our rainwater catchment tank.  We were able to install it during a couple of our hottest days & we noticed our beans had actually grown a couple of inches right before our eyes!

Our 15′ x 48′ high tunnel is slowly going up & the ground will be prepped for planting soon.  We’ll have a “rock picking” party first, then we’ll add our amendments (horse & worm poo), cover that with black plastic to bake out the weed seeds, & then get to planting!  The mission is looking forward to extending our growing season to offer more green items to our food pantry participants, sell items later in the season at the local farmer’s market, & teach gardening to more & more of our community members!  Food preservation classes are in the works too!  Canning & Freezing & Dehydrating, OH MY!


Worm Vermicose, worm castings, worm poo! Whatever you prefer to call them…… We’ve added RAW Sustainable Living’s (FB) Worm Castings to our gardens & seen a remarkable improvement in our plants!  Our beans are leaping, our tomatoes are shooting out branches/flowers galore, & our pepper plants have tiny peppers appearing on them!  This is the season of growth!!  Weed growth as well though.  Having to stay on top of our weeds has been a chore, but we have some amazing volunteers that are jumping in on that task as well.  Everyone is enjoying the sunshine & learning that goes along with it.
Grow Appalachia participants are even trying out the local farmer’s market sales.  We’ve sold peas from the Community Garden at the Floyd County Farmer’s Market along with handing out packets of seeds to anyone willing to take them.  Other participants have had Chicken & Duck eggs along with their peas to sell.  We’re looking into canning up some Strawberry Jam from the garden grown strawberries here at the mission using my Home based Microprocessor Certificate and selling them at the market.  Salsa season is right around the corner too!  So many great garden veggies to pull together & can!  We’re looking forward to trying our hand at some new things this year & this grant has made it all possible!