Here is a look at Wolfe County Grow Appalachia in June. There’s a lot growing and I have been busy visiting gardens and setting up trellising in between rainstorms (I guess I don’t have many pictures of that right now because my hands have been full of t-posts and Hortonova: I will post some next month when I return and see our good work in action)!

Here is a family with a second year raised bed garden. They had put a lot of work into these beds last year, before joining Grow Appalachia. They have been attending every meeting and learning a lot about organic growing. And they just had a baby at the end of May!

 

These kiddoes are great helpers in the garden especially Little Miss Bre Rose who wanted to show me her own special garden she planted of peas over in the shady side of the garden. For her birthday recently all she wanted was a chicken. Luckily this family is part of our Wolfe GA Chicken Program this year! This family is growing many crops for the first time this year including: beets, radish, carrots, and GIANT cabbage! They are especially excited about all the preserving they are going to do (and our upcoming Canning and Preserving Class on July 11).

         

Just a couple of shots of the Methodist Community Garden: one box is some fairly new gardeners and the other is a seasoned gardener. They are learning from each other and enjoying the opportunity to garden at their apartment housing. Yum yum-so many peas!

And this Wolfe County family already had many gardening techniques already in place. They have been using chicken tractors for years. I get many of the plants for our participants from this family. And this year they finally got the bees they’ve been hoping for for many years with the help of Wolfe GA’s Bee Program this year. I even borrowed a bee jacket from the Ag. Agent so I could comfortably check out the bees with Ray. What a great experience! They are looking forward to all the pollination they will encourage on their farm and in the future- honey!

       

We had a meeting early in June on Insect and Disease Management. Of course, the first thing is monitor your plants regularly to keep track of trouble areas (or to have done things like variety selection, mulching and trellising to avoid trouble areas in the first place). Use lightweight agribon row cover on crops that don’t need pollinators to fruit (like cabbage) and pick off bugs when you see them munching on your leaves or fruit. If a pest problem persists or gets out of hand, you can try spray. Our GA families got goodies like the sprayer and spinosad. They also got copper to help folks stay ahead of tomato blight. There’s even an extra seed donation that came in plus buckwheat (which we’d talked about in our previous meeting on cover crops) that can be used in unplanted areas of the garden and for pollinators. Oh, and guess what we had as a snack at the meeting? Homemade blueberry muffins from blueberries I picked from my neighbor and peas from the demonstration garden I built and planted (and we trellised at our May meeting) at Extension!

Well, it’s that time again– back to the garden!