As of today, our Grow Appalachia families in Wise County, Virginia have produced over 2300 pounds of vegetables (and a few berries) in 2017!

Given that most growers got a late start, and the momentum continues to build, I expect the final tally for the year to surpass two tons.

On Saturday, we held the last of our mandatory workshops — a presentation on Fall Gardening and Season Extension.  A non-mandatory presentation on pollinators was also offered by Virginia Master Naturalist Chris Allgyer of Big Stone Gap.

Also on Saturday, a handful of our Grow Appalachia participants walked home with blue ribbons for their entries of vegetables, berries and herbs in our annual Extension Fair.

We’ve talked a bit about green manure crops, and last week, we had some visitors to one of our community garden sites, where we have a couple of different summer green manures established:  buckwheat and a sorghum-sudangrass hybrid.

Our planning committee has decided to offer several “garden walks” next year, where we’ll meet as a group at a designated garden and get some hands-on practice in identifying weed and insect species and scouting for disease.  That will be a great time, too, to acquaint them a bit more with these green manure crops.