Those 40 degree nights and days in the 60s and 70s sure was nice earlier this month. Now it is back up in the 80s and those fall veggies are getting their grow on. What’s growing in your garden? Our growers are growing varieties of cabbage, broccoli, kale, mustard, collards, swiss chard, radish, turnip, beets, carrots, lettuce, spinach, cover crops, and for those that became totally overwhelmed, weeds. Our average frost date is October 10- only 20 days away! Get ready to bust out all your agribon.

 

Alright, let’s check out what’s been going on around Wolfe Co. gardens!

 

Jenn in her first ever summer garden. She had deer eat her tomatoes and sweet potato tops, but she got plenty of cucumbers, squash and corn. She has a nice fall garden started too! Go Jenn!

The Perry’s are our Wolfe GA market gardeners. They slipped away when I pulled out the camera, but here is their table of organic garden goodies.

Cassie is enjoying her first veggie garden. She’s been getting so much food and putting it up by dehydrating, freezing, and canning. She is moving closer to her homesteading goals. Now, if we can just control those weeds…

Is it just me or is okra the most beautiful fruit to watch develop?

So proud of this fellow: he rocked his first year Grow Appalachia garden. He is passionate about researching and implementing organic tricks and methods. He practiced sucession planting, companion planting, trellising, 3 season gardening, and more. He used hay mulch which made a huge difference in the amount of weeds. He says he is just lazy so he did that, I say he is smart to put a little more effort up front to keep from having to weed. Instead he can spend his time trellising, harvesting, planting, putting up and eating fresh!

 

Who has ever seen or heard of corn smut? Corn smut is a plant disease caused by the pathogenic fungus Ustilago maydis that causes smut on maize and teosinte. The fungus forms galls on all above-ground parts of corn species, and is known in Mexico as the delicacy huitlacoche;[1] which is eaten, usually as a filling, in quesadillas and other tortilla-based foods, and soups. The picture of corn smut featured here is from one of our gardens… we were a little creeped by it, but really we should have been harvesting it and preparing some tasty Mexican food.

We made a 10-minute Bean Soup fresh veggies during our healthy cooking class with Wolfe Co. Extension’s SpanEd Program Assistant, Stacy Trent. It was quite delicious! And everyone got their last minute fall transplants, veggie seeds, and winter rye/hairy vetch/tillage radish cover crop seeds.

 

Now it is time to focus on that grant proposal for 2018! Stay tuned for future Wolfe Grow Appalachia happenings: Fingers crossed!