Despite the challenges and downright difficulties we have faced we are doing great! Our gardeners are all set, at the moment. We will be starting garden visits soon. I enjoy these visits because the gardeners are so excited to tell us about the good (and the not so good,) stories of their journey. We have a few this year that are new to growing a garden. I am especially wanting to hear their tales of triumph and woe.

Now we have time to plant the community garden. I know it seems late but we were even later planting it last year. Last year’s garden did very well so we are not concerned about the date.  We purchased a planter late last year that is making some of our work easier. It is a Jab Planter. We really like it for many reasons: side dresses the fertilizer as you plant, cuts down on the bending over, top loads seed & fertilizer, set depth of seed, number of seed, and saves time.  One thing is that the ground has to be fairly loose. The draw back for us so far is that our ground is rocky, so on occasion a stone will get lodged and need removed. We have used it to plant beans, corn, and sunflower seeds so far. They are all up and looking good.  Our next plantings will not be as easy. Getting our tomato and pepper plants in will use up all our bending over we saved with the Jab planter.

In conclusion I want to share this snip-it from CentralTexasGardener.org; “Every gardener I’ve met has these qualities: curiosity, tenacity, creativity, and passion. Plants connect us to hope, anticipation, learning and nurturing.” We need people with these qualities now more than ever.

Check out our Grow Appalachia coordinator, Tim, who loves to be on video, demonstrate the Jab planter.