With the first of our site visits underway, we are featuring one of our families gardening in Brooke County, Nick & Debbie Yoklic! The Yoklics have been very receptive to the Grow Appalachia program and all we have to offer. They have kept us in the loop from the beginning from their garden construction to questions regarding misshapen produce and we are so thankful for their continued enthusiasm and participation in the program. Their progress leading up to our site visits is documented in the photos below that they shared with us along the way.

Upon our arrival to their green oasis we were taken aback by the beauty of their space and their gated jungle of summer abundance. As with most people in the Northern Panhandle, they had a late start with getting things into the ground, as our last frost date was well past Mother’s Day. But the Yoklics persisted and now have a lush green garden amidst their sprawling landscaped property. They have been harvesting a little bit of everything so far including cucumbers, radishes, beets and lettuce. 

During our site visits we provide questions our gardeners have in regards to their spaces and provide any tools/materials they requested prior to the visit. The Yoklics are still waiting for their tomatoes to fully ripen and have a bit of a tomato jungle on their hands. Our diagnosis was the tomatoes were delayed due to excess branches off the root redirecting energy to those offshoots instead of the main plant and shading from excess branches. We recommended pruning to the Yoklics and have provided pictures below of the process of pruning tomatoes from our demo garden with each step shown.

We are continuing with our site visits for our participants in the coming weeks, in addition to a visit from Berea’s Grow Appalachia team! We are so excited for them to visit the Northern Panhandle and see what we have going on up here. So keep on logging your harvest, and before you know it, our canning class will be around the corner!