Monday September 13th, St. Vincent Mission Grow Appalachia hosted an end of the season appreciation dinner for their participants. We are very proud of them for all their hard work on making 2021 a successful growing season. Growers were presented with a gift of their choice of a large canner, small canner, vacuum sealer, 1 gallon or 2- gallon garden sprayer. We hope the selected item will help to improve their gardening and preservation next season. Participants also received flower seeds, low tunnel hoops for those doing season extension, wheat grain seeds for cover crop if needed.
Great food and garden stories were shared among growers and our participants got to sample food from each other’s gardens. The Participants enjoyed talking about the good/positive things that they experienced in their growing season. They also exchanged information about what didn’t work so well. After speaking with the participants, we found out new things that they would like to see and learn about next year. Some of things that was mentioned was creating their own compost system, and doing a class on freeze drying foods. We were able to recruit 3 new participants for next year from the appreciation dinner. We are looking forward to an productive and fun 2022.