For the last meeting of the Grow Appalachia series in Magoffin County we talked about season extension and participants took home one last crop to plant in their gardens, organic garlic. Fall is the perfect time to plant garlic and it should be ready to harvest next summer. The crop should allow them to save back a few bulbs to re plant and keep their garlic crop going year after year.

We also talked about the hardships the growing season threw our way, mostly June bugs and other pests seemed to give our gardeners the most trouble this year. Our gardeners were very thankful to finish out this season strong, especially in comparison to last year when the garden season was ended early due to flooding.  Triumphs were also discussed and all of our gardeners reported having a bountiful harvest and even reported canning over 2,000 pints of food; that should get them all through the winter!

A gardener even shared her potato harvest with us, as she stated “thanks to this program, I have grown the biggest and most potatoes I remember ever harvesting.” We are thankful for the blessings the 2023 garden season brought us and with our gardens prepped and ready for the winter, the only left to do this year is wait patiently for the spring to come and start all over again.