Martin County Cooperative Extension Service 2024 Grow Appalachia Blog

 

Hello, everyone from Martin County! First, I must apologize for the lack of pictures in this blog post: we were organizing ourselves to meet the needs of our 2024 participants. We had two organizational meetings beginning in late January and another in mid-February following the All-Hands Meeting. I left there motivated and with a clearer understanding of organic garden production. As a result of these meetings, we were able to identify those families that are in definite need of coaching and training as it pertains to gardening. We also included some, while not seasoned gardeners, who were at least at the stage where they could provide some fantastic peer support to our beginner folks. In our first education class, it was great to see them making contacts and discussing what they learned with the others.

Our first class was, of course, on garden planning and plant bed preparation. The students were taught how to take soil samples and how they are valuable for accurately fertilizing our crops. We then discussed picking up seeds and plants and contacting folks with our folks who plowed for us.

We wanted to thank our friends in our district for providing us with a location where we can acquire seed potatoes for FREE! We love that! Thank you, Heather Cook!

David Pelphrey