Preparation for the growing season is well under way here in the Ohio Valley. Our backyard gardeners are laying out their growing spaces, starting their seeds, and eagerly awaiting the day that they can plant outdoors without fear of frost.

An attentive reader may notice that this post comes to you in a different voice than our updates have been for the past two years. That’s because our dear Caroline has finally wrapped up her time here at GrowOV and moved on down the road to a new farm in the Shenandoah Valley (though she has promised to visit for special occasions and trips to the creek).

Luckily for us though, we were able to hang on to Caroline for our first two workshops of the season – garden planning and planting.

Our introductory garden planning workshop went off with record attendance, not including myself. I was knocked out by a mystery respiratory bug, but Caroline and Corbin were able to keep things running without missing a beat. They were a little shorthanded though, which is why there is unfortunately no photographic evidence of this gathering.

For our second workshop, I was back in action and got to meet this year’s gardeners for the first time. The weather cooperated enough that we were able to have this workshop outdoors at Farm18, one of our urban farm sites in downtown Wheeling (this is also the location that our community gardeners use). I’m so excited to work with this group, and so far it seems like they share the sentiment (everyone showed up!).

Those in attendance were able to participate in demos and take home supplies related to seed starting, soil prep, and their planting tool kits. It was a little chilly by the end of the evening, but everyone stuck it out and we were grateful to be outside in the fresh air.

Over the next month we’ll start to get gardens turned over and fences put up, and we’ll be adding a few new faces to our team here too.

Time to do some work!

~ Hannah