Developing new gardening skills and knowledge through Grow Your Own has been such a highlight of my year.
I originally started my grow your own journey by myself, but my partner, K quickly became interested and joined me at meetings and began helping me in the garden more often! We have two sweet Corgis who were happy to spend more time running in the yard!
Both of our dogs love attention and meeting new people. Here’s a photo of Mymble hanging out with the Red Hot Chili Peppers:
Growing our own produce has encouraged us to eat more home cooked meals and saved us a TON of money on lettuce this year!
We were able to grow new things and in a way that didn’t endanger our pets, or local wildlife.
The program provided us with a lot of seeds—so we decided to branch out and grow some mew things in our small backyard garden.
The two of us were shocked to see how some things grew.
Did y’all know broccoli got this big????
Getting the chance to meet with others who are exploring unique ways to grow their gardening space really got my thinking outside the box. (Only a little bit though because my yard is made of pretty solid clay.)
I was able to repurpose a neighbor’s discarded bench pieces into a new raised bed for our garden.
I should add that I’ve also grown plenty of sacrifices to our local bugs. At least the collard greens protected the strawberries! We managed to grow way more berries this year thanks to diatomaceous earth. K and I also ventured out into canning our own food! We made some delicious gooseberries into jam and gave them to friends and neighbors.
Written by the Brilliant Brittany, GYO member 2024
Brittany and their partner K are amazing participants in Grow Your Own! They bring their own unique flair to workshops and are always on time getting reports in. Having folks like them in the Grow Your Own program inspires me, and inspires others, for the community of growers we are cultivating here in Southwest Virginia and Northeast Tennessee.
Morgan Bradley, Director of Agriculture Education
Appalachian Sustainable Development
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