Our gardening season is coming right along, with lots of gardeners, including more than a few new gardeners and quite a few younger gardeners- some who are beginners and are anxious to put something in the ground. To help these less experienced gardeners, we have started a mentoring program, assigning experienced and knowledgeable gardeners to help less experienced gardeners. The new gardeners just reach out to their mentors with their questions when they need help. They can also put up a post with pictures on our Facebook page asking other gardeners for advice.

The Planning and Planting Workshops that we’ve already had, have helped the new gardeners get a good start on their gardening experience. They listened and took notes while we were explaining to them about a plan, and then they made a drawing of their garden. We also went over what could be planted now and what could not. We explained how to leave room for your vegetables to have room to spread and let the vines run. This helped them to decide what they wanted to plant, and how much. This was also a good time for them to ask questions before getting started. I hope we can help and encourage them to stay with gardening; it isn’t all that difficult and the food tastes so much better and is much healthier for them.

Supplies have been late getting to us, mostly due to weather. We’ve had a lot of rain with a lot of flooding that in some cases blocked roads for more than a couple of days, but we still have plenty of time to get seeds in the ground. The weather so far isn’t really suitable for planting any way- the ground is soaked and hasn’t really had a good chance to dry out enough the last couple of weeks- this can cause the seeds to rot if the soil remains too wet for too long. We have handed out lots of potatoes with sweet potatoes coming in early May, and seeds going out this next week with our next workshop. The tomatoes and peppers (2000+) that Buck has started will also be handed out in May.

Here’s hoping for a really good gardening year for our gardeners this year!