In the hustle and bustle of organizing workshops, procuring equipment, and recruiting participants, sometimes the simplest of things can be overlooked!  For example, we realized halfway through the season that we had not discussed how to determine if your vegetables are ready to harvest as well as the many ways to harvest different vegetables. So, we decided to squeeze in a bonus workshop this July where participants/families brought in produce to share and learned the technique to harvesting the variety of vegetables that they were seeing pop up in their gardens.

We were SHOCKED with how much produce was brought to share. At the end of the day, we ended up counting all of July’s harvest as shared because, beyond our workshops, families have been sharing their bounty with their communities and neighborhoods as they pick and weigh.  We were delighted to find that we have harvested just under 850 lbs. of produce during our report 3 period, and shared nearly as much.

In July, we also hosted Grow Appalachia for a site visit to several of our backyard and community gardens. It was thrilling to showcase the pride of our gardeners as they viewed their months long efforts.

We’re all looking forward to the last half of the season (can’t believe it’s mid August!).  We will be hosting the following workshops to wrap up the year:

  • Canning (August)
  • Fall gardening & Season extension (September)
  • Harvest Celebration (October)

Just a few more months until we start all over again (fingers crossed)!