Marcelle St. Germain
Step by Step, Big Ugly, West Virginia

Now that we have finished our first four Grow Appalachia workshops, and the plants and seeds are in the ground, it’s time to visit some gardens. The first picture of Maisel and his greenhouse and garden is from the Mud River area in Lincoln County. His greenhouse was a wonderful find for us as he raises sweet potato slips. We had been somewhat short on our original order from Sow True Seed for our slips. What a lucky find to be able to get some locally raised slips. The number of gardeners requesting sweet potato slips has increased quite a bit after they have tried sweet potato hummus and sweet potato fries at our healthy heart cooking workshops lead by our culinary chef, Rowan Zoeller.

             

The second and third pictures are from the Henson Garden in Harts. Beautifully laid out but not yet all planted as the lower end can catch some high waters from the creek when it’s super wet in the spring. They are waiting another week or so before planting that lower end. Meanwhile an old black shirt with a little stuffing serves as a dead crow decoy to keep the crows out of the corn. Very inexpensive to make and very clever.

        

There are two pictures of the Green’s garden in Boone County where all 4 members of the household help in the garden. Joey does succession planting in his garden so his family has fresh food coming in all summer long. Looks like the corn and cabbage are well on their way (in fact a cabbage or two has already been harvested.) Joey got an early jump on his garden as he is recently retired. The early warmth this spring allowed him to get the plants and seeds moving along. Won’t be long before they will have tomatoes, beans and corn. The best of summer eating!

Lastly there’s a picture of Joe McClure’s bean patch just off his front porch. Even that close to the house, the beans have to be protected from deer that roam around and like to munch on them. Joe’s set up keeps the beans up and off the ground, protected from the deer and then easy to pick for fixing them up for dinner.

Great so see all the hard work of our gardeners now producing food for meals every day!