Hello dear Grow Appalachia community from Sprouting Hope. As winter edges ever closer we are beginning to experience frosts in our gardens in Marion and Chilhowie. The buzzing of bees has slowed down, the leaves throughout Hungry Mother State Park are vibrant fall hues, and thankfully the frost has killed many of those gnarly summer
This past summer was our first ever attempt at a garden. I have wanted to garden for so many years but lacked the knowledge to even know where to begin. I was then blessed with an opportunity to participate in the Homegrown program through Sprouting Hope, our local community garden. Gardening has changed my life
Hello there. My name is Kai Conley and I am excited to introduce myself as the new Coordinator of Sprouting Hope. Back in 2014 when I decided to leave my home in Baltimore, Maryland to work on farms in the south, it came out of a personal desire to connect with my familial roots, as
Written by: Catherine Schrenker My dad always had a garden, he grew up poor in the small Indiana town of Elwood. Both my parents were Depression Era, so mom canned and preserved what Dad grew in the yard. I stress “yard”, not “garden” because Dad planted his vegetables where he knew they would grow best.
This spring has brought with it a few record setting weather phenomenon down here in southwest Virginia. February and March’s warm weather was followed by April, May’ and June's never ending showers. As gardeners, so much of our success and failure depends on Mother Nature. There are a few steps we can take to protect
Hi! We're the Bansemers and we've lived in Marion for eight years, not long enough to say we're from these parts but long enough to have learned some traditions and skills of the Appalachians! We homestead on our little farm with the goal of producing as much of our food on our land as possible.
As spring approaches and the weather warms, The Ohana Center for Recovery looks forward to the second year of partnership and working with Sprouting Hope Community Garden. Born out of a need for persons in recovery from substance abuse to find purpose and meaning in life, the garden fills that vacancy. Juli Clark, Director of
5 Years and Growing This year, Sprouting Hope celebrates five years of growing and sharing food with our community. In that time, we have grown and distributed over 20,000 pounds of fresh food to our community partners at the Mel Leaman Free Clinic, the local senior center, and to our neighbors through two food banks.
Volunteers preparing the asparagus beds. There’s a lot that goes into preparing our garden for the late fall and winter. We pull out the row cover and the hoops. We trim and mulch the asparagus beds. The raspberry bushes get trimmed as well. With the row cover blanketing the garden it seems like
Greetings from Sprouting Hope! Summer is starting to fade into fall and slowly our community garden is losing some of its staple favorites like squash and zucchini. Before saying goodbye to these tasty treats, we made zucchini pizza with our bi-weekly group from Evergreen here in Marion. Evergreen provides services to adults living independently, but
