Grow Appalachia: Home Visits ---Chad Brock------ Red Bird Mission

Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Home Visits ---Chad Brock------ Red Bird Mission

Here at Red Bird Mission we have been spending time visiting some of our participants gardens; helping with any problems, helping to plant some fall plants, and collecting harvest information.
I am finding that even though the dry conditions had slowed alot of the produce, overall yields are looking pretty good. I think the biggest problem we have had is blight and blossom end rot on their tomatoes. Mostly, everyone is harvesting from their tomatoes, but are forced to pick them a little early and let them ripen inside.
Even here at Red Bird I have had alot of issues with this, and like alot of our participants I sprayed faithfully, left at least two feet between plants and pruned the plants to increase air circulation. But still had problems. The last month or so here have been very wet; rain every couple of days, high humidity and heavy dew nightly. This is an ideal environment for these fungus diseases to explode.

We are seeing an increase in both vendors and customers at our weekend farmers market here at Red Bird Mission and are providing a much bigger group with the access to fresh local grown organic vegetables and providing some income to local farmers in a very economically depressed area. The food voucher program provided to local, low income families through Grow Appalachia and the Red Bird Mission Food Security Project has been a big factor in boosting involvement and helping to reach this goal. We anticipate it to continue once everyone sees the benefits of this market.