The big news from Rockcastle County this week is the plant give-away.  

 We picked up the plant starts (mostly flowers) that the Mount Vernon Elementary School 4^th graders grew in their PRIDE greenhouse for our Grow Appalachia project and purchased more plants from the Rockcastle County High School FFA students.  Also available were the plants (the best of the bunch!) that were grown for us by one of our project participants, Armilda Barnes, who delivered over a thousand starts.  We had a total of about 70 flats of starter plants to share with participants.  The evening of the give-away, the parking lot was over-flowing with participant cars.  Nearly everyone showed up to take home plants for their gardens.  We are working with 39 families and a Girl Scout troop (7 girls and their families).  Those with community garden plots headed right into the garden and planted their plants the same evening.

Also, this week, our summer youth employee, Saxon Brown, came on-board, putting in her first day of work with us.  We had her start out with work on the ASPI demonstration plot.  She planted up a storm and our garden plot is looking good.  Saxon has been an ag student at Berea College, and her knowledge of gardening will be a great benefit to the project this summer.

 Mark Davis of PRIDE has agreed to attend our community garden work day on the 16^th to assist the Girl Scouts in turning our plastic barrels into ready-to-use rainbarrels.  The Richmond St. site is being 'groomed' to be taken over by the local community.  Grow Appalachia's part will be getting the project started this first year, then assisting as consultants if needed in the future. We hope to see numerous small sites grow up in the coming years with the support of the community. 

Sign for the Richmond St. Community Garden

the ASPI Community Garden site

Proud 4th graders (and assistant) with their plant donation

The June workshop has been confirmed.  Timi Reedy, a local mushroom ‘guru’ will do a hands-on training of mushroom log inoculation, with each participant inoculating and taking home their own logs.   

 

Grow Appalachia will be attending Mt. Vernon’s ‘Longest Day of Play’ on June 20^th.  This event has become a popular healthy living event in the county and is well attended each year.  

Keeping busy in Rockcastle County!