This week some volunteers and I made a few home visits to see how our participants gardens are growing and to offer some help to those who could use a hand. One of the families we assisted were the Fee family.
We went and joined Ewel and Elizabeth in the garden to hoe their corn and beans. This couple is well known for the vegetables they grow, sell and share. The volunteers were really impressed at the size of their garden seeing as they are both in their eighty's now and still work every day in their garden. When asked how they do it they reply "this is what keeps us a going." This couple has been gardening their entire life and hold a huge amount of knowledge when it comes to self sustained gardening. They grow a lot of heirloom vegetables from seeds that have been in the family for years.
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| Hoeing corn with Ewel Fee |
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| Hoeing corn with Ewel Fee
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| Elizabeth Fee |
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| Fee garden |
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| Fee garden
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Another participant we visited was Donna Asher. She is pretty new to gardening but has done really good at caring for her plants with the help of her grandson. She is growing a nice variety of vegetables and has already been harvesting some things to share and eat. Unfortunately we have seen sure signs of early blight in her tomato plants and we advised her to pull all the affected leaves off and remove them from her garden and to use the liquid copper spray we gave her.
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| Donna Asher showing us her garden
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| Donna Asher showing us her garden |
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| Donna's cucumbers |
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| Donna's tomatoes |
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| Donna's tomatoes
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While we had an extra hand we also staked our tomatoes and used some shredded paper to mulch around them, completed a small fence to try and keep the deer out of our garden and planted some white half runner beans to be grown for seed to distribute to our participants next year. We also plowed a 800 sq.ft area and planted some Miria sweet corn and have begin providing the Red Bird Mission Work Camp Kitchen with lettuce we have grown here on campus .Yep it has been a fun and rewarding week for Grow Appalachia here at Red Bird Mission.
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| Volunteer mulching tomatoes |
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| Our proud volunteer's |
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| Volunteer mulching tomatoes |
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| Our tomatoes, staked and mulched |
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| Planting beans |
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