News from Grow Oak Ridge and its markets.
Art, creativity, science, and magic
Grow Your Own: Backyard and Community Garden Program Update
It is hard to believe that we are wrapping up our first Grow Your Own season as a partner site to Grow Appalachia. It is an understatement to say that I have learned so much in my first year as the program coordinator and garden coach. Lessons learned have been in program development & in gardening as a whole. This year, we recruited 10 families, sourced supplies, had roughly 80 garden visits, 7 group gatherings, and worked on learning and growing the infrastructure for our program. The rewards have been many this season & there is always room for improvement. Next year, I want to work more on participant retention, creating more community spaces, and increasing our overall food production from each garden.
This year has been one of the most challenging, while simultaneously gratifying, years of my life. Growing your own garden may change the way that you approach and see food, recognizing all the effort it takes to produce even one delicious garden tomato cannot be fully realized without this experience. Gardening gives people a chance to slow down, focus, and refocus – cementing mental connections with physical activities. It is a chance to connect with the land & everything that lives on it. It is art and creativity, and it is also science and magic. There is something truly special when a seed sprouts.
I was just in conversation with one of our families about how variable and complex gardening can be. No garden will look the same & even two of the same type of tomato plants on the same plot may grow differently than one another & encounter completely different successes and challenges. We laughed about how one garden can be so bewildering.
My favorite garden memories from this season were during the garden visits that I brought the T-Post driver & getting to witness the feeling of accomplishment that people experienced when they stepped back to see the infrastructure they established. They have also been the memories of the joy that people experienced while welcoming their first ever harvest.
I was incredibly fortunate in my first year to work with a welcoming, energetic, and kind group of gardeners. I really appreciated their grace as I learned through this process. I feel as if I learned just as much from them as they learned from me. In our garden visits, I constantly found myself encouraged by their effort & creativity in the way they approached challenges in their gardens. It was amazing to watch our community grow, hearing people share stories, advice, & techniques and listening to them making agreements to trade seeds and produce (some gardeners especially rich in squash seeking a trade for tomatoes). Those were some of the connections that I could not have expected in the beginning.
I am continuing to learn about the power of gardening and food growing. I am currently reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Camille Kingsolver, Barbara Kingsolver, & Steven L. Hopp. On my reading list are also Growing, Older by Joan Dye Gussow and How to Grow More Vegetables* *than you ever thought possible on less land than you can imagine by John Jeavons, which was recommended to me by my manager on the Berea Horticulture farm. I am continuing to learn and be inspired.
Thank you for this opportunity & for following along with us during this first year. While we are wrapping up this season, I am excited and optimistic about the seasons to come.
Counting Backwards to Move Forward
Grow Your Own: Backyard and Community Garden Program Update
On September 7th, we had our end of season potluck. One of our gardeners brought a propane griddle and cooked outside. We gathered around the griddle, gathered around the table, making connections, having fun conversations, moving indoors and outdoors. Our gardeners swapped stories about canning, pickling, and what we are doing in our fall gardens. It was a great time to gather and build community. I loved hearing people share with each other what they have done this season, for instance, different varieties of tomatoes and trellising techniques. Our gardeners received water bath canners, cover crop seed mixes, and onion bulbs!
During the remainder of our August garden visits and this September, we have been discussing what we are planning to season extend, where to plant fall crops, and how to make the transition into a fall garden. It is hard to let go of the warm season crops that have given us so much! Sometimes it feels like it's best to just rip the bandaid off and wish them well in order to welcome something new.
We added 4 more families to the Grow Your Own program in partnership with the Y12 Gives Foundation, which will strengthen our program for the coming year by allowing 4 more families the space and supplies to get growing in the Welcome Garden at First Presbyterian Community Garden. We had a workday where they got their fall gardens planted early this September.
For the fall, our gardeners got carrots, radish, kale, broccoli, turnips, beets, lettuce, and spinach seeds. I’ve been keeping track of the days until our first expected frost around October 27th and reminding our gardeners that it is not too late to plant several of their fall crops! As I am writing this, we are 42 days away. Drawing close, but not too late to plant radishes, lettuces, and other crops with shorter days to maturity.
Stepping into fall gardening
Grow Your Own: Backyard and Community Garden Program Update
Here at Grow Oak Ridge, we are starting to plan for our cool season gardens. We are continuing to welcome the harvest, especially tomatoes! I have loved seeing our gardeners find and use techniques for trellising. At my last garden visit, one of our gardeners is doing an upright trellis for their tomato plants where they built a tall structure and wrapped tomato twine around the stem of the plant, leading it upright. This method and the Florida Weave have definitely been my favorite methods to see for trellising. The upright trellis has allowed one of their tomato plants to grow at least 8 feet tall and for all of them receive a lot of airflow!
At our last workshop of the season (besides our Potluck), we talked about Season Extension and Fall Gardening. We had two guests from the Master Gardener program stop by and share their experiences with growing and cool season gardening. I think people are excited to try out cool season gardening. The timing of it all presents a challenge as far as when and what to season extend and where to plant, but we are definitely embracing it. During our latest garden visits, our gardeners are showing up with their fall garden map, planning out what they want to extend, where they can start their cool season seeds, and where they can plant cover crops. For cover crops this year, we are doing a mix of tillage radish (to break up Oak Ridge’s notoriously heavy clay soil), winter rye (to create a natural mulch and increase biomass), crimson clover, & hairy vetch (to add nitrogen back into the soil). Cover cropping is probably one of my favorite topics as I love learning about and teaching ways to improve soil health.
Welcoming the Harvest!
Grow Your Own: Backyard and Community Garden Program Update
This last month, our gardeners were delighted to welcome some of their first harvests of the season. We experienced lots and lots of rain, which led many of our squash plants to bloom and take off overnight. I made zucchini lasagna with my Green Tiger Hybrid Summer Squash harvest. It was delicious. Recipe linked here.
On July 15th, we had our Food Preservation class, which has been much anticipated throughout the season. We talked about food safety, canning, freezing, and dehydrating (which proves to be rather difficult due to the humidity in our area). We had guests from UT Extension and Susan, a home canning expert, help lead this lesson!
I also asked that our gardeners share photos of their garden through their eyes for virtual garden tours. At our meeting, they shared their experience, lessons learned, and progress so far. I have included all their photos below!
one of Casey’s Gardens
Kylie’s Oasis
Bray’s Bounty
Garden of Eatin’
Cloudless Sky Gardens
Lavender Lane
Our Crazy Little Garden
Ellis Garden
Syncing Up with the Spring Season!
Grow Your Own: Backyard and Community Garden Program Update
A lot has happened in the last month! Finally the last spring frost date in East Tennessee passed, our gardeners got their first packages of seeds, starter plants, and more seeds for their warm season gardens! Each family received 12 tomato, 4 bell pepper, and 3 basil plants distributed from Beardsley Community Farm. They got instruction and experience in hardening these plants off prior to planting. We handed out bean, cucumber, and squash seeds too!
This month, our gardeners learned all about Garden Maintenance at our latest workshop, led by our local extension agent and Master Gardeners from Anderson County. Over potluck snacks and dinners, we talked about beneficial insects, how to identify insects, and how to encourage pollinators to come to the garden. For this session, we also focused on Integrated Pest Management (IPM) practices and how to prevent plant diseases. Oak Ridge has a lot of deer pressure, which our gardeners are all too aware of. During this meeting, we talked about ways to relieve deer pressure, which has been a highly anticipated topic. We also went over trellising and how to give our happy little plants support during their growth!
At our latest meeting, our gardeners also received a Red Bee Balm plant, which will attract many bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds, donated by Tennessee Naturescapes. In addition to having beautiful pollinator attracting flowers, red bee balm is also known as the herb bergamot, which can be used in teas among other applications. It will bloom all through May and June. Then after it is cut back, again in August. Tennessee Naturescapes is a local, native plant nursery, where we will also be headed tomorrow for a field trip to learn more about pollinators and pick out another plant!
Most of our families have their trellises set up. During last month's garden site visits, I brought around the post driver to set the 6 foot TPosts we have for trellising. We synced our breathing! “In” on the lift up and “out" when we hit the posts. I felt like things were becoming real for our gardeners this past month, when they stepped back from the TPosts and thought “hey, I did that!” in addition to receiving plant starts and seeds. Needless to say, our gardeners are excited to get planting this month.
Many Delights
Grow Your Own: Backyard and Community Garden Program Update
This time of year always has so many delights–butterflies fluttering, birds singing, plants waking up after their winter sleep, even “weeds” decorating our yards in shades of purple, white, and yellow, and budding trees and flowers that indicate that there is more hope to come. Each passing day is getting longer and brighter, making it easier to hold onto them.
Our families in the Grow Your Own: Backyard and Community Garden Program are getting excited and looking forward to planting. Over the last month, we were able to get gardens tilled, receive soil tests, recommend soil amendments, and set up infrastructure for our future plants. We handed out tools to set up trellises, to weed, and finally seeds! Our families will be picking up their additional seeds and starter tomato, basil, red bee balm, and pepper plants later this month. All of the preparations and hard work we have taken so far remind me of the good things to come, as images of flourishing and fruiting gardens come to mind.
We hosted our latest workshop over Garden Planting, where we covered soil amendments, planting times, weed management, and a highly anticipated section over composting. Our gardeners left with supplies and their own 2L composting bottle, to watch composting happen in real time through the “lasagna” method of adding soil, fresh materials, and leaves. We are so grateful to the Anderson County Master Gardeners and UT Extension staff who lead us through this activity and education.
With the winter ending, so has our Indoor Winter Farmers Market, and we are shifting solely to online orders through Market To Go. We are also gearing up for the 2023 Lavender Festival in June, where we will have a smoothie bike for kids to power their own fruit and veggies smoothies. We created a Facebook group for our participants to connect and share resources and are having a potluck style meeting at our next garden workshop. We are really looking forward to hearing stories from our gardeners about what their favorites have been so far throughout the season. There is so much excitement to come!
Grow Your Own: Backyard & Community Garden Program begins
Grow Oak Ridge is excited to launch the first season of the “Grow Your Own: Backyard and Community” Program as a partner site with Grow Appalachia.
The mission of Grow Oak Ridge is to connect locally grown food with the public through farmers markets, community gardening and education. Grow Oak Ridge produces the Winter Farmers Market, Market-To-Go, and educational programs like Nourish Kids Club.
Katie Roach is our Garden Coach for this program. She is helping 10 Oak Ridge families grow their own food in summer 2023, and will be visiting their gardens each month, and providing them with seeds, seedlings, organic fertilizer, hand tools and education. All the families must attend educational workshops, which are also available free to the public.
Workshops are in the community room of the United Way Building, 301 Broadway Ave., Oak Ridge.
April 6, 6-8 p.m., Garden Planting and Growing Organically Workshop
May 4th, 6-8 p.m. - Maintaining an Organic Garden - Overview of insect and weed pressure that comes with organic gardening and how to battle them organically.
Thursday, June 1st, 6-8 p.m. - Harvest and Heart Healthy Cooking from the Garden Workshop
August 3rd, 6-8 p.m. Season Extension and Fall Gardening Workshop
Potluck and Closing Stories Dinner – Thursday, 6:00 PM on Thursday, September 7th, 2023
In addition to these, a canning workshop will be offered to our 10 families in a local kitchen, and because of space limitations this is not open to the general public.
Katie Roach, Garden Coach, talks to families at our first Backyard & Community Gardening workshop in March. It was held at the Oak Ridge Public Library so participants could see the seed library available to the public and get free seeds.
Grow Oak Ridge received three times the number of applicants it could accept into the program, which is funded by a grant from Grow Appalachia, a program through Berea College.
Workshops will also be available via Zoom. If you would like to receive notification about them, please sign up for our emails.
We are so grateful to the Anderson County Master Gardeners from UT Extension, who helped us kick off the program by teaching an introduction to gardening during our very first Garden Planning workshop on March 2. Our gardeners left our first meeting with an in depth intro to basic gardening and organic gardening, having potted marigold seeds (sourced from the Oak Ridge Seed Library), and started bean seeds in plastic bag greenhouses. After this meeting, we are hoping that our gardeners will submit their “garden map,” where they will apply the knowledge they learned during the Garden Planning workshop to decide on future crop rotations, how to stack tall and short plants, and how to garden efficiently in a small space without overcrowding.
In addition to designing their garden maps, we have asked our 10 gardeners to each name their garden plots. They came up with a lot of fun ideas like–”Garden of Eatin’,” “Lavender Lane,” “Our crazy lil garden,” “South 40,” “South of Eden,” and “Woodland Community Garden.” Eight of our gardeners are gardening at their residences and two are gardening in a community garden. We are so looking forward to hearing about the ways that these experiences overlap and how they will apply their gardening knowledge to their own specific gardens.
We cannot wait to see how this program grows in the lives of our participants, within our own organization, and the impact it will have in our community. I am looking forward to growing with our gardeners because this will be a learning experience for me too as my first year coordinating. I am so excited to see what the future harvest looks like for all of us.
Katie Roach and the Grow Oak Ridge staff