EAT South

22/11/2024

Are you a farmer, aspiring farmer, school gardener, food advocate? You'll find community and good information here.

The 2025 ASAN Food & Farm Forum is shaping up to be an incredible event—make sure you’re part of it by registering today! Join us January 23-25 at Camp McDowell.

More info --> 2025 Food & Farm Forum

21/11/2024

If you will be in Dothan or know someone in the area, you should go to this.

Spend a day with us at Aunt Katie's Community Garden on December 7! In this workshop we will be sharing ways to best manage small-scale farms and community gardens - resources, tools and techniques, value-added products, and even how to use drones in farming.

Join National Center for Appropriate Technology - NCAT, Rural South Institute, Strategic Alignment Network, LLC, and other partners for this community event!

This workshop is free, but registration is required. Please email E'licia Chaverest at [email protected] or call her at 256-457-8564 to register. Lunch will be provided.

🍅🥕🥦 See you there! 🥦🥕🍅

19/11/2024

Registration is open for ASAN's 2025 Food & Farm Forum! This is your opportunity to connect with Alabama’s farming community and learn about sustainable agriculture.

Join us January 23-25 at Camp McDowell!

More Info & Link to Registration here!
2025 Food & Farm Forum

18/11/2024

Get ready for the giving season and support Montgomery's gardens!

https://donate.seedmoney.org/11337/david-s-community-garden-of-life-help-a-brother-out Please help out our community!!

18/11/2024

Early birds get the worm! 🐛 Registration for the Extension Master Gardener Intern Training is officially open! Apply by November 15th for an Early Bird special of $150.

No experience necessary—just a desire to learn and grow. Come join us for another great year! Training is available in counties across Alabama, including Bibb, Calhoun, Chilton, Coffee, DeKalb, Houston, Jefferson, Lauderdale, Madison, Montgomery, Tallapoosa, Tuscaloosa, and Walker. You do not have to live in a county to attend its training—just be willing to travel!

For more info, visit: https://www.aces.edu/go/mgv or contact your local County Extension Office.

How to apply:
1.Check the county training schedule here: https://www.aces.edu/go/mgschedule
2. Apply here: https://www.aces.edu/go/mgapply (link will not open until November 1st)
3. Pay the course fee online. (Regular course fees are $175*)
4. Submit a background check (in December, details will be emailed to you).

Come grow with us and help make our community bloom! 🌼🌿For more info on registration and other counties offering the course, visit: https://www.aces.edu/go/mgv or contact your local County Extension Office.

17/11/2024

Photo dump!
We sifted a little compost today with the help of one of our dedicated community composters. Shout out to Mikaela! This will go to helping other community gardens and community composters.
Two shots of greens, big ones have Bokashi buried under them. Kind of cool. Stay tuned for our next Bokashi batch community day. And learn alongside new and experienced composters.
A visit to Smiths Farm and Ranch has us excited about the budding organic agriculture scene in Alabama. Thanks for the tour ! They can sell you a whole cow or your favorite cuts. They are bringing together a vertically integrated operation with USDA processing on site, a cooperative market to offer the community various goods from the area. The ranch is situated on the very site of the first flights of the Tuskegee Airmen. Very inspiring family owned and operated farm. Thanks for organizing Arlo,
Check out the elementary schoolers slaying the compost game at . We helped the teachers build this bin during summer and assist when needed. The staff help students add snack scraps and the Garden Club add scraps from home. This is now an active hot compost pile. Yay! 😁
Hope to see you all for Seedy Saturday January 11th 9am-12pm at the Juliet Hampton Morgan Library (Downtown Branch). Bring seeds if you have them, take home seeds for your home and community gardens. Bring tools for garden tool swap. Stay tuned for more information.

11/11/2024

Are there rotting pumpkins on your front step? Turn them into garden gold. With Bokashi pre composting you can take oozy pumpkins from stinky to garden ready in less than two weeks.
Gather materials:
Container with tight fitting lid
Bokashi bran (we can get you started)
Shovel
Absorbent material (optional)
In 10 days we will bury the material in a garden plot to be planted later.

08/11/2024

Have you planted your garlic?

08/11/2024

Beneficial insects help your garden grow!

These helpful bugs are ready to control your garden pests for you!

07/11/2024

Montgomery's own Sam Yu from on a panel with the legendary food sovereignty advocate Karen Washington at the Feeding Change conference today.

06/11/2024

The male brush turkey of Australia gathers leaves, small branches, moss and other litter and builds a mound about 3 feet high and 5 feet across. It then digs holes into the mound repeatedly and refills them, helping to fragment and mix the debris. Finally, the pile is covered with a layer of sticks and twigs. The female lays her eggs in a hole dug into the pile, which heats to nearly 100°F around the eggs, while the outside can be around 65°F. The heat of the composting process frees the birds from having to sit on the eggs to incubate them.

—R.S. Seymour (1991)

06/11/2024

Must pay attention when reaching for faucets. The gulf Fritillary caterpillars are hopeful.

pollinators

01/11/2024

Thank you Montgomery Veterinary Associates for taking such good care of everyone's favorite farm cat Lola. She is home now recovering from what looked like an animal attack, and we are grateful for the kind care she was given over the past week.

31/10/2024

Honey bees aren't the only pollinators. If you're doing a fall clean up, leave space for our native bees, and your veggie garden will thank you.

CARING FOR YOUR NATIVE PLANTS GARDEN: Although traditional landscaping recommendations involve cutting down stems of perennial plants in the fall, new sustainable practices encourage gardeners to retain these through the winter both for ornamental interest and wildlife benefit. Then in the spring, hollow flower stems that are pencil-sized or larger can be trimmed down to varying heights, from 8 to 24 inches tall, to create habitat for stem-nesting bees.

As female bees emerge, they will create nests in these stems, laying eggs and provisioning them with pollen balls. Then, over the spring, new growth at the base of the plants will hide the stem stubble. Meanwhile, young bees will hibernate in the stems through the summer, fall, and winter.

The cut stems should be kept in place through this second spring until caps of mud or resin break away, indicating that the new adult bees have emerged.

Native plants suitable for stem-nesting bees include perennials, such as Cup Plant (Silphium perfoliatum), Ironweed (Vernonia noveboracensis), and Joe-pye-weed (Eutrochium dubium), and woody plants like Elderberry (Sambucus canadensis), Wild Hydrangea (Hydrangea arborescens), and the Sumacs (Rhus species).

For further information on this practice see a short video on the MGNV website, “Cutting Back Native Plants in Spring.” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qd-COjqMQ9A)
Other helpful resources include a chart on “How to Create Habitat for Stem-Nesting Bees” by Heather Holm (https://www.pollinatorsnativeplants.com/uploads/1/3/9/1/13913231/stemnestingbeesweb_1.pdf)
And a resource sheet on “Nesting & Overwintering Habitat for Pollinators & Other Beneficial Insects” by the Xerces Society (https://xerces.org/sites/default/files/publications/18-014.pdf)

(Upper left photo by Heather Holm; lower right photo by Katharina Ullman.)

30/10/2024

Teachers - apply to receive a $500 classroom grant! Proposals are due November 15th.

CHS Inc provides $500 grants each year to PreK - 12th grade general education teachers whose classroom projects use agricultural concepts to teach reading, writing, math, nutrition, science, and/or social studies.

Learn more and apply by visiting: https://agclassroom.org/teacher/grants/