New Digs for Mittleider Garden
Feed Fannin’s Mittleider Garden has been relocated to the Fannin County Family Connection on Industrial Park Drive in Blue Ridge and is settling into its new digs fairly well.
Feed Fannin’s Mittleider Garden has been relocated to the Fannin County Family Connection on Industrial Park Drive in Blue Ridge and is settling into its new digs fairly well.
It is approaching the Fourth of July weekend as I write this article. I am happy to report that the Feed Fannin garden was planted this spring brought some needed normalcy to my world.
This is the end of the second growing season for the Mittleider Garden, our showcase experimental garden. Because of the unique soil mixture Mittleider gardens use, the plants establish deep roots, require less water and the beds suffer fewer weeds than standard gardening methods.
It has been a fun, hard-working, educational and expensive summer. Our tractor spent the latter part of the summer in the hospital having transmission surgery, but I am happy to report it has made a full recovery! Here are some of the activities from the garden this summer.
As its inaugural project, the newly formed Garden Research Committee incorporated a garden that Feed Fannin volunteers had built next to the Family Connection Food Pantry using the Mittleider gardening method.
One of the good things about winter is that most foliage and greenery goes dormant or dies, and you get to start with a fresh clean slate for spring. It’s a chance for new beginnings in the garden as you plow under your winter rye cover crop and rotate your stock from the previous year
Summer has come to an end, and we have harvested most of our produce. It’s time to put the garden to bed for the winter.
The “Feed Fannin/Barbara Ferer Research & Demonstration Garden” opened with a ribbon-cutting ceremony and the unveiling of a sign on Aug. 8 next to the Fannin County Family Connection Food Pantry in Blue Ridge.
After a wet winter and temperatures near freezing at the latter part of April, May has arrived with dry, sunny days. There are exciting, yet challenging things that have been happening in the garden over the winter.
They say that adversity makes you stronger because it makes you adapt and find what you are capable of doing. If this is true, then I would say that gardening this year has taught us a few lessons.