Starting A Vegetable Garden
There are lots of varieties to grow in a vegetable garden. Look for those that offer disease resistance, heat or cold tolerance and other characteristics.
Seed packets and online instructions give planting instructions, including how deep to plant seeds. Vegetable plants require regular watering. It’s better to water deeply every few days rather than a little sprinkle each day.
BELMONT COUNTY, Ohio (WTRF)
It’s at the Belmont Correctional Institution, and it’s tended by the adults incarcerated there.
They eat some of what they grow, and the rest is regularly donated to area food pantries.
The garden opened in 2011.
Participants learn skills from Belmont County Master Gardeners, who go in and teach them everything from square foot gardening to seed saving.
“We kind of look at the whole person—mind, body and spirit,” said Warden David Gray. “And part of that is not getting instant gratification. So we have a program called Thinking For A Change. And the whole point is to have folks think before they do. Well, gardening is one of those things. There’s no such thing as instant gratification in gardening.”
“We currently have over 200 incarcerated adults in our gardening program,” explained Ryan Clark, public information office at Belmont Correctional Institution. “It’s an incentive-based program. They can’t cause any trouble. They have to stay out of trouble to be part of it.”
“We are absolutely amazed, like blown away, by the amount of care, the amount of dedication and just their resourcefulness and the productivity that they are able to get out of these ten-by-four foot beds,” said Master Gardener Mary Mowrer.
They are not allowed to use regular metal garden tools.
They only have small plastic hand tools.
They can’t water with a hose; they have to carry water in small plastic watering cans.
They can’t have anything that could be made into something dangerous, so they can’t grow hot peppers.
It’s a self-sustaining garden; they save seeds from the year before to keep it going.
Source: wtrf.com
