Garden Guru: Finding the right grass for your yard
By By John Porter For the Sunday Gazette-Mail Soon, the hot and sunny summer will give way to cooler fall temperatures, color-changing leaves and the autumn rituals of leaf raking and football. As we...
View ArticleWV Farm 2 Fork Team: Going local in a centralized food system
By By BethAnn Earl WV Farm 2 Fork Team Farm-to-table eating: What does that mean? Doesn't all food come from farms? This is a conversation I have had with a few folks. Those of a certain age, like my...
View ArticleOne Month at a Time: Improvising pickles and practicing dehydration
By Bill Lynch After my pickle-canning tutorial with WVU Agricultural Extension Agent and Gazette-Mail Garden Guru John Porter, I decided to pickle and can my own. But I'm not John. While he learned to...
View ArticleGarden Guru: Local gardeners shine at WV State Fair
By By John Porter For the Sunday Gazette-Mail Each year I make the pilgrimage from Charleston to Fairlea, near Lewisburg, for the State Fair of West Virginia. I love fairs and have fun at the fair. I...
View ArticleGardening: growing blackberries without the blood
By By LEE REICH The Associated Press For the past couple of weeks, I've been picking and eating what are arguably the best fruits I have ever tasted (a belief I often hold when a particular fruit is...
View ArticleGarden Guru: Collecting and storing saved seeds
By By John Porter For the Sunday Gazette-Mail A few weeks ago, I covered some information gardeners need to know if they are going to save seeds, specifically about how different plants cross and what...
View ArticleWV Culinary Team: Food connections found in unexpected places
By By Susan Maslowski WV Culinary Team Food is more than nourishment. It connects us with people and places, and it creates memories. Certain foods take us to unexpected places. When I think of figs,...
View ArticleGarden Guru: Canning, drying and freezing to preserve a harvest
By By John Porter For the Sunday Gazette-Mail The end of the summer growing season and the beginning of fall is a great time to talk about saving produce for the winter. Sure, there was probably more...
View ArticleGarden Guru: How to get your own pawpaw patch started
By By John Brown For the Sunday Gazette-Mail Walk in the West Virginia woods in September and you may find a sweet treat that many old-timers who grew up in the Mountain State remember fondly from...
View ArticleGarden Guru: Fall is the time to plant trees and shrubs
By By John Porter For the Sunday Gazette-Mail Even though the calendar tells us we have now officially made it to fall, it's not quite time to put away those gardening tools. There are still quite a...
View ArticleGarden Guru: Picking the perfect pumpkin for carving or eating
By By John Porter Garden Guru Now that the calendar has officially signaled the beginning of autumn and has dipped over into October, pumpkins are popping up all over the place. But did you know that...
View ArticleWardensville Garden Market a welcoming first stop in Eastern WV
By Douglas Imbrogno WARDENSVILLE — It was a September Saturday, about 10 a.m. The morning fog had burned off the nearby fields. The day would be a warm one in Hardy County. “We could stand to have...
View ArticleGarden Guru: Keeping the garden going during colder months
By By John Porter For the Sunday Gazette-Mail Now that there's a chill in the air and the colors of autumn creep through the hills and hollows, most people are ending their gardens for the winter....
View ArticleWV Farm 2 Fork Team: Taking farm-to-table to local schools
By By Allen Arnold WV Farm 2 Fork Team As this series of articles illustrates, farm-to-table is a movement that continues to grow in West Virginia. For one thing, in keeping with the basic economic...
View ArticleGarden Club plants monarch butterfly nursery garden on Carriage Trail
By Carlee Lammers Monarch butterflies making their way south for the winter have a new haven in Charleston. Members of the Kanawha Garden Club are hoping the 160 milkweed plants near the entrance of...
View ArticleGarden Guru: Fall is planting time for garlic, shallots, onions
By By John Porter Garden Guru Autumn is probably my favorite season. The cool, crisp air and the colors are definite big reasons, plus it is a season where great things happen - like my birthday. The...
View ArticleGarden Guru: Touring West Virginia farms with SARE fellows
By By John Porter Garden Guru One of the experiences that has shaped the way I approach my work is a fellowship I participated in a few years ago through the SARE program. SARE stands for Sustainable...
View ArticleGarden Guru: True origins of the pumpkins we eat and the ones we don't
By By John Porter Garden Guru This time of year, some people go pumpkin crazy. I'll admit that I do like pumpkin - from pie and other desserts to beer. I'm not so sure about other pumpkin items these...
View ArticleGarden Guru: What to do with sunchokes in your gardens
By By John Brown Garden Guru During the summer, a giant found a home in my garden. Standing tall near the back gate of the house, the green giant reached at least 12 feet in the air - sticking its...
View ArticleWV Farm 2 Fork Team: Farm-to-school nutrition comes full circle
By By Allen Arnold WV Farm2Fork Team An earlier Farm2Fork article pointed out that "buy local" has become an integral component in our schools' child nutrition programs. Kanawha, and neighboring...
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