Healing Gardens of Mississippi

02/18/2025

Can you guess what it is?👀👀

01/23/2025

Heyy everyone! It is not too late to sign up for this program if you are planning to garden this year! We really could use your help with combating food insecurity in the spring! Please see below on how to sign up! Thank you kindly!

Heyyy everyone!

We initially tried to roll out this program last year but it didn’t take off. However, we are trying it again in the Spring! If you would like to sign up to be one of the local home gardeners that will agree to donate your extra produce to the food banks listed in the flyer and are willing to take a food safety training, see the link below!

https://tinyurl.com/msugrowarow

I found out that LSU had created a program like this and thought that it would be a good idea for Mississippi to adopt it. It is another way for us to combat food insecurity!

The date for the training will be announced, I am hoping it can be done in January or February 2025.

Thank you for the support and please share!

01/02/2025

Here's your veggie planting guide for January! Some of the vegetables you can plant in your garden this month include...

🥕Carrots
❇️Kohlrabi
🥬Lettuce Head & Lettuce Leaf
🧅Onions
🥔Irish Potatoes
🟢English peas
🌿Spinach

🚨Planting times will vary by zones.🚨

Read our Mississippi Vegetable Gardener's Guide for TONS of great info: https://extension.msstate.edu/publications/mississippi-vegetable-gardeners-guide

Contact your county's Extension agent for localized guidance! Find yours here: https://extension.msstate.edu/county-offices

12/19/2024

Heyy everyone!! The entire segment was not included last night, so WDAM had to fix what was on the website but here is the news story about the “Grow A Row to Share” Program that we teamed up with MSU to continue in the Spring!

One local agricultural extension office is teaming up with a local vegetable garden owner to train others on growing produce to combat hunger in the Pine Belt.

12/18/2024

Tomorrow catch us on WDAM discussing this program with the Extension Office! We hope to see many of you sign up to support the food banks in the upcoming growing season!

Heyyy everyone!

We initially tried to roll out this program last year but it didn’t take off. However, we are trying it again in the Spring! If you would like to sign up to be one of the local home gardeners that will agree to donate your extra produce to the food banks listed in the flyer and are willing to take a food safety training, see the link below!

https://tinyurl.com/msugrowarow

I found out that LSU had created a program like this and thought that it would be a good idea for Mississippi to adopt it. It is another way for us to combat food insecurity!

The date for the training will be announced, I am hoping it can be done in January or February 2025.

Thank you for the support and please share!

12/15/2024

So proud to be a part of the Food Freedom Collective! There is more in store next year but in the meantime, our good friends at Mississippi Rising Coalition has a community fridge at their Hattiesburg office. If you would like to donate food items to support the work we are doing, please see the information below. Thank you!!

❤️👏🏻🗣️We are very grateful to the for supporting our mutual aid work and enabling us to purchase a community fridge for the Free Community Pantry at our Hattiesburg headquarters. Fresh, healthy food will be available to community members with NO conditions and no questions asked.

➡️ To donate food to stock the community fridge, email us at [email protected] and put COMMUNITY FRIDGE DONATION in the subject line.

12/09/2024

Please share!! Our Blessing Box at 229 West Central Avenue in Petal has been refilled!! There are bags in the box and waters underneath it, as well.

12/04/2024

Many folks in Clay County know Art Sanders as the man who brought an abandoned pecan orchard back to life!

It was not until after he signed the deed on the 46-acre parcel 5 miles south of West Point in 1999 that Sanders learned what he had acquired. Aerial property photos revealed rows of trees, showing the previous owner had planned the orchard and planted pecan trees there in the mid-1980s—even augmenting it with an irrigation system and a well—before walking away from it.

“I didn’t realize it was a pecan orchard because there were so many other cedars and pines everywhere,” Sanders recalls. “I had no notion of being a pecan farmer at all. I just wanted to have some land to give me a purpose after I retired.”

He moved back to Mississippi in 2013 after a 30-plus year career in Chicago, Illinois as a firefighter. He didn't waste any time and began clearing land, ripping up bad trees, and nursing the surviving ones to health until they began to bear fruit.

The orchard—nearly 800 trees—is now the official home of Lindy’s Pecans, named after Sanders’s wife, and boasts 10 pecan varieties, including Desirable, Pawnee, and Lakota.

Along the way, he has used a variety of resources offered by the Mississippi State University Extension Service to his benefit—and he still does. He’s a regular attendee of Extension’s field day events, and he often uses the MSU Extension soil testing lab, which provides analyses and nutrient management recommendations for different soils and plant tissues.

He also turned to one of MSU Extension’s most important resources of all—its people.

Read Art's Extension Matters story here: https://extension.msstate.edu/extension-matters/orchard-impossible