New greenhouse sprouts learning opportunities

From The Lane Report: JABEZ, Ky. (June 20, 2012) — It’s taken a few years of planning and building, but a new greenhouse at the Lake Cumberland 4-H Educational Center is open for business—the business of educating people about horticultural and nursery crops.

Erected inside a deer-proof fence on the middle of what was a little-used tennis court, the new greenhouse is a fully automated 24-feet-by-30-feet structure paid for with a $42,500 Kentucky 4-H Venture grant from the Kentucky 4-H Foundation. The center’s director, Joyce Belcher, said she got the idea for the building while attending a conference at the C.A. Vines Arkansas 4-H Center. After learning how the Arkansas center used their greenhouse to raise vegetables for theirkitchen as well as for trainings, she returned to Jabez excited to try something similar in Kentucky.

Having previously worked for the Kentucky 4-H Foundation, Belcher knew that grantswere available for projects like this. She also knew she had to pull together a team of experts to help plan the project and prepare the grant proposal.

“I thought, ‘I’ve got to have some people on board with me — I’m not a specialist, I’m just a director.’ So that’s when I gathered up my committee,” she said.

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