Cathy Benson | The Botetourt View

Tammy Kelly looks at her herb garden; chives and other assorted herbs were beginning to pop up in March.

Tammy and Tony Kelly of Fincastle have been gardening for years. Matter of fact, Tony Kelly grew up on a farm family in the Mill Creek area and sometimes they had a three-acre garden.

They have a barn with tools for gardening right next to their gardening plot. Hoes, rakes, trowels and shovels along with a tiller and a maybe even a garden tractor are good additions to the tool supply when gardening.

The Kellys think one way to fight the struggling economy is by growing your own food. Recently, First Lady Michelle Obama and a host of schoolchildren turned soil at the White House to grow vegetables to be used by the White House chefs -- proving everyone everywhere can get into the gardening act.

When the Kellys decided to get their garden started a few years ago they purchased a "Gardener's Bible," said Tony Kelly.

There are many different good vegetable garden books out there, plus the Virginia Tech Cooperative Extension Service has many different "How to Garden" informative handouts that can be printed out from the Web site.

Tony Kelly said, "Certain vegetables do better next to each other while others should not be grown together."

For instance, many cruciferous vegetables such as broccoli and Brussels sprouts, cabbage and cauliflower can cross-pollinate and those results can be interesting but affect the output of the plants.

They grow a variety of beans, squash -- yellow and zucchini, cucumbers, onions, a variety of tomatoes and peppers and have an herb garden.

"Most of the herbs come back up year after year," noted Tammy Kelly. As one type of vegetable goes out of season, they plant another in its place that way the garden is constantly producing.

The biggest problem? Weeds. To keep the weeds under control they wet newspapers and put them between the rows and put grass clippings from the yard on top. Last summer rain, mostly from storms, came in torrents and was too much at times. The overabundance caused the garden to struggle.

"Deer can be a problem, but rabbits are as well," said Tony Kelly. There are handouts on repellents to spray on your plants that discourage deer and other animal damage.

Some folks put up bird netting and others have high fencing with electric wire strung in strategic places to keep the deer at bay. Again a good resource for ideas would be the extension service and the Web.

"We can our vegetables." Tammy Kelly tells a story of their elementary age niece coming from Northern Virginia to visit for a few days during a canning session.

She laughed, "My niece told her parents, "Wow, you should see the grocery store Aunt Tammy and Uncle Tony have in their basement."

Botetourt proves 'commercial' hot spot

In mid-March on Cloverdale Road, Larry Ceola rented out a Cavalier Automotive bay to Advance Auto so the corporate offices could create a company brochure. Professional photographers, models and an entire day of shooting took place. Said Ceola, "They brought in breakfast and lunch and the scene was a professional shoot complete with minute lighting arrangement fixes." He has promised to send us some photos he took of the day long shoot.

Over in Fincastle, Joe and Jason Martin of Martin's Farm have filmed a testimonial commercial for Specialty Fertilizer to be aired on the RFD channel soon.

The Martins are an uncle and nephew who farm crops, raise cattle and hogs, vegetable produce and sell sausage and pork products from November through April. Jason's wife, Kim, (and their baby son James) run the store.

For a link to see the Martins, visit The Notebook on botetourtview.com. Once on the Specialty Fertilizer Web site, scroll down to "Joe and Jason Martin" and hit the play button after the commercial loads. Joe's brother Weldon Martin submitted this to the View.