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The Grow This Throwdown


In conjunction with its 2024 Grow This seed giveaway, the West Virginia University Extension Family Nutrition Program is launching the “Grow This Throwdown,” a statewide competition that aims to get West Virginians to move more, grow their own food and crush hunger in our state. 

Participants complete a series of challenges to earn points for their counties (see the leaderboard below). At the end of the growing season, the counties with the most points will win thousands of dollars in grant funding to complete improvement projects in their communities.

Active Challenges


Throwdown Thursday 

Join us at noon each Thursday for a presentation by WVU Extension experts about common gardening issues, including dealing with pests, invasive plants, fertilizers and more.  Take a short survey after the presentation, and you'll earn 10 points for your county. Click here to join the weekly Zoom call or click here to see a playlist of previous Throwdown Thursday sessions.

Edible Landscape Challenge

Grab your garden gloves, growers!  The planters and flower beds at your churches, schools and local parks are probably looking a little drab right now. Let's harness the power of the Grow This Throwdown to change that — and feed some people while we do it.

We want your team to adopt a planter in your community and fill it with the plants of your choosing. You can include typical flower bed fare, but we want every adopted planter to include edible landscaping features like herbs, edible flowers, leafy greens, etc.

Completing this challenge will earn 500 points for your county team. Then, in early June, Grow This will select our favorite planter and award that county an additional 2,000 points.

Here's what you need to do:
  • First, make sure you have permission to plant. Talk to the building owner, or city official.
  • Then fill your plot with plants of your choice. 
  • Next, hang a sign telling passerby what's in the bed, and why you did it. We've created a couple of general signs you can use and linked them below. You're also free to create your own.  Planter Adoption sign for download.  Garden bed adoption sign for download.
  • Finally, send our Facebook account a message with the name of your county, a photo, and the location of the planter or bed. 

Throwdown Leaderboard

How does your county stack up in the points race? Find out below.