Add Your Organization to the MC School Garden Letter!

In the past week, groups as diverse as the Chesapeake Education, Arts and Research Society, the West Montgomery County Citizens Alliance, the Cherrywood Garden Club in Olney, the Takoma Park Silver Spring Co-op, and the Montgomery Countryside Alliance have joined our sign on letter, asking that the Montgomery County Public Schools ban on vegetable gardens be lifted. Can your organization be next?

Any and all organizations, from local community and civic associations and boys and girls clubs to gardening clubs, environmental groups and county wide advocacy organizations, are invited to show their support for vegetable gardens in our public schools by joining the Montgomery County Master Gardeners and MVG on our open letter to MC School Superintendent Jerry Weast and the Board of Education.  Making sure our children learn the environmental stewardship that comes from a food garden is an issue that effects all of us.

You can read the letter here. 

To sign your organization on, email us at info@montgomeryvictorygardens.org.  And thanks for forwarding the information to all your friends, neighbors and colleagues in the county - we want to make sure everyone in the county hears about this campaign!


Sandy Spring School Among the Greenest on the Planet

Before it was trendy to be green, Sandy Spring Friends School was growing vegetables for its own lunchroom.  And composting its waste to feed the garden.  And growing sunflowers to create biofuel to run its buses.

In fact, SSFS has so  many sustainable, green initiatives that the Earth Day Network recently recognized them as one of the 40 greenest schools in the world.  And it's the students who are leading the way:  "In reality, the students are way ahead of us," said Ken Smith, head of Sandy Spring Friends. "Many of these great ideas come from them."

The decades long tradition of environmental education and sustainable practices at the SSFS is no accident.  As a school affiliated with the Religious Society of Friends, or Quakers, its students are taught the six guiding testimonies of the Quaker faith: simplicity, peace, integrity, community, equality and stewardship.  And stewardship of the earth certainly includes eating local, and growing your own whenever possible.

We are delighted that the students at this Montgomery County School are leading the way toward a more sustainable future. To read the Gazette article, "Sandy Spring Friends honored for being green," click here.



Area Fifth Graders Dazzle on Farm to School Issues

Prof. Jim Hanson, a farm management specialist from the University of Maryland, was not alone in his astonishment at the questions being asked by the fifth graders of College Gardens Elementary School in Rockville last week. "We need you at the university," Hanson remarked, only half-jokingly.

I was lucky enough to represent Montgomery Victory Gardens at the "Mock Press Conference" presented by about 100 fifth graders with the help of the Audubon Naturalist Society's "GreenKids" program.  And the questions these very young folks asked at the conclusion of their project studying school lunches were indeed astonishingly informed and perceptive.  As fifth-grader Veeraj Majethia said in his plea for better school menu options, "We calculated the nutrition and learned a side of macaroni and cheese here has more calories than a Big Mac.  It's 564 calories.  Would it help if we showed them the raw data?"

The press conference featured a number of local food advocates, including State Senator Jamie Raskin, who introduced the Farm to School legislation after its initial advocate, Jane Lawton, died, Parks Community Garden Coordinator Ursual Sabia-Sukinik, and parent school food activist Carrie Witkop (seen at left exhorting the students).

It was heartening to all of us there.  I know I feel a lot better knowing there are kids like this coming up through our school system.  And our congratulations to Principal DuPont and all the teachers and staff of College Gardens Elementary for doing such a great job!

To read College Gardens Fifth-Graders Get to the Bottom of Healthy Eating, click here.



Late Blight Watch in Maryland

It's nothing to freak out about yet, but careful vigilance is required for anyone growing tomatoes and potatoes.  Late blight was detected in a greenhouse in St. Mary's County earlier this month, and the Maryland Master Gardeners have put out the word for all backyard and community gardeners to keep their eyes open for the disease.

As someone who lost all of his tomatoes to late blight last year, I think that's excellent advice.

Click here on the Master Gardeners' Grow It Eat It site for complete information (and pictures) about late blight.



Corporate Vegetable Gardens are Growing

Will American corporations be the next wave of organic food gardeners?

As strange as it might seem that PepsiCo, which floods the world with $60 billion a year worth of sugar and high fructose corn syrup, would promote organic food gardening for their employees, corporate vegetable gardens are a growing phenomena in the U.S.

According to a report in the NY Times, there are many motivations for the corporate gardens, including the ability to give an employee perk at a time bonuses are scarce.  According to Bruce Butterfield of the National Gardening Association, "It's almost as if they are saying, 'Yeah, we couldn't give you a pay increase and yeah, times are tough, but this is something we can do to help improve the quality of your life."

Whatever the companies' reasoning, the gardens are spreading on corporate campuses for the same reason they're spreading everywhere else: the increasing popularity of food gardening and people's desire for fresh, safe, healthy (and delicious!) food. And in the end, can anything that causes employees to pass a bowl of fresh homegrown snap peas around the company lunchroom be a bad thing?

To read "The Rise of Company Gardens," click here.



New Study: Vegetarian Diet Rapidly Reduces Toxins

Like a lot of you, I've always thought I felt better after eating fresh veggies for a few days, and here is another scientific study to back that up.  This new study by Korean scientists - conducted, interestingly, in a Buddhist Temple - shows that even short periods of eating a vegetarian diet can have a significant health impact.

According to the study results,  "People who adopted a vegetarian diet for just five days show reduced levels of toxic chemicals in their bodies. [Often so low as to be unmeasurable.]  In particular, levels of hormone disrupting chemicals and antibiotics used in livestock were lower.... The pilot study suggests that people may be able reduce their exposure to potentially dangerous chemicals through dietary choices, such as limiting consumption of animal products like meats and dairy."

Please note, of course, that the study involved people who were eating industrial meat, stuff that was filled with chemicals and antibiotics.  Nonetheless, the message about the powerful health benefits of a more vegetarian diet could not be clearer.

To read this about this fascinating new study on the power of veggies, courtesy of our friends at Grist online magazine, click here.

That's it for this week, everybody! Please help support Montgomery Victory Gardens - click here to make a 100% tax-deductible contribution online!

And don't forget to send us your feedback and ideas for stories or local food events we can promote, by emailing us at info@montgomeryvictorygardens.org.