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Montgomery Victory Gardens Weekly Update - June 10, 2010

In this update:

* A Chesapeake Urban Farming Summit, with Will Allen - Friday, June 18
* Update on our Campaign for School Vegetable Gardens
* Even More on the Benefits of School Vegetable Gardens!
* How To Prune and Stake Tomatoes
* "Dirty Dozen" Produce Carries More Pesticides
* Visit Maryland's Largest Organic Vegetable Farm


A Chesapeake Urban Farming Summit, with Will Allen - Friday, June 18

In collaboration with key partners across the Chesapeake area, Engaged Community Offshoots, Inc. is organizing and hosting Sowing Seeds Here and Now!: A Chesapeake Area Urban Farming Summit on Friday, June 18th, 2010 at the Henry A. Wallace Agricultural Research Center in Beltsville.

Will AllenThe keynote speaker and inspiration is Will Allen, CEO of Growing Power in Milwaukee, WI. Mr. Allen (pictured at right) is a pioneering urban farmer whose organization Growing Power does exemplary work and who was named a MacArthur "Genius" Fellow in 2008.  (He also just happened to grow up on a farm near Rockville.)

The purpose of this summit is to educate attendees about the significant benefits of urban agriculture, showcase viable projects across the county, help identify specific policies and ordinances required to encourage urban agriculture in our area, and to bring together healthy food system advocates and practitioners throughout the Chesapeake area, along with policy makers and agency directors, for future collaboration.

A few tickets are still available!  For more information on Sowing Seeds Here and Now!, including ticket purchase, click here.



Update on the Campaign for School Vegetable Gardens

In case you missed it, last week we publicly released our open letter to Montgomery County Public Schools Superintendent Jerry Weast, urging that he revoke the ban on vegetable gardens in our county's schools.

We haven't heard back from Superintendent Weast yet, but we have heard from several more organizations that want to sign on to the letter, including the Sugarloaf Citizens' Association, Crossroads Farmers Market, the Dickerson Community Association, Earth Day Network (which is national but does work in our county) and the Montgomery County Green Party.  The letter will remain open for organizational signatures through the summer as we continue to build community support for a vigorous program of vegetable gardens in our schools, so please forward this information to any Montgomery County groups, large or small, who you believe might be interested.  You can read the letter here.

Also, please take a moment to write a short letter to the editor to The Gazette, which published this article on our struggle for school vegetable gardens - we need every voice of support we can get!  Your letter should be no more than 200 words long, and can be emailed to letters@gazette.net - thanks!



Even More on the Benefits of School Vegetable Gardens!

We have previously mentioned - and will continue to mention - First Lady Michelle Obama's strong support for school vegetable gardens. 

Mettelo with MichelleIn this short article, National Gardening Association President Mike Metallo (pictured at right with Michelle Obama) recounts his day earlier this spring at the opening of the White House Kitchen Garden.  As he notes, "We talked about how much the First Lady believed in gardening as a tool to engage children in a healthier lifestyle. She views gardening as an integral part of her 'Let's Move' initiative to raise a healthier generation of kids."

I thought of this as I sat in on the meeting of the Montgomery County Obesity Prevention Strategy Group last week, and heard Acting MCPS Food Services Director Marla Caplon explain the challenges they had getting school kids to try fresh vegetables such as broccoli.  Yet there is a simple and profound answer for this - school vegetable gardens.  In fact, the USDA's newly released report on Local Food Systems points to a recent study by  McAleese and Rankin (2007), which found that "children exposed to a garden-based education curriculum reported greater fruit and vegetable consumption, even though no effort was made to improve the availability of local foods at the schools."

(This citation can be found on page 46 of 87 of this long but excellent study, which you can see here.  Thanks to MVGer Kristina for plucking out this gem for us!)

Kid in GardenThe NGA article also has this excellent chart on the benefits of school gardens. As President Metallo concludes, "is there any greater satisfaction - or 'greener' activity - a child can experience than smelling a flower from his or her own garden, plucking a carrot from the ground, or digging new potatoes from warm soil? What can make parents happier than hearing their child tell them they want chard for dinner?"

And hey -  when we finally win the fight for school vegetable gardens here in Montgomery County, maybe we can get USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack to come do a cheer for broccoli for us too!



How to Prune and Stake Tomatoes

Like many of you, I have for the past few years used those cylindrical metal cages to hold up my tomatoes.  It's easy as pie, the plants grow as bushy as they want, and for the most part it works just fine.

When conditions turn bad though, tomato cages can be problematic, specifically because of the bushiness of caged plants.  Many tomato diseases, such as the deadly late blight, grow and are transmitted most readily when the plants are wet, and the leaves of bushy caged plants stay wetter longer, since they block out both sun and wind.  (Yet another reason why you should avoid wetting the plant's leaves when watering them.)

staking tomatoes.2Like many commercial growers, a lot of home gardeners are starting to stake up their tomatoes in a different way.  The key thing to remember is that tomatoes are vining plants like beans or cukes, except that they don't attach themselves as they grow.  But if you give them something to grow on and tie them loosely as they go, a healthy tomato plant will grow up a mighty tall pole - or even a handing string.  And if you grow them this way, and prune accordingly, not only do you reduce the incidence of disease, you can also produce more tomatoes because you can plant them closer together.

This four minute video from Fine Gardening does an excellent job of explaining how to grow and prune tomatoes in this fashion.  And while you may not want or be able to build a tomato structure like you'll see here, it's easy enough to do something similar with materials you can find at hardware stores, lumber yards, etc.  (For a "pros and cons" listing of different staking methods, click here.)  I'm going to try one of these in combination with the cages this year - check it out!



"Dirty Dozen" Produce Carries More Pesticides

As Dr. Sanjay Gupta notes in a recent installment of CNN's "Toxic America" series, if you eat the recommended daily amounts of fresh fruits and vegetable, you are likely consuming as many as 10 different pesticides each day.  Yummy, huh?

Pesticides.1As a result, the Environmental Working Group has produced the "Dirty Dozen," a list of fruits and vegetables that carry an extra load of pesticides, even after washing, and that you should buy organic whenever you can.  Fortunately, many of these are ones you can easily grow yourself or buy from local organic producers, including lettuce, spinach, strawberries and potatoes.

While the government says - naturally - that consuming pesticides in low amounts doesn't harm you, some studies show a link between pesticides and cancer, hyperactivity, and nervous system disorders, while others suggest exposure could weaken immune systems.

Interestingly, there is relatively little data from long-term studies about the effects of eating food sprayed with pesticides. But as EWG's Amy Rosenthal wisely notes, "Pesticides are designed to kill things. Why wait for 20 years to discover they are bad for us?"

Some doctors also warn that children's growing brains are the most vulnerable toKids eating fruit pesticides in food.  "A kid's brain goes through extraordinary development, and if pesticides get into the brain, it can cause damage," said Dr. Philip Landrigan, chairman of the department of preventive medicine at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York.

Does this sound like anything you want to eat, or feed your children?  Click here for the "Dirty Dozen" and "Clean Fifteen" lists, and to watch the video segment with Dr. Gupta.

To go straight to the source, click here to receive EWG's 2010 Shopper's Guide to Pesticides, and hear a few more words of advice from Dr. Andrew Weil.

And don't forget - to make sure it's clean food, buy locally whenever possible, or grow it yourself!



Visit Maryland's Largest Organic Vegetable Farm

And while we're on organics, why not take a tour of One Straw Farm, Maryland's largest organic vegetable farm?

The NormansWhile it's a bit of a haul (the farm is above Baltimore), this "Field Day" sponsored by Future Harvest will be an excellent way to see organic farming done right, and on a large scale. Tended by Drew and Joan Norman since 1985, One Straw Farm supplies families, restaurants and wholesalers with certified-organic produce.  Drew will describe the challenges of organic growing as you tour the fields, hoop houses, and warehousing facility, while Joan will describe the diversified marketing approach they've adopted, selling at farmers' markets, restaurants, and grocery stores, and through her CSA.

Sounds like an awesome trip to me!  For more information, and to purchase tickets through Future Harvest, click here.



That's it for this week! 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.

Yours for clean, organic eating in 2010,


Gordon Clark,
Project Director
Montgomery Victory Gardens