Public Hearings for New Community Gardens This Week

Our indefatigable community garden building friends at the Montgomery County Parks Department are at it again!

They have identified four new locations for community gardens, and are holding public hearings to gauge community support for the projects.  While one hearing has already passed (sorry!), the three coming up are in Rockville on Monday, November 1 (tomorrow!), Gaithersburg on Thursday, November 4, and Silver Spring on Monday, November 8.  Please show up if you are interested in getting plots in these gardens, and/or want to show your support for the Parks community garden program!

You can get more information on the meetings here.

You might also note that three of the sites are Montgomery County Public School system property.  While none of them have actual schools on them (more updates on that campaign to come shortly), the school system is inviting schools around the sites to participate, and it's definitely a major step forward that was wrought by the efforts of MVG, the Master Gardeners, and all of you!  Thanks for that help, and keep your eyes open for future updates!

A Wonderful MVG Benefit This Past Sunday!

This is a special thanks to all of you who attended and/or supported the MVG benefit, "The Future of Food and Farming in Montgomery County" this past Sunday, October 24.  The weather was perfect, Blueberry Garden Farms spectacular, the singing of "emma's revolution" inspired and transformative (as always!), and there was an excellent presentation on the main topic (or so I'm told!). More than 50 people attended, and a great time was had by all.

You can click here for a few photos from the event.

With thanks again to all of you for this great event, to Blueberry Gardens Farm for hosting us, for all the businesses that contributed a bounty of delicious food (The French Confection, Good Earth Market, Heyser's Farm Market, Elizabeth Johnsen Caterers, The Country Market), and especially to our volunteers that made it happen: Emily Piccirillo, Meredith Epstein, David Greene, Marvin Shapiro, Andrew Thompson, and most especially Ellen Atkinson of the Friends House in Sandy Spring.  We are looking forward to carrying forth in 2011 on the great work MVG has started this past year!

More Media on MVG and School Gardens

It wouldn't be a good week without a couple more news stories on MVG and/or the school gardens issue, right?  Well here are a couple more from this past week!

Click here to read "Private school vegetable gardens are growing in Montgomery County"

And click here to read "Good Food Movement Gaining Momentum in Montgomery County", which reports on the MVG benefit last week.

Think About Growing "Exotics" in Your Food Garden Next Year!

Have you thought about growing misome, mouse melons or malabar spinach in your garden?

Here, in a Grow It Eat It blog post from MVG Advisory Board member Erica Smith, are some excellent reasons to consider these "exotic" vegetable varieties, which are exotic only because most of us have never tried them - or heard of them.

Remember that virtually all vegetables were at some point exotics, and what may seem unusual to us might be standard fare for the more recent immigrants to our country.  (Remembering that all our forbearers were immigrants at one point!)  They are also often beautiful plants with delicious flavors that enhance our diet and our dinner table, and that many of them grow very well in our area - all the more important as our climate grows warmer. Malabar spinach, as one example, grows extremely well during hot summers, long after the more typical spinach varieties have bolted and died.

All in all, an excellent post on a very important topic, as we all continue to figure out how to grow more of our own food.  Click here to read "Why I Grow Exotics" - and to add some of your own favorites!

Taxpayer Money for Pro-Pesticide Campaign?

Incredibly enough, the California Department of Food and Agriculture has awarded $180,000 of federal grant money to an agribusiness front group to "generate more balanced media reporting and change public perception about the safety of produce when it comes to pesticide residues."  The group claims that information from advocacy groups - some of which we have printed in this column - is false and misleading, and that overall there are few studies on the effects of dietary exposure to pesticides - i.e., eating food sprayed with them.

Well, first off, isn't it odd that there are so few studies of this seemingly critical health issue, and why in the world would you use that as a reason to eat pesticide residue?  And second, there are at least a few such studies, and guess what they all show?

Of course when you spray known toxins and carcinogens such as chloropicrin, methyl bromide, 1,3-dichloropropene, and metam sodium on food, what can you expect when people eat that food?  As one clean food advocate noted, the ending "-cide" means "to kill" - how many studies do you need to figure out these substances probably harm human beings as well?

As disturbing as this report is, it's still a sign of something very positive - the good food movement has gained enough traction that agribusiness feels they need to launch campaigns like this.

Click here to read "Industry Front Group Gets Taxpayer Money to Convince You to Eat Pesticide-Laden Food."   And thanks to MVG Advisory Board member Niki Lewis for passing this one on!

A Video Message from Mother Earth - Organic Matters!

And if reading about studies isn't your thing, how about this fun and extremely well produced video message from Mother Earth - Organic Matters!  (And who knew Mother Earth had such excellent taste in music?)

Check it out and forward it to your friends and family who are beginning to ask their own questions about organic food.

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That's it for this week, folks!  Hope you're enjoying this beautiful fall weather, and still getting great harvests from your gardens - it's the perfect time to be growing more greens!

For the Montgomery Victory Gardens Team,

Gordon Clark, Project Director