It may look like winter outside, but it's time to start planning the growing season - welcome to the first MVG Update of 2012!

MVG logo on field
Montgomery Victory Gardens Update - January 21, 2012
  
 
In this update:

*  Seeds, Seeds and More Seeds!
*  Washington Gardener's 7th Annual Seed Exchange - Jan. 28
*  Support a Community Kitchen in Takoma Park - Your Help Needed!
*  Join the MVG Food Book Group
*  Learning Small Scale Farming as a Second Career - Starting Jan. 24
*  Retrospectives on the Food Year, 2011
*  Some Graph Paper, a Notebook and a Buddy

 

And for all the latest updates, don't forget to check out the MVG Facebook page - and "like" us while you're there!

 

Seeds, Seeds and More Seeds!

 

It is particularly cold and wintry out this weekend... which means there is no better time to be ordering seeds for the garden!

 

landreth catalogThere are still a bunch of independent seed companies out there (thank goodness), which sell lots of different varieties. Many of them allow you to order online, but leafing through a seed catalog is, for a gardener, about as much fun as you can have with your clothes on. (Makes me think of the olden days when - I'm told - folks used to anxiously await their Sears and Roebuck catalogs.) Seed catalogs vary widely, and some of them are as much works of art as they are great sources of information and products.

 

How to know which catalogs to get and order from? Thanks to MVG Advisory Board member Erica Smith and her colleagues at the Montgomery County Master Gardeners, you can check out excellent reviews of many catalogs before deciding which to get, and order from. Click here for reviews of the best seed catalogs around!

 

 

Washington Gardener's 7th Annual Seed Exchange - Saturday, 

Jan. 28

 

Speaking of seeds, what could be more fun than a seed exchange - no less one held Wash Gard magazineat on National Seed Sway Day, Saturday, January 28?

 

Washington Gardener Magazine is holding it's 7th Annual Seed Exchange next Saturday, January 28 at beautiful Brookside Gardens in Wheaton, from 12:30 - 4pm. The very modest $15 registration includes the seed exchange, door prizes, goodie bags, planting tips, and some great speakers: Ira Wallace of Southern Seed Exposure speaking on "Basic Seed Saving," and our own Jon Traunfeld, head of the MD Master Gardeners and Maryland Extension Service, on "Seed Starting Tips and Techniques for Hardening Transplants."  

Click here for more information and to register for the Washington Gardener's 7th Annual Seed Exchange. Space is limited so don't delay!

 

 

Support a Community Kitchen in Takoma Park - Your Help Needed!

 

A critical need exists in our county for commercial kitchen space, to address local hunger issues and to provide facilities for low- and moderate-income families who want to participate in micro-enterprise to help build the local food economy while supporting their families.

 

Takoma Park Presbyterian Church has such a kitchen, has used it in the past for micro-enterprise development. It is now in need of repairs, and they have partnered Commercial Kitchenwith Crossroads Farmers Market and the Takoma Park/Silver Spring Co-op, applying for grants to help make the kitchen operational again.

 

Only one obstacle stands in their way: an outdated county zoning regulation that forbids houses of worship in residential areas from producing food to be sold commercially. County Councilmember George Leventhal has sponsored legislation for a zoning amendment to permit this, but we need your help. The County Council will be voting on this on Tuesday, January 24, and they need to hear from you!

 

Food processing and the "value-added" foods they produce are a critical element in any self-reliant local food system. Please support our local community and in making this happen here in Montgomery County. Click here for more information, including contact info for Councilmembers - and please make sure to call yours this coming Monday, January 23, before the vote!

 

 

Join the MVG Food Book Group

 

Many of us love still love to read books (again, thank goodness), and books on food, whether on food culture, food system policy, or growing food yourself, are some of the most fun, interesting and inspiring books around. (The inspiration to start Animal. Vegetable, MiracleMontgomery Victory Gardens began with my own reading of Michael Pollan's modern classic, "The Omnivore's Dilemma" and Barbara Kingsolver's "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" and a couple other classics.)

 

This is one of the reasons MVG provides a selection of recommended food books at the end of each year, and MVGer Jackie DeCarlo had an even more inspired idea - why not start a food book group, where those of us with like minds can get together to discuss our favorite titles and share the inspiration.

 

And so it is happening! (If you've got a good idea, there's not a lot of red tape to cut through here at MVG... J) Please click here if you are interested in being part of an MVG Food Book Group (it's a very short survey to help us figure out when and where to meet). We'll gather responses over the next week, and then let you all know when the first group will meet.

 

 

Learning Small Scale Farming as a Second Career - Classes Start on Tuesday, Jan. 24

 

Do you sometimes sit at your current job, dreaming instead of growing beautiful food for your neighbors and fellow county residents? Do you have access to a small plot of land that you could do it on, but don't know quite where to start?

 

Well good news - you don't have to be 22 years old and going to farming school to become a small-scale farmer in Montgomery County! A great place to start is farmer with hoewith "Starting a Second Career in Local Food - Commercial Food Production and Marketing for the New Farmer on Small Acreage." This exciting eight week program, sponsored by the University of Maryland Extension - Montgomery County office, is designed to help interested individuals learn how to grow and market vegetable crops. Topics will include Marketing; Cover Crops - Planning and Rotation; Soils and Soils Management; Pest Management; Season Extension Technologies; Good Agricultural Practices - Production and Post Harvest Handling; Business Planning; and What Vegetables to Raise - Timing of Crop Planting and What Actually to Raise.

 

The classes will be taught by Chuck Schuster, the County Extension Director and Extension Educator on Commercial Horticulture (a guy who knows a lot!), cost a mere $15 for the whole 8 weeks, and will run on (mostly) Tuesday evenings, starting this coming Tuesday, January 24, from 6 - 8:45 pm at the Ag History Farm Park in Derwood.

 

Click here to check out this great opportunity (look on the upper right hand side for the link to the course description and other details) - we need more small scale farmers in Montgomery County, and the next one could be you!

 

 

Retrospectives on the Food Year 2011

 

As this is the first MVG Update of 2012, we want to take a moment to reflect on food movement developments in the year that just passed.

 

Occupy PastureHere in Montgomery County there were many developments, most of them good, from MVG, the MC Master Gardeners and Audubon Naturalist Society working together to create a new vegetable garden policy for the county's public schools to the birthing of the new Montgomery County Food Council. And some struggles continue, such as the campaign to save Nick's Organic Farm.

 

On the national level, it was more of a mixed bag, as we saw both the continued growth of the good food revolution, but also a lot more push back, including a Congress that refused to improve school lunch standards and declared pizza a vegetable. Courtesy of Grist and Huffington Post, here are three retrospectives on the year in food that was 2011.

 

The Good Food News of 2011

The Bad Food News of 2011

Top Six Food Politics Lessons Learned in 2011

 

 

Some Graph Paper, A Notebook and a Buddy

 

There are a multitude of techniques and tools to optimize the garden harvest, and the fun. From my own experience, here are three that don't get mentioned often enough - they are all as low-tech as you can get, but can make a big difference in the experience, particularly if you start them now.

 

Graph paper - A piece of paper and a pencil, who would have thunk of it? A few sheets of graph paper are one of the best tools around for planning your garden, making sure you have the room to plant what you want to plant, and for knowing notebookwhere you planted things last year (which is critical to crop rotation, technique #1 in organic disease control).

 

A notebook - So when did you start your lettuce seeds last year, how long did it actually take those leeks to grow (longer then the package said!), and what was that great fertilizer someone mentioned to you? A good memory is helpful, but if you are really getting into food gardening, nothing beats a good notebook!

 

A buddy - Our lives are busy, many of us garden alone, and even in community gardens there is often too little community. Get yourself a garden buddy - even if you do no more than order some seeds together, share some gardening tips and the occasional fresh veggies, it makes growing your own food a lot more fun. (And yes, Joe, I ordered our seeds today!)

 

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It's still January, but this year is already shaping up to be a great (and busy) one for building the local food movement here in Montgomery County. Thanks for sharing these emails with your friends, continuing to forward events and ideas for articles to us, and for doing everything you can to support (and grow!) local food in 2012!

 

Yours in seed ordering, and swapping,

 

Gordon Clark, Project Director
Montgomery Victory Gardens

p.s. -  Would you like to help support the MVG Updates you love, and which help spread the good food revolution in our county?  They may seem free, but our email marketing provider, Constant Contact, actually costs MVG $40 a month to send these out.  Click here to sponsor one month of the MVG Updates.  (...or half a month, any contributions are most gladly accepted!)