It's Seed Starting Time!!

Just as January is the month for going through seed catalogs, February and March are the months to get those seeds started! Starting seeds indoors is great fun, can save you money while adding variety to your crop, and can give you a 4, 6 or even 8 week head start on the season.

We had a great time at our seed starting class last Monday, with 45 avid gardeners (including Ibti Vincent, pictured at right with yours truly and a couple trays of starts) joining us for a spirited demonstration and discussion at Eastern Village CoHousing in Silver Spring. (Thanks again to Eastern Village for their gracious hospitality!)

And not to worry if you missed the class - there is plenty of great seed starting information available on the Grow It Eat It website, including a number of very helpful instructional videos. And for those of you in the northern part of the county, there will be another seed starting class - Saturday March 3, from 10:30am-12Noon at the Poolesville Presbyterian Church, 17800 Elgin Rd., Poolesville, 20837. (Preregistration requested, email Terri Pitts at terri.pitts[at]gmail[dot]com.)  

Ladies and gentlemen, start your seeds!

Green Matter Symposium - Friday, Feb. 24

Brookside Gardens, the jewel of our county Parks system, is finishing a three-year focus on food in their annual Green Matters Symposium - and the concluding symposium will be a doozy!

"Green Matters: Urban Farming Pioneers," from 8:30am - 4pm this coming Friday, Feburary 24, will highlight innovative approaches to feeding the world's population. Featured speakers include Dickson Despommier, Columbia University Emeritus Professor and author of The Vertical Farm: Feeding the World in the 21st Century; Darrin Nordahl, landscape architect and author of Public Produce; and Ben Flanner, Head Farmer/CEO and co-founder of the Brooklyn Grange Rooftop Farm. It will also feature very special guest Kathleen Merrigan, Deputy Secretary of the USDA, who will speak on the "Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food" initiative.

This year's spectacular Green Matters will kindle your inner urban farmer and entice you to think about food production in wholly different ways - and there are still a few seats available. At $89 it ain't exactly cheap, but it's worth every penny, and it supports Brookside Gardens as well. (I know I'll be there.) Click here to register today!

MVG Food Book Club - Monday, March 5

With thanks to all those who expressed interest, we would like to invite everyone to the first meeting of the MVG Food Book Club on Monday, March 5, 6:30-8:30 p.m. at the Silver Spring Library, 8901 Colesville Rd., Silver Spring, MD 20910.

For our first book we'll be reading Slow Food Nation: Why Our Food Should Be Good, Clean, and Fair by Carlo Petrini, the charismatic founder of the international Slow Food Movement. Slow Food Nation is available for loan in the Montgomery County library system. You can also ask your favorite bookstore to order it, or purchase it online.

At the club meeting we'll introduce ourselves, discuss some thought provoking questions about the book (which will be posted in advance), and consider how to continue the MVG Food Book Club, including suggestions for future books to read, meeting locations and dates. For questions, more info, and to RSVP, please email Jackie DeCarlo - jacq.decarlo [at] gmail [dot]com - as soon as possible.

Please come even if you aren't able to finish the book, and please email Jackie even if you can't make it but are interested in future book club meetings - or a possible online discussion to accompany our meetings.

Food Gardening Classes in Germantown - March and April

As part of the Lifelong Learning Institute, Montgomery County Community College will be offering three Saturday morning (9:30 to 12Noon) classes at their Germantown campus this spring:

March 10: ILL488 Intensive Vegetable Gardening - grow more food by using techniques to get the most out of a limited space. Emphasis on soil preparation, succession planting, and vertical growing methods.

March 24: ILL489 Container Vegetable Gardening - learn how best to use containers to grow salad greens, vegetables, etc. by making the best use of soil mixes, watering methods, etc. Take home seedlings to get started!

April 7: ILL490 Techniques for Extending the Growing Season - learn all about cold frames, tunnels, and other methods for keeping your garden going into the fall and winter. Now is the time to plan ahead so you'll be ready to make the most of your garden!

These are great classes, and all are taught by qualified Montgomery County Master Gardeners. Registration fee is $65 per class. Click here and type in the course name in "Keyword Search" for more info and to register.

USDA Finalizes New, Healthier School Lunch Standards

As this review of the new school lunch standards from Grist notes, there are 32 million reasons to be happy about this change - namely the 32 million children participating in the National School Breakfast and Lunch program, who will now be getting much healthier food.

Despite the best efforts of Congress to screw this up (remember last fall when they declared pizza a vegetable and mandated that French fries be served five days a week?), the USDA has taken a giant leap forward toward healthy food for kids. The new standards will, among other changes:

* Double the amount of fruits and vegetables offered;

* Increase the variety of vegetables served to include dark greens, red/orange, and legumes;

* Increase offerings of whole grain-rich foods

* Limit calories based on the age of children being served, and

* Reduce the amounts of saturated fat, trans fats, and sodium.

Many of these new standards are, incredibly enough, the first of their kind for school lunches in the U.S. We will be following up to see how the new rules will be advanced in Montgomery County Public Schools, but in the meantime, here is a big MVG thanks and props to First Lady Michelle Obama, who was instrumental in getting the new rules written by ensuring that the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act passed in 2010. Thanks Michelle!

Organic Farmers Take Monsanto to Court

This is a David and Goliath battle if ever there was one. The corporate biotech giant Monsanto, whose patented genes are in more than 80 percent of the soybeans, corn, cotton, sugar beets, and canola grown in the U.S., is being sued by 83 plaintiffs representing non-GMO seed producers, farmers, and agricultural organizations - the Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association.

At issue is Monsanto's habit of harassing and suing family farmers for copyright infringement when their genetically manipulated plants - the pollen of which can travel, like other pollen, through the air - is found in the farmer's fields. While Monsanto goes to great lengths to present itself as the friend of the farmer, according to the Public Patent Foundation, between 1997 and April 2010 Monsanto filed 144 lawsuits against farmers for patent infringement. They also "investigate" more than 500 farms each year, a highly intimidating action on its own.

"We want nothing to do with Monsanto. We don't want their seed. We don't want their technology. We don't want their contamination," says Jim Gerritsen (pictured at left), an organic farmer from Maine and president of OSGATA. (Here's a video of the very eloquent and impassioned Mr. Gerritsen speaking to the Occupy Movement Farmers March in New York.)  The lawsuit is intended to prevent future Monsanto lawsuits against farmers.

The suit was heard in Federal Court in New York City on Jan. 31, and we'll know by March whether or not the judge will let the case proceed.  We'll keep you posted.

As Climate Warms, Hardiness Zone Maps are Updated

Do gardeners know something presidential candidates do not?

While it's become common among some political leaders to deny the existence of climate change and global warming, long time gardeners know full well that our climate is changing, and getting warmer. And the USDA finally caught up with what growers know, changing the plant hardiness zone maps for the first time in 15 years. (Interestingly, agriculture department officials questioned for this Washington Post article, by Post gardening columnist Adrian Higgins, went out of their way to state this this map, which clearly shows a changing climate, "is not a tool to measure climate change.")

These changes do not signal the need for wholesale changes in your gardening habits just yet, and summer heat and humidity are just as important as our warming winters. (In fact, last July was the hottest in Washington DC history.) But commercial growers are starting to grow some unusual foods for our area. And just last week a very experienced and credentialed horticulturalist shared his hunch that winter was largely over - and suggested that I could safely plant my peas now... in mid-February. Talk about your early crops.

The Coolest Anti-Factory Farming Ad Ever   

I only caught a few minutes of the Grammy awards here and there, but I was lucky enough to catch this new commercial from Chipotle that debuted that night.

Chipotle is one of a growing number of restaurants that is embracing local, fresh, and humane ingredients on their menus - food that was raised with respect for the animals, the environment, and the farmers. (You can read their statement on "Food with Integrity" here.)

As part of their commitment, Chipotle produced "Back to the Start,"a two minute animated film with Coldplay's haunting song "The Scientist," performed by family farming advocate Willie Nelson, as the soundtrack.   Whatever marketing boost it may give Chiptole's, this short film, which depicts the life of a farmer as he slowly turns his family farm into an industrial animal factory before seeing the errors of his ways and opting for a more sustainable future, is certainly one of the most emotionally touching, powerful, and all-around brilliant repudiations of factory farming I have ever seen on TV or anywhere else. Check it out - and forward it to your friends!

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Wow - mid February and it's beginning to look, and feel, like spring.  Sigh - well, at least there'll be lots of time to grow beautiful food this year.  Thanks for sharing these emails with your friends, forwarding any events and/or ideas for articles to us, and for doing everything you can to support (and grow!) local food in 2012!

Yours in starting seeds, and going to those classes,