Food Gardening Workshops Galore in April!

Spring has finally arrived, and the season of food gardening workshops is also in full tilt. There is a great selection of workshops this month, join us at one or more! (Please note: unless listed otherwise, workshops are led by yours truly, Master Gardener and Master Composter Gordon Clark of MVG.)

Monday, April 15 - Planting Schemes for Vegetable Gardens, at beautiful Brookside Gardens in Wheaton. Hosted by the Silver Spring Garden Club and led by Elizabeth Olson, a Maryland Certified Professional Horticulturist and Specialist in Composting with the Maryland Nursery & Landscape Association, this workshop will explore different ways to maximize the space and yield of vegetables gardens, including succession and relay cropping, inter-cropping, and crop rotation. Starts at 8pm, free, click here for more info.

Tuesday, April 16 - Container Food Gardening, also at Brookside Gardens in Wheaton. Even without a garden, you can still grow beautiful food on a deck, porch, roof or even window sill, as long as you've got 5 hours of direct sunlight a day. All the basics of organic container gardening, and plenty of fun examples. From 6:30-8pm, registration required, click here and go to page 12 for info.

Wednesday, April 17 - Essentials of Organic Food Gardening, at the Whole Food Market in Rockville. This soup to nuts workshop is for both beginnings and intermediate gardeners, it will include everything from planting schedules and methods (seeds vs. starts, raised beds or not, succession planting, etc.) to soil fertility, the mysteries of compost, and bug and disease ID and prevention. From 6:30-8pm, workshop is free with RSVP requested - click here for more information.

Thursday, April 18 - Essential of Organic Food Gardening, at the Whole Foods Market of Silver Spring.  Same workshop as above, repeated down county! From 6:30-8pm, free with RSVP requested - click here for info.

Saturday, May 20 - Intensive Vegetable Gardening for the Suburban Gardener, at the Germantown Campus of MCCC, and led by Master Gardener, Vegetable Specialist and MVG Advisory Board member Erica Smith. Discover ways to maximize your vegetable yield and make the most of the gardening space you have. The class will cover soil preparation, succession planting, vertical gardening strategies, and more. For beginning as well as intermediate vegetable gardeners. From 9:30 AM to 12:00 PM, cost is $25 + $65 fee. (Over 60 pay only the fee) The class will be held in Room 111 of the Science and Applied Studies Building. Course #: 35274 Call 240-567-5188 to register, or click here.

Tuesday, April 23 - Introduction to Food Growing for Kids!, at Whole Foods Market in Rockville. Young people who grow food get good exercise, eat (and enjoy!) more fresh fruits and vegetables, build social skills and develop a deep sense of environmental stewardship. This hands-on workshop for young people aged 6 - 11 has all the basics of food growing, including how to start plants, water and fertilize them, and safety tips for the garden. Participants will also get to take newly planted seeds home with them to watch them sprout and grow! (Note: parent or guardian must attend with child.) From 4-4:45pm, free with RSVP requested - click here.

Panera Bread Does a Great Thing

As you know, we live in a country with a broken food system, where 40% of the food we produce gets thrown out at the same time 1 out of every 6 children goes hungry. A nation where we see regular examples of callous disregard for food, the people who produce it, and hunger - here's a recent story from Georgia, where police actually prevented hundreds of people from taking food left on the street after a grocery store owner was evicted. What happened to the food? Thrown out, of course.

In the midst of such craziness, it's wonderful to see corporate initiatives such as Panera Cares Community Cafe. Just expanded to 48 locations nationwide, the Panera Cares Community Cafe invites customers to pay what they want (or can) for their meals. Pretty cool, huh?!

The program started when company founder Ron Shaich decided to give hungry people a place to eat with dignity, even if they couldn't afford the listed prices. And so far the experiment is working out great, with the nonprofit cafes earning 70-80 percent of the revenue earned by their for-profit counterparts.

We can only hope such generous, caring, and ultimately wise community food system experiments multiple. In the meantime, way to go, Panera!

Become a School Garden Champion!

The school garden movement is gaining momentum in Montgomery County. But how do you go about starting one at your school, and where can you learn the skills?

Whole Foods and Audubon Naturalist Society are stepping forward to meet this need, presenting three workshops this spring on how to be a school garden champion. In these workshops you will learn how to get started; how to obtain funding; the basics of organic gardening; how to follow MCPS policies, and loads of fun lesson ideas.

These workshops are designed for both parents and teachers, and will be held three times around the county: April 15 from 7-8:30 pm at the Rockville Whole Foods Market, April 22 from 7-8:30 pm at the Kentlands Whole Foods Market, and May 22 from noon-1:30 pm at the Silver Spring Whole Foods Market. RSVPs are requested. Click here for more information - and join the school garden movement!

Monsanto Wins A Round on GMOs (but the fight ain't over yet...)

Two weeks ago we sent you an alert regarding the "Monsanto Protection Act," a rider inserted in a Continuing Resolution (to fund the U.S. government for six months) that essentially grants Monsanto immunity from federal courts. The rider would force the USDA to allow continued planting of any GMO crop under court review, even if the judge finds it was improperly approved, giving backdoor approval for any new genetically engineered crops that could be potentially harmful to human health or the environment. Sen. John Tester had offered an amendment to strip the rider. (Sen. Tester, from Montana, is an organic farmer - and the only farmer in the Senate.) Thanks to all of you who made calls on this issue.

Regrettably the Continuing Resolution passed with the rider intact, and Sen. Tester's amendment was not voted on. While the rider was added "anonymously" (see this Jon Stewart clip for a hilarious take on this miscarriage of democracy), it is our own Sen. Barbara Mikulski who chairs the Appropriations Committee that allowed the rider to be added, and who then refused to allow a vote on Sen. Tester's amendment. (Sen. Mikulski's office can be reached through the Capitol Switchboard at 202-224-3121 - give her a call and let her know how you feel about this.)

In the meantime, more exposes are being written about Monsanto, more lawsuits are being filed against them, and more states continue to join the campaign to label GMOs. Why does this one company - which also created infamous products like DDT and Agent Orange - inspire such animus in the good food revolution? Stay tuned to this update for a longer, upcoming MVG article, "The Case Against Monsanto."

America's High Fat, High Sugar, High Salt It's-Gonna-Kill-Us-All Diet

Much has been written recently about our terrible national diet in the U.S. - a high sugar, high fat, high salt diet that is prompting a virtual epidemic of childhood and adult obesity, diabetes, heart disease and other diet related conditions. This dangerous (largely processed) food supply is also the reason more and more people are buying local, buying organic, or growing their own.

If you don't have time to read the books, here are a couple of quick videos that will keep you laughing while you learn about this situation:

Award-winning New York Times reporter Michael Moss discusses his new book, "Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us," in this interview with Jon Stewart of The Daily Show. Hear how Moss explored deep inside the laboratories where food scientists calculate the "bliss point" of sugary drinks or the "mouth feel" of fat, and use advanced technology to make it irresistible and addictive.

And in this interview with Stephen Colbert of the Colbert Report, Robert H. Lustig, M.D., Professor of Pediatrics at UCSF and President of the Institute for Responsible Nutrition discusses his new book, Fat Chance: Beating the Odds Against Sugar, Processed Food, Obesity and Disease. Don't think sugar can be poison if you eat too much? Watch this interview, and you might change your mind...

Ode to My Winter Spinach Patch

I know I've mentioned it before in this space, but I want to brag again on my winter spinach patch - if for no other reason then to get you jazzed to do some fall and winter gardening yourself this year!

Planted in early October, this 4x10 foot plot has been producing fresh, delicious, super healthy spinach since December - and it is still going strong, as this picture from last week demonstrates. By happy accident, I planted two complimentary varieties: an arrowhead leaf variety (Python), which did great during the late fall and winter, and a savoy leaf type (Carmel), which is now coming into its own just as the Python is starting to wane. I had to put a cover over it on some of the coldest days (although spinach is super cold-hardy), but with very little effort, my family and friends have enjoyed fresh sautéed spinach and spinach salad for the past 4 months, with at least one more to go. It can't be beat!

How can you grow a winter garden like this? Keep your eyes peeled for MVG's Fall and Winter Food Gardening workshops, coming later this spring and early summer!

The Question Is Not How to Feed the World

How to feed a world where more than a billion people go hungry is a perennial question asked by proponents of industrial agriculture, and one which dogs the efforts of those trying to build a more local, sustainable and organic food system. But can you feed the world this way?, we are always asked.

While there are plenty of studies and experts who are increasingly answering "yes, you can," (see this letter to the Wall Street Journal from our own Nick Maravell, operator of Nick's Organic Farm and a member of the prestigious National Organics Standards Board), food author Shannon Hayes offers an intriguing counter-proposition in this recent article: what if we're asking the wrong question? What if continually seeking to "feed the world" actually leads to methods that create greater hunger and escalating environmental destruction. Food for thought, indeed....

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That's it for now! I hope you're out there planting in this newly warm (but not scorching hot) weather - and do join us at one of our workshops this month to learn even more!

Educationally yours,