The Montgomery County Master Gardeners will host a free Open House about Vegetable Gardening on Saturday, June 29, 2013, from 8:30 am - 1:00 pm, at the University of Maryland Extension/Montgomery County, Agricultural History Farm Park in Derwood.

Sessions include growing grapes and making wine, fall and winter vegetable gardening, pests and diseases, seed saving, and cooking with herbs. Attendees can purchase plants, have gardening questions answered, and tour the Demonstration Garden. (It's a great one!) No registration is required, and the open house is free, although a separate Food Preservation class on canning requires a $35 registration.

It will be a great day at the beautiful Agricultural History Farm to learn everything you need to know to grow great veggies. Click here for more information!

Last Container Food Gardening Class of the Season, June 12

Want to grow food but don't have a backyard or community garden plot? Well if you have a balcony, porch, deck or rooftop that gets 4-6 hours of sunlight a day, you can still grow great food in containers!

MVG will be presenting its last free workshop on container food gardening this coming Wednesday, June 12 at the Whole Foods Market in Silver Spring. Learn everything from container types and soil mixes to planting schedules, fertilization, and vertical growing techniques in this class, from 6:30 to 8pm. Class is free and registration is requested - click here for more info.

Brickyard Education Farm Fundraiser, June 14

As MVGers know, Brickyard Educational Farm is the only organic, seed-producing educational farm in our county - hence it's our favorite (!), and one that must be preserved and expanded.

MVG has been helping to fight the battle to save Brickyard (formerly Nick's Organic Farm) since the County Executive First announced his intention to turn it into soccer fields two years ago. Now that those plans have finally been abandoned, the struggle is in a new phase as we work to convince the County Board of Education to keep it as a farm, and use it for the county's school children.

The gala fundraiser this Friday, June 14 at the Glenview Mansion in Rockville will feature Wenonah Hauter, Executive Director of Food and Water Watch and author of the new book Foodopoly, with a star-studded honorary committee including MD Senators Frosh and Raskine, MD Delegates Cullison, Lee, Hixson, Reznick, Kelly, Simmons, Frick, Waldstreicher, Dumais, Hucker, and Robinson, and Councilmembers Elrich, Leventhal, and Ervin.

It should be a great time, and some volunteer opportunities (and discounted tickets) are still available. Come help support this great, one-of-a-kind farm in our county on Friday, June 14!

Mulch Your Garden Now!

We experienced our first heat wave of the summer last week, but more are sure to come, along with the long dry spells - so if you haven't mulched your garden yet, now is the time to do it!

Mulching the garden has two primary functions: suppressing weeds and retaining soil moisture. There are a variety of mulches you can use, see here for some ideas, but the best ones are organic mulches such as shredded leaf mulch or straw. (Not hay, which has seeds in it.) If you apply a thick layer of mulch, you will be amazed how much moister your garden soil will stay, how much happier your veggies will be - and how much less time you will have to spend watering your garden.

Water conservation is one of the key elements of creating sustainable, organic local food production into the future, as aquifers in our main food producing areas dry up, and climate change and human action fundamentally change the earth's global water cycle (the imbedded video in this article is particularly strong) making drought periods more likely and more intense. Start to garden the most water-savvy way by mulching your garden now!

Beekeepers Sue EPA Over Continuing Bee Die-Off

"Colony Collapse Disorder" - This unprecedented annual die-off of our nation's bee hives - 30% or more - started in 2005 and continues to this day, with some beekeepers reporting they lost a full half of their hives this past year. A group of beekeepers has now taken dramatic action, and joined environmental groups to sue the Environmental Protection Agency over its refusal to suspend insecticides widely suspected to be part of this carnage among our primary commercial pollinators.

At issue is the use of insecticides clothianidin and thiamethoxam - a class of neurotoxins known as neonicotinoids. While their manufacturer, Bayer, says everything is fine, scientists and beekeepers from all over the world say something very different. Countries such as Germany, Italy and France already ban or strictly limit their use, and earlier this year the European Food Safety Authority found that neonicotinoids pose an unacceptably high risk to bees and that industry science may be flawed. Experts also claim the pesticides are harmful to other bee species and beneficial insects such as butterflies and ladybugs.

The EPA rejected a legal petition to suspend use of the insecticides last July, and says instead that they are accelerating their "re-evaluation" of neonicotinoids... but that it will be several years before that process is complete. (Some acceleration, huh?) Meanwhile the bees, which are responsible for pollinating approximately one quarter to one third of all the food we eat, continue to die at alarming rates. We can only hope this lawsuit will help move the EPA to see the urgency of this situation, and act as if our food system depended on it - because it does.

Amber Waves of Frankenwheat - Unapproved GMO Crop Invades U.S. Fields

It's unusual for U.S. agricultural news to roil global markets, but that's exactly what happened in late May when an unapproved GMO wheat strain was found in an Oregon wheat field. Japan immediately cancelled a large order for U.S. wheat, and other nations, which take a much dimmer view of GMO crops than the U.S. government, are taking a closer look at their purchases.

To be extra clear, for all the GMO crops that have been approved for use in the U.S., this crop was NOT approved for commercial use - and Monsanto, the crop's "inventor," claims it ended it's testing program in Oregon in 2005. How then, did it end up in an Oregon field 8 years later?  The specific path may be unimportant - what is essential to realize is that when humans experiment with genetically engineering plants to resist herbicides, those plants can be very, very difficult to kill. (As comedian Stephen Colbert notes in this very funny, spot on segment.)

Opponents of GMOs argue that the crops will infect non-GMO and organic crops. Indeed, if Monsanto cannot even keep an unapproved strain it says it stopped testing years ago out of U.S. fields, why in the world would anyone expect to contain these crops when they are planted all over the country? We are already seeing the appearance of super weeds and the disastrous impact on some animal species, like Monarch butterflies, although the longer term effects on environmental and human health are largely unknown. (Here in the U.S., it appears, our government approves first, studies later if at all.)

As noted, other countries take a much more skeptical view of GMOs, so much so that Monsanto recently decided to stop lobbying the European Union altogether. Any guesses where that lobbying budget will be reapplied? If you haven't done it already, sign on to the Just Label It campaign. And to avoid GMOs yourself, eat fresh, whole and organic food whenever possible.

Know the Good Bugs From the Bad Bugs in Your Garden!

This is our friendly annual reminder: before you start killing bugs in your veggie garden, make sure you know what they are! A healthy organic garden invites beneficial insects into the garden, actually depends on them to control the pests, so knowing the good from the bad is truly important. And since we are now heading into "high bug" season, what better time to learn!

The best online source for information on the pests is at this Grow It Eat It page. And here is a good list of beneficials to know, and here is another. (And don't forget that insects look different in different stages - at right for instance is a ladybug larvae, which looks a little evil but is of course one of the best garden protectors you can have.) UMD's Home and Garden Information Center also has good information on bug diagnostics, and BugGuide.net is always a great one for checking out different photos. (Note - ALWAYS check more than one source to confirm your hypothesis: a Mexican Bean Beetle can look a lot like a ladybug on quick glance, and online photos are not always the best.)

And what's the best way to attract beneficials (including pollinators) to your garden? Everyone, all at once: PLANT MORE FLOWERS! :-)

Michael Pollan Strikes Another Blow for Good Food!

In this intriguing (if slightly lengthy) NY Times commentary, "Some of My Best Friends are Germs," the nation's most famous food author lays out the fascinating symbiotic relationship we humans have with the 100 trillion or so microbes that live inside us, the majority in our gut, and the untold trillions of microbes in the world around us.

And guess what? While the science is not all in yet, and the scientists doing it are much more modest in their pronouncements than those who are say, studying the human genome, it turns out some of the best things you can do for a healthy gut - which makes for healthy digestion, a healthy immune system and a whole lot more - is to eat whole grains, eat organic unprocessed foods, and eat lots of plants... and to spend time outdoors in the dirt growing them!

Oh, and here's one more study showing that community gardeners are in better shape their non gardeners. Do the benefits ever end??