Fall and Winter Food Gardening Workshops This Month!

It may seem counter-intuitive since we've just started the real heat of summer, but July is the ideal month to begin planning, ordering, and planting for your fall and winter food garden! And if you don't do fall and winter gardening yet, you need to start - there is less heat, less bugs, less disease and less weeds, but every bit of the delicious produce you'd expect during warmer months.

Most of the cool season plants that we grow in the spring - lettuces, spinach, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, chard, beets, collards, carrots, cabbage, potatoes, Asian greens and more - can also be grown in the fall and early winter, with results that can be the same or even better. (In addition to the decreased pest and disease pressures, cool fall days generally make for crisper, tastier harvests than hot late spring or early summer days - and some veggies, such as collards, even prefer a light frost for optimum sweetness.) But with diminishing daylight the plants take longer to mature, so you need to get a jump on them during the summer.

Some seeds, like carrots and beets (as well as seed potatoes), can be started outside. Many others are preferably started inside or in more controlled conditions where the tender young plants won't roast in the July and August heat. The Grow It Eat It Planting Calendar for Central Maryland is still your best overall resource for planting times in central Maryland. We also recommend Elliot Coleman's excellent book Four Season Harvest.

And above all, we welcome you to join us at the following two MVG Fall and Winter Food Gardening workshops this month, where you can learn everything you need to know about starting - or improving - your own fall and winter food garden! The first class will be held at Brookside Gardens this coming Tuesday, July 9, from 6:30 - 8pm, contact Brookside for registration details. The second class - basically the same as the first, but without the PowerPoint presentation - will be held at the Silver Spring Whole Foods Market on Thursday, July 25, also from 6:30 - 8pm - click here for details. See what all the buzz is about, and join the cool weather "front" of the good food revolution!

Montgomery County's 24th Annual Farm Tour Days - July 27 & 28

There has been a dramatic decline in the number of farms in Montgomery County over the past few decades - a decline some are working to reverse - but there are still some wonderful, diverse, small and family farms close by. And there is no better way to show your support for them, or beat the heat while having a great family day in the country, then by visiting one or more during our annual Montgomery County Farm Tour Days. Saturday and Sunday, July 27 and 28th, from 10am - 4pm.

Some of our county's most venerable farms, such as Butler Farm, Lewis Orchards and Heyser Farm are joined by newer operations such as Red Wiggler, Rockland, and even a couple of animal sanctuaries. (Such as Poplar Spring, which my wife and I visited last year and enjoyed immensely.) So help celebrate Montgomery County's agricultural heritage on this 24th Annual Farm Tour Day - spend a day or two in the country petting farm animals, having lunch by a scenic pond, and purchasing fresh fruits, vegetables, and flowers while learning where they come from! For more information on participating farms and other details, click here.

Montgomery County's "New Farmer Pilot Program"

Speaking of efforts to establish new farmers in the county, both the Washington Post and the Montgomery County Gazette featured articles on Montgomery County's "New Farmer Pilot Program" this past week.

Spurred on by a federal grant, this fledgling county program does a number of things: it provides instructional classes, matches aspiring farmers with farmer mentors, and attempts to get new farmers a piece of land to work.

You can read in the Post article, "Montgomery  cultivates a new crop of farmers," about the challenges of farming: as one program participant noted "I've spent my life in kitchens that are 130 degrees and I'm used to being on my feet for 12 hours at a time, but there is no workout like farming." (They all have second jobs, of necessity.) The biggest challenge, however, is getting the land to farm. And the part of the county program designed to help new farmers obtain land is, unfortunately, ending after the 2012-2103 season (as noted briefly in the Gazette article).

It is hoped that this part of the effort can be continued through Montgomery Countryside Alliance's Landlinks program, and we know that the UMD Extension Office in Montgomery County will continue to offer classes. We can only hope that these and other efforts will keep the trend of new farmers going - because the handful who have started under the current program deserve more support... including more new farmers to join them!

Attack of the Zombie Deer!

If your food gardens have been ravaged by deer this year, you are not alone. From the southern part of the county (indeed, from inside the DC border) to Rockville and north, reports of deer attacks on gardens have been regular this year. And they are eating things that I, and other gardeners, have not seen them eat before, like tomatoes and potatoes. (I guess they didn't get the memo that nightshade is poisonous - although here is some interesting research suggesting that herbivores might actually find nightshades and other toxic plants to be addictive.)

As one gardener put it, "we have millions of deer, they're voracious, mindless, and they can't be stopped: zombie deer."  (And yet they look so adorable!)

So what CAN you do to stop them, short of getting a shotgun? Many noxious (to deer, anyway) substances have been tried, including garlic, capsacin, mothballs, coyote urine and flashing CDs. They have worked for some, and not for others. Ultimately, a physical barrier is the most reliable way to keep them out - personally I don't like the "prison look" in my garden, but I am even more sick of losing my crops to the zombies. Smaller crops such as beets can be effectively protected with chicken wire, mesh or even row cover, but for larger crops and the garden as a whole, deer fence is the preferred option.

Be aware, if you install deer fence, that deer have been known to clear an 8 foot fence (which is the generally recommended height). It may take the LeBron James of the deer world, as one friend put it, but it has already happened to one Master Gardener in the county this year. Some are going so far as to install an electric fence baited with peanut butter to attract the deer, and then zap them till they learn to stay away. There are a number of online sources for deer fencing, but you can start by looking at NIMBY Deer Fencing. Good luck with the zombies!

Could Your Straw Be Toxic?

Straw is one of the preferred organic mulches and compost ingredients recommended by Master Gardeners, this one included. And now there's a problem with it.

Clopyralids are a particularly persistent herbicide used in a variety of applications, including commercial production of grains such as wheat. So persistent, in fact, that residues of clopyralids can be found in grass clippings, straw, animal bedding, and finished compost - and even small amounts of it can be toxic to sensitive plants such as tomatoes. Clopyralids have been banned from certain uses in Washington and California as a result.

Clopyralids are allowed for use in Maryland, though, and the UMD Home and Garden Information Center (HGIC) has confirmed that there is at least the potential that commercially purchased straw could contain levels of clopyralid residue toxic to some plants in the home garden. While the odds of that are small, the fact that it even has to be considered is sorely distressing, and yet another manifestation of an chemical-dependent industrial food system gone off the rails.

What can you do? You can use different organic mulches, such as leaf mulch or grass clippings. You can purchase your straw from an organic farmer. (Nick's Organic Farm in Potomac should have some available.) Or, at the very least, we strongly recommend that everyone who purchases straw commercially ask the supplier very direct questions about where it came from and what was used on it. They are generally happy to talk about it - you might even end up talking with the farmer who grew it, as I did once - and at the very least everyone involved needs to be alerted to this dangerous problem. Yet another reason for more organic farms in our county, right?

MCPS School Garden Survey Complete!

Not to let the cat out of the bag before any hoped for media coverage, but the MVG survey of veggie gardens in MCPS schools is virtually complete, and being presented at the next meeting of the MC Food Council's School and Youth Garden Working Group.

A wide range of food-growing experiences are being offered in our schools, from salad tables to raised beds to greenhouses, and strong support for these efforts is coming from a number of groups, including PTA's, the Audubon Naturalist Society, and the county's Whole Foods Markets.

Our current count is that 32 schools are growing food in one fashion or another in Montgomery County - more than we previously thought (or knew), but still a small fraction of the county's 218 public schools, and far less than in much poorer districts such as Washington, D.C.

We will release the full list later this month, and will be using it to strengthen the current efforts and encourage new ones. And to encourage more school system support as well - with a $2 billion + budget, we believe there can and should be more resources available to meet this critical educational need.

Community Gardens Sprouting Throughout the Northeast

My wife and I recently took a short vacation up north to see friends, and as is my wont I stop to look at local food growing operations whenever I can. Delightfully, they are almost everywhere you look.

One stop was at The Produce Project in Troy, NY, part of New York's Capital District Community Gardens, which works to reduce the impact of poor nutrition on public health by organizing community gardens, providing healthy food access, and offering nutritional and horticultural education for all ages. This beautiful community garden overlooks downtown Troy and the Hudson River (can't really see it in the photo, I know...), and provides dozens of high school students with year round educational and employment opportunities growing food.

An equally delightful location was Putney Community Garden in Putney, VT. It was a bit of a surprise to see this - one kind of assumes folks in small Vermont towns have patches of land to grow on - but it is certainly in keeping with the state's focus on fresh, local food, and the garden was large, beautiful and immaculately maintained.

Just a shout out to community food gardeners everywhere - and to let those of us in Montgomery County know we are far from alone!

That's it for now! Keep sending us those tips and ideas for stories, and make sure to drink plenty of water when you are out in the garden during the heat.  Hope to see you at one of the great Montgomery County food events coming up this month!

Locally yours,