New at the Market: Plant Clinics from Master Gardeners

This year, Casey & Dave Kneipp and other members of the Cheverly Garden Club will present monthly plant clinics at the Market. Plant Clinic will have a table at the first Market of each month (June 13th, July 11th, August 8th, September 12th, and October 10th ). Bring your plants, get advice and tips...this is a great benefit to our community and we're grateful that our local Master Gardeners are bringing it to the Market!

Master Gardeners come from all walks of life, but they all share a common interest in gardening and sharing their knowledge with others. Their mission? To educate Maryland residents about safe, effective, sustainable horticultural practices that build healthy gardens, landscapes, and communities. The Maryland Master Gardener Program was started in 1978 to provide outreach education to the public on subjects related to environmental horticulture and Integrated Pest Management. The program guides a large corps of dedicated volunteers – a driving force for helping the University of Maryland Extension Service achieve it mission and goals. In exchange for 40 hours of training by Extension facility, participants agree to volunteer a minimum of 40 hours to the program during their training/internship year. Subjects covered in training classes include: soils and fertilizers, composting, plant diseases, entomology, invasive species, vegetables, houseplants, and many other areas of gardening. After completing their training, passing a final exam, and accumulating forty hours of service to their community, an intern becomes a Maryland Master Gardener .

Bring your plants, bring your ideas. Stop by and say hi to our local Master Gardeners. You're sure to learn something new!

New Vendor Profile: Swann Farms

We're very excited to bring another greta new produce vendor to you this season: Swann Farms, from Owings, Maryland. Swann Farms grows some of the best peaches, sweet corn, watermelons, cantaloupes, and tomatoes you'll ever taste. Dust of those cookbooks, get your creative cooking juices flowing and get ready for a great season of beautiful produce from our great vendors at Cheverly Community Market! Make sure to stop by, introduce yourself, and pick up some fabulous produce at our opening Market, May 30!

EAT LOCAL

Our 2nd Annual Behnke Nursery Fundraiser

The good people at Behnke Nurseries want to help you make your garden more beautiful while helping Cheverly Community Market, too!

Shop at Behnke Nurseries on Saturday, May 23. Bring this coupon, and 10% of your total will be donated to Cheverly Community Market. This is a great benefit to us -- we keep vendor costs as low as possible, and continue to grow our Market in order to better serve Cheverly.

Behnke Nurseries has two locations -- visit their website for directions:

Behnke Nursery Beltsville: 111300 Baltimore Avenue

Behnke Nursery Potomac: 9545 River Road

Please print out the coupon, share it with neighbors, forward it to your friends!

Meet Our Vendors!

As we prepare for our 2009 Market season over the next few weeks, we'll be highlighting our new vendors and reminding you about our great returning vendors. First up, new vendor Shlagel Farms!

Shlagel Farms, in Waldorf, Maryland, is a third generation family farm operated by Russ & Eileen Shlagel and their five children. The farm is located on the northern edge of busy Waldorf, in Charles County, Maryland, just out of earshot of commuter traffic on US 301. You can hear the cows calling to each other and smell the sweet pungent aroma of ripening strawberries! The farm is open to the public in the spring for strawberry picking & greenhouse flowers and bedding plants. In the fall, the farm offers mums and seasonal vegetables. Shlagel Farms specializes in vegetable production, selling wholesale to Washington, DC area stores and farmer's markets. They also raise quality hay for the pleasure horse trade, as well as field corn and soybeans to feed their herd of Angus beef cattle. The farm is open to the public in spring for visitors to enjoy a day in the country relaxing with family and picking strawberries.

We welcome new vendor Shlagel Farms to Cheverly Community Market -- we are very pleased to help them bring fantastic produce to you this year! At our opening Market on May 30, make sure to stop by and welcome the Shlagels to our Market community. And pick up some of those luscious, gorgeous strawberries. (We'll post some fantastic recipes featuring strawberries this week, too!)

Cheverly Garden Club

The Cheverly Garden Club holds its annual sale this Saturday (May 9) at the Cheverly Town Park Pavillion from 8:00am until the last plant is gone. The Garden Club has lovely plants, and they always sell out quickly, so make sure to get to the park early!

2009 Market Vendors...

We are very excited to announce three (3!) new produce vendors this year, all bringing fruit to the Market: Schlagel Farms -- they'll bring their luscious strawberries to our opening Market Swann Farms- Peaches Reberts Farms- Third generation farmers growing an amazing variety (Sugar peas, peas, onions, red beets, green beans, tomatoes, peppers, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, lima beans, cantaloupes, watermelons, sweet corn, strawberries, black berries, red, yellow, and black raspberries, blueberries, red and white potatoes, sweet potatoes, zucchini, yellow squash, patty pans, jack be littles, bird house gourds, gooseneck gourds, cucumbers, spaghetti squash, acorn squash, butternut squash, buttercup squash, lakota squash, blue hubbard squash, pumpkins, egg plants, apricots, peaches, nectarines, dark and white sweet cherries, sour cherries, 8 types of plums. Apples include: Lodi, Tansparent, Summer Rambo, Ginger Gold, Gala, Honey Crisp, Macintosh, Cortland, Jona Gold, Golden Supreme, Golden Delicious, Red Delicious, Stayman, Northern Spy, Banana, Smoke House, Grimes Golden, York, Rome, Sweet Paradise, Jonathan, Granny Smith, Empire, Zestar, Starks Delicious, Fugi) In our poll last year, the overwhelming request was for more produce, especially fruit, so we're really pleased to bring these three producers to you. In addition to our new friends, many of our old friends will be back this year: Cheverly United Methodist Church Fair Trade Gifts and Coffee Martha's Jams Cheverly Breadbasket featuring Firehook and Moctec Tom Baldwin/New Starts Farm Joanne Romano/Golden Leaf Pax River Alpacas Rose Fennel Pottery Basignani Vineyards Elk Run Vineyards Al Pong (Produce & Plants) Clan Stewart Farm Andrews & Dunham Damn Fine Tea Simple Pleasures Ice Cream (And, of course, this list will grow in the coming weeks!) And, of course, Cheverly Community Market is very pleased to offer music by our very own house band, The Hot Noodles. We can't wait to get a pastry and a cup of coffee, pull up a chair and enjoy the band! And getting the best local produce, plants, bread, seafood, meat and other provisions? Cheverly Community Market can't be beat! Finally, make a note of our extended hours: 8:00am to noon. We frequently stayed open after 11:00am last year, but this year we're making it official. Many more updates in the coming weeks as we prepare for our opening Market (May 30). You can follow us on facebook or twitter for the nitty gritty...

See you (very soon!) at the Market

Congratulations

to the winners of the James Beard Foundation awards. If you have a moment, make sure to look them up -- there are some great books and a lot of inspiration here. Personal favorites: Bittman and Pollan. Tomorrow we'll introduce some of our 2009 Market vendors! We're only a few weeks away from the kickoff to our season and we have some very exciting developments to share with you in coming days. -- blogging via iPhone