Microgreens Maryland: An Upcoming Tour Announcement

Posted in Uncategorized on August 17, 2020
Tags: Maryland

Recently we got attracted to the idea to explore how are microgreen farmers in Maryland doing this year. We crossed on a couple of incredible farms and we are confident their stories are worth sharing on Microgreenology.

While preparing the content and communicating with the microgreen farmers, we decided it's worth listing a few of the farms for the people that are searching for high quality produce offered with a great customer service.

Eco City Farms

Eco City Farms is an unique type of a nonprofit urban teaching and learning farm based in Prince George's County in Maryland.

Besides the fact that they are growing great food, they also have the noble mission to educate farmers on how they can protect, restore and sustain the natural environment and the health of local communities.

ECO City Farms works with both with youth and adults and prepares them to become the next generation of urban farmers and eaters.

Eco City Farms and Their Relationship with Microgreens

Microgreens are just one of the organization's eleven programs.

With the financial aid of Maryland's Department of Agriculture Specialty Crop Block Grand, the farm's team is developing a growing system for microgreens to work in smaller scale.

The system is aimed to help urban farmers or ones looking to take care of additional crops. They have a pretty insightful research on microgreen farms across the whole country that involved testing seeds and growing media, and experimenting with growing structures as well.

They had a pretty scientific approach compared to the way a lot of new farmers are launching their own small farms just by following the industry authorities advice.

The outcome of their research and tests lead to the creation of their own growing area in a large hoophouse.

The other outcome was a document titled Guidelines for Growing Microgreens which deserves an extra attention in a separate blog post.

With some ideas of what worked for the setup, we built out a microgreens growing area in a large hoophouse which could be expanded as market and customers grow. Learn more about ECO’s best practices from our Guidelines for Growing Microgreens.

Metro Microgreens

If you're based in Montgomery County, you should know about Metro Microgreens too.

It's a family operated farm and everyone is involved with their unique kinds of responsibilities.

It all started about 25 years ago when farm's co-founder Mark Ross started sharing his interests for organic farming with students on a regular basis.

About 3 years ago Mark already passed a number of 1,000 students who had the chance to plant, weed and harvest different plants in a founded by him Stone Mill Elementary School Garden - this was in the school where his daughters were attending. Today both girls are part of the farm's team.

Mark founded Metro Microgreens together with his wife Debbie. He follows strict organic growing methods and adheres to GAP guidelines (Good Agricultural Practices) for food safety and cleanliness.

Debbie’s background is sales & marketing so she handles the business side of Metro Microgreens.

What other microgreen farms based Maryland deserve getting reviewed on Microgreenology?

If you have suggestions, please email them at hello (at) microgreenology (dot) com.