ANNAPOLIS, MD – Maryland Public Television’s (MPT) popular original series Maryland Farm & Harvest returns for its ninth season on Tuesday, November 9 at 7 p.m. with the first of 13 new half-hour episodes. A preview is available for viewing at https://bit.ly/3pMCbiA.
The season premiere features farms and locations in Carroll, Howard, and Montgomery counties as part of a “planting” themed episode. Later in the season, Maryland Farm & Harvest will return to these same farms for an episode all about harvesting.
Maryland Farm & Harvest airs on Tuesdays at 7 p.m. on MPT-HD and online at mpt.org/livestream. Encore broadcasts are available on MPT-HD Thursdays at 11 p.m. and Sundays at 6 a.m. Each episode also airs on MPT2/Create® on Fridays at 7:30 p.m.
The weekly series takes viewers on a journey across the Free State, telling interesting stories about the farms, people, and technology required to sustain and grow agriculture in Maryland, the number one commercial industry in the state.
Joanne Clendining, who has earned two Emmy® awards from the National Capital Chesapeake Bay Chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences for her work on Maryland Farm & Harvest, returns as host. She is joined by Al Spoler, who handles duties for each episode’s The Local Buy segment.
Segments featured on the November 9 episode are:
- Planting corn (Howard County). Maryland Farm & Harvest’s news season starts with a trip to Carroll Mill Farm in Ellicott City to see how the farm prepares in the spring for its new corn crop. The farm, run by farmer Ricky Bauer, practices no-till farming, an environmentally beneficial practice. Seed selection is critical and specific to each farm, as is the timing for planting, and the depth of the seed as it goes through the planter. Maryland farmers planted 480,000 acres of corn in 2020, making it one of the most popular crops in the state.
- Planting seedless watermelon (Carroll County). Next, the show travels to Foxleigh Farm in Taneytown to find out how seedless watermelons are grown. Here the Mace family includes 10 acres of watermelons among grain and other crops on its farm. Viewers learn about the complex breeding and planting process used to produce seedless watermelons. Both seeded and seedless watermelon plants are planted near each other to support the pollination process. Rows are eight feet apart and plants three feet apart in each row so that the vines don’t tangle and choke each other. The result is an abundant harvest, which viewers will see later in the season.
- The Way it Works: Corn planters. Segment host Joe Ligo takes a look at a mechanical corn planter, which is towed behind a tractor to plant corn. Joe explains the many elements of the unit, all of them essential to ensuring the ground is prepared to accept the corn seed, and that each seed is inserted into the soil at the proper depth and with the correct spacing. On average, a planter will do this for about 35,000 seeds per acre.
- The Local Buy: Planting hydroponic lettuce (Montgomery County). Segment host Al Spoler visits Bella Vita Farm in Brookeville where he gets a look at how hydroponics and aquaponics are used to grow a variety of produce. Sisters and farm owners Amy Falcone and Angie McNally operate a 4,000 square-foot greenhouse that incorporates hydroponics for plant nutrients and four 500-gallon fish tanks, each containing 100-plus fish, as additional nutrient producers to fertilize the farm’s produce. Fish waste is converted by bacteria into a natural fertilizer. The plants absorb it and clean the water before it returns to the fish. Al then gets a taste of the sisters’ grilled tilapia with herbs and olive oil. A recipe for this dish will be available for viewers at mpt.org/farm.
More than 10 million viewers have tuned in to Maryland Farm & Harvest since its fall 2013 debut. The series has traveled to nearly 400 farms, fisheries, and other agriculture-related locations during its first eight seasons, covering every Maryland county, as well as Baltimore City and Washington, D.C.
Past episodes can be viewed on MPT’s website, while episode segments are available on the series’ YouTube channel. Engage with the show on Maryland Farm & Harvest’s Facebook and Twitter.
The Maryland Department of Agriculture is MPT’s co-production partner for Maryland Farm & Harvest. Major funding is provided by the Maryland Grain Producers Utilization Board.
Additional funding is provided by Maryland’s Best, Rural Maryland Council, Maryland Agricultural Resource-Based Industry Development Corporation (MARBIDCO), a grant from the Maryland Department of Agriculture’s Specialty Crop Block Grant Program, MidAtlantic Farm Credit, Cornell Douglas Foundation, Maryland Soybean Board, Maryland Association of Soil Conservation Districts, Wegmans Food Markets, Maryland Nursery, Landscape, and Greenhouse Association (MNLGA), the Maryland Seafood Marketing Fund, Maryland Farm Bureau, and The Campbell Foundation.
Other support comes from Mar-Del Watermelon Association and Maryland Agricultural Education Foundation (MAEF).
