Maybe it's Michelle Obama. Maybe it's the economy. But vegetable gardens are everywhere.

Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association is offering a course at 40 sites statewide on April 1 on how to start an organic vegetable garden, and they are very popular.

Abby Sadauckas, MOFGA's volunteer coordinator, said they held classes at 19-20 sites last year, and this year they expanded the locations to 40. Some of them have already filled up, and others are getting close to filling up. Check MOFGA's Web site for the list of locations.

Sadauckas said the community education organizations she has been in touch with say registrations at many courses have been down, but vegetable gardening classes have been very popular.

With Michele Obama starting a vegetable garden on the White House lawn, the program got an extra kick. Obama did not credit Roger Doiron of Scarborough specifically for the idea behind the garden, but Doiron's Kitchen Gardeners International certainly pushed for the change, and Doiron shows how happy her is on the KGI Web site.

The down economy and the health scares from commercially produced food have also provided an impetus.

A personal experience shows how popular vegetable growing is. I tell everyone that I am a garden writer not a gardening expert, but some groups like to hear me speak, anyway. My topic at Merryspring in Camden on Tuesday was vegetable gardening at home, which I do, so it was legitimate. I never said I do it well. But even with me as a speaker the room -- which seats 75 to 100 as an estimate -- reached its legal capacity.

So, if you want to go to Wednesday's MOFGA class in your area, sign up quickly. It could well fill up.

And April 19 -- the old fashioned start date for planting peas and other cold-weather crops -- is only about three weeks away. And if it doesn't snow again, we in southern Maine will bring that a few days closer.

I'm so psyched.

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