Chew on This: Eco farm 15 miles from DC

Eight miles as the crow flies from the Washington Monument, hidden behind the houses of a residential subdivision, lies the farm of Mike Pappas. Only 2 1/2 acres of Eco Farms' 16 acres are cultivated, but they're a potent spread of organic, bio-intensive produce.

If you've eaten at any high-end Washington restaurant, from Frank Ruta's Palena to Restaurant Nora and Café Atlantico, you'll probably have eaten his produce. Among the most popular is that curly green or crimson or yellow frizz of tiny little sprouts that decorate top chefs' dishes, "micro-greens". It's appropriate for a man who came to farming from another "micro" business -- computers.

He was working with his stepbrother at the family firm Capitol Computer Exchange when his stepbrother decided to explore organically farming his parents' lot in Lanham, Md., land which had previously supported a variety of animals and fowl. Including peacocks.

Pappas took a course in California with bio-intensive farming guru John Jeavons, author of "How to Grow More Vegetables," then came back to Lanham to hand-dig deep beds with his brothers. They set up a rotation to help with the growing then selling at farm stands and farmers' markets. Mike felt more and more pulled in, excited by the feedback he got from his customers, until he ended up leaving the computer business for the farm. He's now the only one of the three brothers working on it full-time.

But farmers' markets weren't cost effective on their own. "You have three days' preparation, digging up the vegetables, cleaning them, packing them, setting up, for a four-hour selling opportunity. You make $1,000 if you're lucky."

So, looking for a niche, he set out on the rounds of local restaurants. He offered chefs the kinds of vegetables Alice Waters pioneered at Chez Panisse: organic baby everything. With mini heads of Romaine, tiny turnips sweet enough to eat raw, white radishes the size of a nut, baby red and green cabbage, baby beets, baby snow pea greens and baby tatsoi, Pappas commits a kind of vegetable infanticide.

In trying to drive the market not follow it, he's also investigated what unfamiliar tastes might be available in the world of herbs.

Now Pappas offers flavorings you probably won't have heard of but that may, like Peruvian black mint seeds popular with the chefs at Café Atlantico and the National Press Club, have been sprinkled on your entrée. Tried Mexico's large "hoja santa" leaves? They leave your tongue feeling slightly numbed. His Mexican mustard leaves do the exact reverse.

Even at this barren time of year, outside his large micro-sprouts greenhouse, there are long, narrow beds of Greek marjoram, Mexican tarragon, German white barn-neck garlic growing for the spring, wild arugula, sage and cilantro, now died back for winter. He's got greenhouse pots of little known, organically-grown herbs from South America and Southeast Asia that he discovers through the Internet.

His small farm's bio-intensive system is tailor-made, he says, for backyard farmers. It uses 90 percent less water than conventional methods, while sowing the plants close together in uncompacted soil encourages a moist, warm microclimate and discourages weeds. He grows nasturtiums with cilantro to deter the aphids that bother the latter, and tomatoes next to basil so that the flavor of each is enhanced by the proximity of the other. Strawberries coupled with green beans keep bugs at bay.

With less energy, this kind of farming can produce two to six times more food than conventional methods, while constantly building the content of the soil. And without fertilizers and chemical additives, the food it grows is more healthy. Why would you want to farm any other way?