You possibly have heard in the news about a kitchen garden at the White House? First Lady, Michelle Obama, with the help of 25 fifth graders from Bancroft Elementary School in Washington broke ground Friday on a new White House kitchen garden, which reportedly will be filled with organic seeds and seedlings and fertilized with compost from the White House kitchens.
The students will be brought back to the White House next month to help with the planting, and after that to help harvest and cook some of the produce in the mansion’s kitchen. The first harvest is expected by late April. Mrs. Obama joined the students — first with a shovel, then a rake — and together they began pulling up the grass, dumping it into wheelbarrows and depositing the contents in a central location to start a compost pile.
The 1,100-square-foot garden, the first of its kind since Eleanor Roosevelt planted a victory garden during World War II, will grow dozens of vegetables, berries and herbs.
Larger White House Kitchen Garden pic
The collection of crops, a wish list from White House kitchen staff, will include lettuces, squash, fennel, rhubarb, cucumbers and sweet and hot peppers. White House chefs will use the produce to prepare meals for the family and for official functions, and some of the produce will be donated to Miriam’s Kitchen, a soup kitchen near the White House.
With the garden, Obama initiated a public campaign to help Americans better understand where their food comes from. Mrs. Obama, who has spoken about healthy eating, said the garden will help get her 10- and 7-year-old daughters to eat their veggies. “Especially if they were involved in planting it and picking it, they were much more curious about giving it a try,” she said.
Such a White House garden has been a dream of noted California chef Alice Waters, considered a leader in the movement to encourage consumption of locally grown and organic food. She has lobbied the White House to plant such a garden for more than a decade.
What do you think about this new garden? Do you think it will prompt other Americans to plant their own backyard vegetable gardens?
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Douglas Moran
Smithery
Patie
Love Grandma
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Alan Nothnagle
Salon.com
Comments
But what do you think about it? You did an excellent reportorial piece here, but now opinion of your own.
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but now we need an opinion of your own.
I hope we will see even more interest in the raising of vegetables, and the like, from more citizens. This White House garden might just be the push to get some people off the fence and into gardening.
(rated "g" for gardens and "e" for everyone)
I realize it's unlikely Michelle or Barack have the time to actually garden without help, but still, it's a great idea and worth promoting.
A link to the graphic would be nice since the OS format doesn't treat those kind of pictures very kindly.
It is great to see a First Lady interested in so many things. This small garden not only will help teach her children about healthy eating, it also helps show the world that growing organic food will promote healthy lifestyles. Also, by her reaching out to these young people, it helps establish a connection from which they can find fulfillment by growing things that have meaning & purpose.
We all should follow Mrs. Obama's lead and plant our own garden or volunteer with a community group to help others.
Michelle picked the perfect age for children to be made aware of the importance in having a garden, eating healthy vegetables, which is exactly what she wants for her family. I look forward to watching the garden grow and I think it will inspire others to follow suit!
Alice Waters is a fine example as she has done more than just about any chef to make us aware of the importance of good, fresh, healthy food and how to cook it. Julia Child was another example of the same.
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Agrarianism is ecological. Frugal. Agribusiness is greed, waste, and global ruin. Disaster. Of course, science plays a role, but the quacks, the white-lab "experts" are CEO profiteer's and dangerous gibbers,
and blabber mouther.
People do not exist in isolation as autonomous beings. We live in this extensive life-web of interrelatedness. Examine honestly. Who is laboring? Tending? Employed in honest pursuits? What about the planet? Who is participating with fellow-humans in Responsible Livelihoods? Yes!
Think about the rapid, noisy, cell-phone, i-pod, ETC-gadgetry? No?The mobile, industrial, transnational, oil-based, conglomerate? Oy!
The breakdown of communal life, the benefits of good-hearty, Oho. Where are honest neighbors? It must be discussed. Horrible? O, O, OY. Oy!
Aloof.
O, Lonely?
"off-topic" Before I began getting jailed for trying to help Kim Doan, an American/Asian citizen who was ripped-off by GOPS. Those nasty crooked lawyers/ Bank Predator Loan schemes ...
Mrs Doan lost a laundromat, home, health, and hundreds of thousands of dollars. (Maybe I walk into the Depart of Justice with mound of legal papers since Barack Obama has replaced Bush's gang of thieves? Kim was the poorst of the poor and was a toddler who lived near Mei Lai. I helped arrange a Life in America in the early nineties ) ...
Agrarian life was my devotion, and wholehearted commitment. I had minimal time to blog. I was more cheerful, and Healthy. I was concerned about toxins, sludge, and indusrial waste being dumped, and unmonitored by EPA, USDA. etc.. EPA has letters from me. huh.
EPA scientist,
Mr. Rubin MD?
Statistics. Analysis?
It's too much personal detail, apology.
foci. Agrarian practices extend beyond the human to include the Land, and all the various, minute Life forms. The beneficial, microscopic, and KNOW that a handful of pure Earth is abundant with tiny life forms. Now, the Earthen world is killed -of ... by the market-lobby-frauds. They promulgate the "safe" chemical hoaxes.
What is "safe" is based
on non-feeling, deaths,
the death principle in motion, frauds, bias,
and statistical "fact" of fake quackery greed.
The idea that human communities can flourish,
at the expense of the broad natural, healthy rural,
fertile earth, and thriving communities is Absurdity.
How can contaminated food, eroded top soil, Sustain?
How can the non-sustainable food-network feed cities pop.?
It's been shown false. I'll let more statistical analytical spews.
Trace the Faulty knowledge, grants, and know the info. is dispersed from the multinational, and quackery. The Garden idea is so Great. We are to be Guardians.
It's to be human. Creatures.
Tend the earth. Experience the health. Sweat. It's free therapy. on and on and on. P.S. Look up my old Papers in the DoJ? FBI Sonny?
Oh. You know who you are. Be honest.
The White House used papers for tp?
I gotta go hop in a Sunday sauna, hush.
Once, while on vacation, he asked my little sister to put his minnows in the lake, handing her the bucket with the holes in it... huge mistake on his part. She dumped them.
Outdoorsy stuff is not my family's forte. But, hooray for Michelle.
We should all eat good, organic local food instead of food picked green, grew practically standing in a pool of chemicals, and shipped many miles from God knows where.
I got my herbs coming up. I returned to a tray of freshly spouting thyme. Pennyroil. Many things to plant.
This White House garden is something we should follow as a model.
Plant food, or get it local and fresh.
Good piece here.
Rated
Gardening is FUN, teaches us so much, and to have a First Family that sees the potential for the whole nation in their garden, My God, what a relief!
Many people including me suggested an organic garden on the White House website. And involving the school kids with Sasha and Malia is a great idea. So glad Michelle is doing this.