Michelle Obama’s organic garden at the White House enjoyed its second harvest this week, bringing in another 220 pounds of food to add to the previous harvest’s 740 pounds, for a grand total of 960 pounds of yummy organic produce from an 1100 square foot garden plot on the South Lawn! Here’s the plot diagram showing the second plantings, while the sweet potatoes that were harvested were planted in the spring due to their long growing season…
Our First Lady of course had lots of help with her garden, not just the White House kitchen staff but also a group of 30 5th graders from Bancroft and Kimball elementary schools in the District of Columbia, for whom the garden served as classroom and on-the-job training about how food is produced and how much can be grown in a small space with some effort. At second harvest the little garden’s produce came in at just 19¢ a pound, something everyone with 1100 square feet of yard should take into consideration when deciding if a Victory Garden may be in their future!
Here’s a photo of the produce itself, which was primarily onions and shallots, lettuces, greens, herbs and sweet potatoes. The bulk of the bounty goes to Miriam’s Kitchen, which provides home-cooked meals to DC’s homeless population. Thus the children who helped so much with this grand effort by the First Lady also learned about helping those less fortunate than themselves.
Makes ya proud, doesn’t it? Here’s hoping that the Victory Garden organic ‘movement’ takes off big time again next spring, and that good portions of America’s suburban lawns are taken permanently out of the water-wasting, chemical-intensive show-off weirdness of crabgrass-free, carefully-clipped uselessness column and put into production of food that can nourish minds and bodies. It could even be a show of defiance against our ever more corrupt food production, processing and distribution system in this country, a system that is as surely killing us over time as much as it is costing us larger and larger portions of our meager (and getting meager-er) incomes.
It doesn’t take all that much work, and the work is greatly satisfying. It’s not aerobic exercise, but it is some fresh air and some bending and stretching, and a wonderful stress-reliever after a hard day at work to putter in one’s garden and see the stages of growth and maybe even an opportunity to bond with neighbors who may be persuaded to turn their own lawns over to such a project! No one should go hungry in America, yet too many do. Here is a local project (a 3-part series on feeding the hungry) I helped to start in this area where almost everyone has a garden. There are many innovative ways to share the harvest, neighbors can do a lot more than governments usually can. The gardens themselves can provide enough joy to their gardeners to be worthwhile, so consider that extra row for donation to a food bank or soup kitchen in your town!
Hooray for Michelle Obama, the children of Bancroft and Kimball, and the dedicated chefs and staff of the People’s House at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue for the inspiration as well as the nearly thousand pounds of FOOD!
