If Alice Waters on 60 Minutes wasn’t enough to make growing your own organic produce the mainstream, let’s hope that her dream of seeing an edible landscape at the White House makes it so.
This week, the White House has begun the process of planting an organic garden as “a means of educating children and communities about healthful eating, and as a source of fresh herbs and vegetables for the family and guests.” Our First Lady, Michelle Obama, dug up a patch of dirt to begin the process – the first time this has happened at the White House since Eleanor Roosevelt’s victory garden during World War II.
“My hope,” the first lady said in an interview in her East Wing office, “is that through children, they will begin to educate their families and that will, in turn, begin to educate our communities.”
That’s exactly the inspiration behind My First Organics seed starting kits!
When you read the article, you must click on the garden map graphic and see what $200 buys you.
Thank you President Obama, First Lady Michelle, and those two beautiful daughters, for setting the example of the many benefits realized by growing your own produce and supplmenting meals with fresh, local products! That’s called a sustainable, local food system folks!
Linda McNair
And it’s not impossible to do! Read my first blog post to find out how you can start this process as a family today!
Tags: Obama, White House
Thanks for all your wonderful information and resources. I was wondering if you could address or suggest resources for preparing your soil for an organic garden.
Hey Dianne. It’s really not as hard as you might think. If you haven’t been spraying Roundup or using synthetic fertilizers chances are your backyard soil structure is alive with living organic organisms. Worms are a good sign that there are even smaller microbiology there. The easy thing to do is compost your kitchen waste – makes for wonderful nutrients for your garden. I’ll probably do a few posts about composting in the near future, but for now just remember that anything that can rot can be composted: Coffee grounds, paper products, egg shells, leafy green waste, bread…just don’t throw meats in there. There are lots of free instructions out there for creating a simple composting bin in your backyard. Look for nearby horse boarding facilities that have manure as well. Let is sit for at least 9 months before you use it. Fresh manure can burn plants if it hasn’t cured for quite a while – but over time it is a marvelous source of nitrogen.