Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["Andeanfx" <andeanfx@midrivers.com>]

AAHHMMM, and all this is while her husband is doing what with whom???? 
Really now.


Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken. - Oscar Wilde


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
To: <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Friday, October 30, 2009 7:42 AM
Subject: [Livingontheland] Michelle Obama, DC schoolchildren help with 2nd 
major harvest of White House garden


> Michelle Obama, DC schoolchildren help with 2nd major harvest of White 
> House garden
> http://www.startribune.com/lifestyle/homegarden/67300707.html?elr=KArksLckD8EQDUoaEyqyP4O:DW3ckUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aUUsZ
>
> Mark Wilson, Getty/afp - Getty Images
>
> First Lady Michelle Obama holds a sweet potato while harvesting the 
> vegetables with students from Bancroft Elementary School and Kimball 
> Elementary School, on the South Lawn of the White House on Thursday.
>
>
> WASHINGTON - Cupboards at a soup kitchen near the White House will be 
> spilling over for several days after a donation of fresh produce harvested 
> Thursday from first lady Michelle Obama's vegetable garden.
>
> Mrs. Obama invited about 30 fifth-graders from two District of Columbia 
> public elementary schools to help with the project. One of the schools, 
> Bancroft Elementary, has helped with the garden since it began, preparing 
> the soil, planting the crops and harvesting in the spring.
>
> "Are you guys ready to do some work? Are you ready to work really hard? 
> Are you ready to get dirty?" she asked them. "All right, let's go! Let's 
> go, let's do it, let's do it."
>
> The students were divided into groups of three and paired with an adult 
> who showed them what to do. All told, they spent about a half-hour jabbing 
> and digging at the plot on the South Lawn with pitchforks and other tools.
>
> They filled one wheelbarrow with huge sweet potatoes, and filled baskets 
> and bowls with carrots, fennel, lettuce, tomatoes, broccoli, turnips, 
> eggplant, peppers, tomatillos and greens, for a total of 223 pounds, Mrs. 
> Obama's office said later in the day. Most of the produce is being given 
> to Miriam's Kitchen for the next days' meals. Mrs. Obama helped serve 
> lunch there earlier this year.
>
> Before Thursday, the garden already had produced more than 740 pounds of 
> food, Mrs. Obama said, bringing the total for the year to more than 960 
> pounds. Some has been served at White House events.
>
> The first lady and her group first tackled sweet potatoes before moving on 
> to carrots and big bulbs of fennel. At one point, she held up one of the 
> larger orange-colored spuds and said: "This can feed an army."
>
> Before the harvesting began, she said she and daughters, Malia, 11, and 
> Sasha, 8, already had helped themselves to some sweet potatoes.
>
> The harvest was the second for the garden. More than 70 pounds of lettuce 
> and 12 pounds of peas came out of a springtime harvest of the 
> 1,100-square-foot, L-shaped plot. After that, fall crops were planted, 
> leading to Thursday's event.
>
> Mrs. Obama started the garden in March, saying she wanted to use it to 
> talk about the importance of eating a nutritious diet and show what good, 
> fresh food tastes like. She said it cost about $180 to prepare the soil 
> and plant the seeds and seedlings.
>
>
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