This was yet another web search that got linked to my blog.

Let me help out here.

All Liliums that have the tell-tale scaly bulb, tall stem with fragrant tetrahedron flowers atop, are pretty much the same.

The bulb is where the magic happens.

The bulb is “fed” by the leaves during the growing season and when the foliage is left to die back naturally, all that goodness from the leaves and stem go down into the bulb as food to keep it going over winter so that it will sprout again in the spring.

Never cut the stem off Lilies until they’ve gone brown and brittle. Cut the dead stem about a few inches above soil level and leave it for over winter. Then the next spring, you should be able to pull out the stem stubble with ease. If you find any resistance, don’t continue to pull or you will yank up the whole bulb. Just wait and it will loosen up at the right time. *smile*

Visit the web links below to learn all about Lilies, and see just how easy they are to grow and propagate.

The North American Lily Society

Here are some of my Lilies. I have almost 200 bulbs of many different types of Lilium.

Asiatic Lilies

Once again I have been looking at the stats for this blog and notice what people type in search engines to reach my blog. And today, I find in the stats that someone searched for “kale growing when spring “zone 4.”

So I thought I would assist in providing some information in case others are doing a web search.

The following is an excerpt from one of my gardening books, “Burpee: The Complete Vegetable & Herb Gardener – A Guide to Growing Your Garden Organically.” It’s a hardcover book, 438 pages, ISBN # 0-02-862005-4

A traditional Scottish story tells of a young doctor looking for a town in which to open his practice. “If you see kale growing in the gardens, move along,” he was advised. “They won’t be needing your services there.” Kale may not be a complete substitute for health insurance, but it is one of our most nutritious cultivated greens. It has slightly less iron than spinach does but three times the vitamin C, more vitamin A, more B vitamins, and more calcium, potassium, and protein.

Kale was grown by the Greeks and Romans, then traveled to northern Europe and Britain and, in the 16th century, on to North America with the French explorer Jacques Cartier.

Kale is sometimes called “the cabbage without a head.” It is indeed in the cabbage family, Brassica.

It can be grown pretty much everywhere except the warmest plant hardiness zones. Kale, however, prefers cooler weather, and its taste is improved when touched by a slight frost.

A few versions of Kale exist. Some with curly leaves, and some with smooth leaves. Some with red veins in the leaves, at times possibly almost purple.

Don’t confuse a Brassica Kale with the common name of “Sea Kale” which is really Crambe maritima, and grown completely different. Sea Kale is commonly grown, allowed to rest, and covered with a special “forcing” pot which is placed over it, with fresh stable manure stacked around the outside of the pot. The manure begins to decompose, providing heat for the plant. The forcing pot is topped with a lid and this blanches (turns white) the leaves and stems, producing a delicate lovely pale harvest which is then gently boiled and served with butter, Victorian style.

How to grow Kale

Kale likes full sun in early spring but prefers a bit of shade during the hottest, sunniest part of the growing season. It will push through the season and still be seen growing strong at the onset of winter.

It prefers rich, acidic soil and doesn’t like to be fertilized too much. Your best bet is to feed the soil, not the plant. What does that mean? Well, you amend the soil properly before you ever sow seeds or dig to plant pre-grown seedling plugs. This is accomplished by mixing in some well-rotted farmyard manure (horse, cow, sheep, rabbit, or chicken poo), perhaps some leaf mold (composted tree leaves), maybe some peat moss or coconut coir. What you need really depends on your soil type.

If you have mostly sandy soil (like me), you need to mix in lots and lots of organic matter. Manure, leaf mold, garden compost, etc. If you have wet clay soil, you need to add organic matter and perhaps some sharp grit to assist in drainage. Clay is good, rich soil, and just needs help with drainage.

Kale likes about one inch of water a week. If it receives too little moisture, the leaves don’t taste that great. Kale has a very mild flavor anyway.

Kale is very hardy, I can’t say that enough. *laughs* I’ve seen Kale totally lace-worked by cabbage white moths and even sometimes eaten all the way to the stems, and yet it still grows. I have also seen Kale buried by snow, and it never froze and kept growing until the snow was so heavy that the plant could no longer support itself. And the next spring, we found kale happily continuing to grow after the snow melted!

In my garden book mentioned above, it says that 20 plants will provide enough Kale for a family of four.

Start seeds 6-8 weeks before your last average frost date (which doesn’t occur until the first week of June for my location). Or you can direct-seed outdoors as soon as the ground thaws. Sow 1/4 to 1/2 inch deep, 4 inches apart. Or plant more seeds and just pluck out extra seedlings and use the pullings as baby greens in your next green salad. Yum!

The seeds should germinate in less than a week. Two weeks before last frost, start hardening off these babies in increasing amounts outdoors so they get used to nature instead of their comfy, cozy home environment.

When the plants are growing well outdoors, take care to prevent a cabbage white moth / cabbage looper invasion, or they will eat your crop seemingly overnight. Don’t use chemical sprays. All you need is either to hand pick the green loopers, crush the eggs, or rip off the infected leaves and discard far away from your crop. If you really really want to spray, spray on a diluted mixture of Neem oil. Bugs will say YUCK to neem oil and leave your plants alone.

To harvest, you can either yank leaves as soon as they are large enough, or wait until the whole plant gets big then harvest the entire thing.

You can eat the fresh leaves in a salad, or cook the leaves as you would spinach or chard. To store, you can cook leaves, strain excess water out and pack into freezer bags.

From the frozen cooked leaves, you can make lasagna fillings, cannelloni noodle fillings, spinach-type bread dips, or just reheat it and top with a bit of butter and salt and pepper. Kale doesn’t need much flavoring. But Kale makes a great substitute for spinach in recipes. And the best part, no one will be the wiser!

Now get out there and enjoy some Kale! It’s good for you and highly nutritious. You cannot go wrong with this vegetable. I find it much less fussy than growing spinach, because spinach bolts and goes to seed at the slightest inclination. But Kale doesn’t flower or produce seeds until it’s second year because it’s a biennial.

Kale

photo borrowed from http://www.veggiegardeninfo.com/kale/

This year I’m making paper pots because we need a LOT of pots to get all the vegetables started.

I figure I need about 200 pots total.

Yikes!

Here’s the method I’m using. And no, that’s not me in the video. Just something I found off YouTube.

I’ve made 8 pots so far. *laughs*

Last year I signed up to be in a growing challenge but failed miserably on my vegetable garden.  Had a lot of personal stuff happen last gardening season so my garden was pretty much a flop.

This year it will be much better!  Plus I’m way more prepared than I was last year.  Over the winter I did a lot of reading and chatting with other gardeners so I could learn new things.  And learn I did!

Some of my plans I have not posted on this blog because I don’t yet have the plant material in my hands.  Still waiting on someone to put stuff in the mail.  I think perhaps he’s waiting until threat of freezing during shipping is over.  Will be getting some heirloom potato tubers, true potato seeds and some heirloom perennial (that’s what I was told) leek seeds.   I’ll be bragging about those when I finally get it all in the mail.  Hopefully the guy didn’t forget!

So, on to the challenge!  This year’s challenge includes a new bit, as well as the old.  The old challenge was to grow something you never grew before.  This year the challenge is to grow something from seed, and then save seed from that crop to plant next year.  Also the seed (depending on variety) can be donated to a seed bank, traded for other seeds, and even given away for free!

I have already saved seeds in the past but only for tomatoes and peppers usually.  This year I will be saving seeds from many other crops.

From Seed to Seed Challenge

So here’s the challenge, copied/pasted from that blog.  And a link!  But you can also link to it by clicking on the image above.

Seed to Seed Challenge

Why Grow Your Own Food?

1. Growing your own food tastes better and is more nutritious.

2. Gardening is a good workout and improves mental health.

3. By being outdoors among the elements, you can learn about local wildlife, appreciate small beauty, and become one with the seasons.

4. Growing at home reduces your carbon footprint and energy usage. By gardening organically, you eliminate the petroleum products used in farming equipment, fertilizers, pesticides, food packaging, storage, and transportation.

5. You can have fresh, local, organic produce all year long by planting a four-season garden – long past the day your local markets and farms close for the winter.

Why Grow Food From Seed?

1. To save money. It costs just a couple of dollars per packet for many seeds. When you plant starts from a nursery, you pay a lot more per plant. (Hint: if you don’t want a whole pack of seeds, share seeds with other gardeners to save even more money.)

2. For greater variety. The varieties of seeds available are nearly endless – the different flavors, colors, and growth paterns of tomatoes alone is astonishing.

3. To support sustainable farmers who bring you the seeds. You have the option of buying open pollinated, organic, biodynamic, sustainably grown seeds – supporting the environment and farmers alike.

4. To further reduce your carbon footprint. A small seed packet sent in the mail takes much less energy than a much heavier seedling (and its soil) that has most likely been transported long distances from its original home.

5. To become more self-reliant and adaptable to economic changes and energy supply issues.

Why Save Your Own Seed?

1. To save more money. You can grow crops for years without spending a cent on seeds!

2. For fun. There is certainly pleasure in nurturing a plant from seed, learning how it propagates, and actually harvesting the seeds. It’s quite empowering, actually!

3. To preserve biodiversity. By saving heirloom seeds that have been passed on through generations, you can help preserve important crop diversity.

4. To create new varieties with particularly desirable qualities. You can create crops uniquely adapted to your backyard microclimate. Also, you can select seed from the plants with better flavor, greater frost hardiness, earliest blooms, prettiest color, and more.

5. When you are entirely the master of your seed, you know where it has been, from what plant it originated, what has been sprayed on it, what soil it grew in, and important details about how it will grow in your garden.

The Rules Are Simple

1. Plant at least one new crop from seed, grow it organically, and save the seed to plant next year.

2. Check in here when I post Seed To Seed or Growing Challenge posts (more or less once/week). Or if you have your own blog*, you can write about your gardening there instead – or in addition. The point of #2 is to learn from one another, inspire one another, and build our growing community. So please share questions, thoughts, and discoveries as they come up.

Well it’s that time of year again! Easter is on its way!

Easter always comes on the first Sunday after the full moon after the Spring Equinox. Some crazy calendar-wrangling there! But it’s true.

Here’s my previous post

“Save the Easter Lily”

I cannot stress how important this is to me. Yeah yeah you’re all thinking I’m nuts. Go right ahead.

But think about it! At least do that. Spend a few minutes pondering what I’m about to say.

We live in an economic crisis these days. People are out of a job, can’t pay the bills and are struggling to feed themselves, let alone house themselves. And here we are yet again in the season where millions of plants are forced-grown to supply flower delivery companies with stock to make arrangements and sell. Churches are loaded with Easter Lilies usually, and even some businesses. It’s such a waste really.

And after the flower has bloomed, what happens? The whole plant, pot and all, gets tossed into the garbage. What a shame… makes me cry to think about it.

The plastic pots could be saved and reused by gardeners. The bulbs can be replanted in just about any patch of ground (provided it’s not swampy. Lilies don’t like having wet feet, so make sure they are planted in well drained conditions.)

If you don’t have a patch of land of your own, then turn into a Guerrilla Gardener!! There really is a group of people out there doing just that, gardening on land that doesn’t belong to them. They plant beautiful plants on roadsides, abandoned plots and all sorts of places, especially in large cities. They are volunteers. They use their own money and time to create something beautiful to share with everyone and never ask for anything in return.

Visit their site. Lots of before/after photos of Guerrilla gardening projects. http://www.guerrillagardening.org/

So save the Easter lilies and all live plants from land fill waste and replant them somewhere else where they will happily grow! You’ll be recycling, saving land fill accumulation, and bring smiles to people that pass by your secret public gardening spot. What could be better?

Just remember that Easter lilies don’t naturally bloom at Easter. They bloom (depending on climate) anywhere from June to August, as far as Zone 2 hardiness zones (brrrr, that’s cold!).

I see a lot of hits on my page about baking homemade bread to save money. I guess the economic crunch is hitting everyone.

So I’ve decided to post how I make the majority of our homemade bread. It’s really quite easy, because I’ve taken a lot of work out of the equation.

We have a bread machine. But I do not use it to bake the bread because I don’t like the resulting texture and flavor.

Here’s the recipe, with instructions below.

2 cups warm water

2 tablespoon sugar (or molasses, brown sugar, honey)

2 teaspoons salt

2 tablespoons oil (or butter, margarine, olive oil, etc)

6 cups of white, unbleached flour

2 teaspoons rapid rise baking yeast

In my bread machine, I add the ingredients listed in the order above. The measurement of the salt, sugar and oil are just estimates of what I use, since I do not actually measure those ingredients. But then again I’ve been cooking most of my life. And after you measure out so many teaspoons and tablespoons of ingredients, you get a “feel” or general idea of just how much it really is. If you’re not certain, please measure.

Whatever you do, do NOT mix the salt in with the yeast layer. Salt is for flavoring, but if it’s in direct contact with the yeast it will slow the rising process. Ask me how I know. *laughs* But if you put the salt in with the water below the flour, then it will turn out just right.

Then once all the ingredients are in the bread machine pan, put it inside the bread machine and turn on the “dough” cycle. What this does is mix the dough and gives a slight gentle heat in a closed environment to allow it to rise properly, but does not bake the bread.

This recipe will make two good-sized loaves or 2 dozen rolls.

After the dough rises once in the machine, the machine will beep and then I remove the dough, shape it and place into baking pans. Then the pans filled with dough go into the oven with the light on and the door closed until they are risen again. Takes anywhere between 1 to 2 hours to rise the second time. Don’t rush this step! If you bake the bread in a half-risen state you will end up with hard, chewy, dense bread. This recipe should give you light and fluffy bread.

You can also divide the dough into 4 parts, and roll it out to make 4 nice medium sized pizzas! But that recipe is another post, another day. If anyone wants to see my homemade pizza ideas, please leave a comment!

For variety and to make what I call a “pseudo” wheat bread, add in about 1/4 cup of wheat bran and 1/8 cup of wheat germ to the white flour layer in the dough.

To make extra special rolls, you can alter the recipe to have half milk and half water for the liquid and add an egg. But you may have to add a bit more flour, say 1/2 cup. You can also brush the tops of the risen, unbaked dough with a bit of beaten egg white for added shine. Or you can brush melted butter over hot, fully baked bread for extra yumminess!

If you want a sweet bread, for like raisin bread, use the same recipe. Only add a bit more sugar, the egg as mentioned above, raisins that have been soaking in hot water and drained, and 2 teaspoons of cinnamon. This version of the recipe makes KILLER toast, especially with butter spread on after it pops out of the toaster. You can even roll out the dough after it’s split into two chunks and make cinnamon buns! Yum!!!

Bread is so easy to make it’s not even funny. Especially when you make the bread machine do all the hard work and all you do it put in ingredients and push the start button. Can’t go wrong!

I know many many people out there must have a bread machine sitting in their cupboards unused. Well, time to take it out of the cupboard and use it!

In bread machines you can make fresh homemade pasta dough, jam and all kinds of other goodies.

I make bread every second day. One loaf gets put into the freezer once it’s cooled completely, and the other is eaten, usually pretty darn quick. Once the smell of homemade bread fills the house, everyone shows up wanting a piece while it’s still warm.

In these tough economic times, you can still be happy and help others feel happy with the soul-food feel of bread. If you have children, they will grow up always remembering the smell of homemade bread in the home. It’s one of those things that sticks with you throughout life and always brings a smile and happy memories.

So get out there and make some memories!

Great idea from the

Compost Confidential blog

A $25 garden to feed a family all summer with fresh produce.

This is entirely do-able, even for a family that has never gardened before. I recommend leafy greens, beans, peas, carrots, and tomatoes for the beginning gardener. Those are very easy crops, even for children. Kids just love planting stuff.

What to do about compost? Well, not everyone rakes leaves in the fall. Some wait until Spring. *raises hand* Well actually I don’t do much raking at all because we’re lucky that the wind blows in such a way as to take all the fallen leaves and blow them into neighbor’s lawns, which they then rake or hire someone else to rake and it all ends up on our property anyway in bags! (They are too lazy to take the bags to the curb, so I give permission for them to dump all leaves on our property. haha)

Cheap places to get seeds are from other gardeners (often can get these seeds for free!), yard/garage sales, community trades (Seedy Saturdays and Seedy Sundays in Canada), and even the local bargain dollar store. In our local dollar store, you can get three packs of seeds for $1. Can’t beat that! You might say, oh those seeds are no good. On the contrary! We’ve purchased seeds from there many times and always had good luck.

So let’s assume that a family buys all their seeds. If they choose the easy crops I listed above, the total cost would be approximately $10 at $2 per pack of seeds on average. Some are more costly, such as heirlooms or “organic” labeled seeds. Stick with open pollinated or heirloom seeds. Future seeds will come true to type, unlike the F1 and F2 hybrids, which can revert to an older plant parent’s qualities. To truly save money from gardening, you need to be able to collect your own seeds and grow them again next year. Use extra seeds to trade on websites like Garden Web.

Now, growing containers for starting seeds. Hit up that dollar store! Save up toilet paper and paper towel cardboard tubes and put into plastic containers. Recycle newspaper and make newspaper pots. Again, put into plastic containers to keep water from spilling everywhere, which can ruin wood furniture finish. (I know from experience! *blush*)

If you don’t want to buy plastic containers, then recycle! You can use large food cans, plastic boxes from store bought mushrooms and leafy greens. I have a killer large clear plastic tub from the grocery store that held organic baby spinach leaves that was on sale last week. That container can be planted in directly, or turned over where the lid is on the bottom to hold pots and the top can be a mini greenhouse.

Build your compost pile container out of old wood pallets. Many free directions online on how to build it.

Buy a good quality seeding mix to start off your veggies indoors or under lights. Here in Canada, we get Pro Mix brand, which costs about $6 and is enough to fill about half our seed trays.

Get your gardening tools at garage/yard sales instead of buying new. Sometimes you can find antique tools that are in much better shape than the stuff you can buy cheap imported. Tools were made much better in the Victorian era. Stuff had to last back then and they didn’t accept a lower quality.

Regarding the rest, well you need plenty of energy, gardening clothes to protect your skin from bug bites and the sun, and patience. Your greatest expense will come from purchased compost and seeds. After that, you can use plant material from the many plants you grow and fallen leaves to make your own free compost. Then harvest seeds to use next year.

You can do it!! Let’s see some new gardens spring up in 2009!

If you feel you can’t do it, or need inspiration, watch what they did in Cuba, which is nothing less than amazing.

Spring is here!

Well, at least it is Spring on the calendar anyway. Everywhere I look outside in this cold Zone 4 Hardiness Zone is snow, snow and more snow. Oh yeah, and some ice. Our gravel/dirt driveway is part nature-made skating rink and part muddy ground. I’d rather see a lot more mud than snow and ice!

Last night I first read about the new vegetable garden to be installed at the White House. Oh I was excited for sure, knowing that so many people will be inspired (if not already, due to the bad economy) to also start their own vegetable gardens.

Then, I started thinking.

When will this ground breaking take place? March 20th.
What day is that? Oh, Friday!
Why start digging now, or in a couple of weeks? Because it’s the Spring Equinox and the PTB (Powers That Be) just LOVE the Spring Equinox. Well actually they love just about everything to do with the esoteric. Esoteric just means hidden. So in this case there are hidden, non-obvious meanings regarding certain natural and calendar events. For those that don’t believe in the Esoteric stuff, research why D.C. is designed and laid out in geometric patterns, with specific places pointing towards the rising sun, etc. The Egyptians did it with the Sphinx.

What does that mean to the everyday American? Not much. But anyone who has studied esoteric vs exoteric texts will understand the significance of this chosen date to start a new garden.

Ostara, the Germanic fertility Goddess was associated with human and crop fertility. On the spring equinox, she mated with the solar god and conceived a child that would be born 9 months later on DEC-21: Yule, the winter solstice.

Spring – Crystalinks

I can hear the collective thoughts now. “What’s the big deal?”

The big deal is, the PTB hardly makes a move with anything unless it’s astrologically aligned.

According to Plant Hardiness Zone charts, the D.C. area’s last average frost date is late April, with guaranteed frost free by mid to late May. For that area, now is the ideal time to start digging a new garden plot. Between now and planting time, they will have enough time to remove sod, build raised beds, erect any garden structures and set up a watering system.

Out of all the crops they’ve chosen to plant, only a couple of plants take longer, such as the Rhubarb. The rest of the plants chosen can all be sown directly into the ground with no need to start early. Washington is in a good area for growing stuff, because they can get successive crops.

They want to grow:

Lettuce
Peas
Broccoli
Kale
Collard
Fennel

Where’s the pumpkins? Something is wrong if there are two little girls living in the White House and they are not growing any pumpkins to carve this autumn.

Strawberries? Not much mention of fruit trees and shrubs there in the published garden layout. Also missing are shallots, garlic, potatoes, turnip, kohlrabi, sweet potato vine, tomatoes, head/savoy cabbages, and beans. Can’t have a proper garden without beans! *wink* Runner beans would be best since they are heavy producers and one of the best crops for growing extras to share with the needy.

They need to build a wigwam/tepee of beans and tall peas for the girls. Kids love that kind of stuff. Forget bush beans and peas. Who wants to spend several hours bending over picking produce when you can reach the pods comfortably whilst standing?

Anyway, I don’t really see a need for them to start seeds in advance in a greenhouse when most of the chosen plants can be sown directly. But then again if local children will be involved then it would be easier for children to put in baby plant plugs instead of tiny seeds. Also most of the lettuce and leafy green crops are “cut and come again” so there doesn’t need to be that many successive sowings. And that layout is more for early season stuff. They won’t be able to grow some of the greens there when it gets really hot in D.C. The lettuces will bolt, turn sour and seed. And where’s the compost pile/bin? I seriously doubt they will use a plain ‘ol pile and the tax payer will probably have to shell out money to purchase a composting system, if one doesn’t already exist.

Well it’s a start anyway, this Whitehouse garden. I just worry that it’s a publicity stunt instead of promoting real “Change.” Critical mass change won’t occur until there is more than half the population growing something, whether it’s just a dwarf tomato in a hanging pot or some Basil growing in a kitchen window.

Vegetable garden in White House lawn

Great job, Kitchen Gardeners International!  Yeah yeah they didn’t even give you guys credit in this NY Times article, but still I’m sure all the hard work was worth it!

http://www.kitchengardeners.org/

http://www.eattheview.org/

I really hope the Obamas will keep their promises in creating a new vegetable garden on the White House lawn.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/19/dining/19garden-web.html

WASHINGTON — On Friday, Michelle Obama will begin digging up a patch of White House lawn to plant a vegetable garden, the first since Eleanor Roosevelt’s victory garden in World War II. There will be no beets (the president doesn’t like them) but arugula will make the cut.

While the organic garden will provide food for the first family’s meals and formal dinners, its most important role, Mrs. Obama said, will be to educate children about healthful, locally grown fruit and vegetables at time when obesity has become a national concern.

In an interview in her office, Mrs. Obama said, “My hope is that through children, they will begin to educate their families and that will, in turn, begin to educate our communities.”

Twenty-three fifth graders from Bancroft Elementary School in Washington will help her dig up the soil for the 1,100-square-foot plot in a spot visible to passers-by on E Street. (It’s just below the Obama girls’ swing set.) Students from the school, which has had a garden since 2001, will also help plant, harvest and cook the vegetables, berries and herbs.

Almost the entire Obama family, including the president, will pull weeds, “whether they like it or not,” Mrs. Obama said laughing. “Now Grandma, my mom, I don’t know.” Her mother, she said, would probably sit back and say: “Isn’t that lovely. You missed a spot.”

Whether there would be a White House garden has been more than a matter of landscaping. It’s taken on political and environmental symbolism as the Obamas have been lobbied for months by advocates who believe that growing more food locally could lead to healthier eating and lessen reliance on huge industrial farms that use more oil for transportation and chemicals for fertilizer.

In the meantime, promoting healthful eating has become an important part of Mrs. Obama’s agenda.

“The power of Michelle Obama and the garden can create a very powerful message about eating healthy and more delicious food,” said Dan Barber, an owner of Blue Hill at Stone Barns in Pocantico Hills, N.Y., an organic restaurant that grows many of its own ingredients. “I don’t think it’s a stretch to say it could translate into real change.”

The Clintons grew some vegetables in pots on the roof of the White House. But the Obamas’ garden will have 55 varieties of vegetables — from a wish list of the kitchen staff — grown from organic seedlings started at the executive mansion’s greenhouses.

The Obamas will feed their love of Mexican food with cilantro, tomatilloes and hot peppers. Lettuces will include red romaine, green oak leaf, butterhead, red leaf and galactic. There will be spinach, chard, collards and black kale. For desserts, there will be a patch of berries. And herbs will include some more unusual varieties, like anise hyssop and Thai basil. A White House carpenter who is a beekeeper will tend two hives for honey.

Total cost for the seeds, mulch, etc., is $200.

The plots will be in raised beds fertilized with White House compost, crab meal from the Chesapeake Bay, lime and green sand. Ladybugs and praying mantises will help control harmful bugs.

Cristeta Comerford, the White House’s executive chef, is eager to plan menus around the garden, and Bill Yosses, the pastry chef, is looking forward to berry season.

Sam Kass, an assistant White House chef who prepared healthful meals for the Obama family in Chicago and is an advocate of local food, will oversee the garden. The White House grounds crew and kitchen staff will do most of the work, but other White House staff members have volunteered.

“First of all,” Mrs. Obama said, “there’s nothing really cooler than coming to the White House and harvesting some of the vegetables and being in the kitchen with Cris and Sam and Bill, and cutting and cooking and actually experiencing the joys of your work.”

Mrs. Obama, who said that she never had a vegetable garden before, said the idea for it came from her experiences as a working mother trying to feed her daughters, Malia and Sasha, a good diet. Eating out three times a week, ordering a pizza, having a sandwich for dinner took it’s toll. The children’s pediatrician told her she needed to be thinking about nutrition.

“He raised a flag for us,” she said, and within months the children lost weight.

For children, she said, food is all about taste, and fresh and local taste better.

“A real delicious heirloom tomato is one of the sweetest things that you’ll ever eat,” she said. “And my children know the difference, and that’s how I’ve been able to get them to try different things.

“I wanted to be able to bring what I learned to a broader base of people. And what better way to do it than to plant a vegetable garden in the South Lawn of the White House.”

The country’s one million community gardens, she said, can also play an important role for urban dwellers who have no backyards.

But, sitting in her office in the East Wing, Mrs. Obama stressed that she doesn’t want people to feel guilty if they don’t have the time to have a garden: there are still many small changes they can make.

“You can begin in your own cupboard by eliminating processed food, trying to cook a meal a little more often, trying to incorporate more fruits and vegetables,” she said.

White House veg garden plan

Burt’s Bees, Tom’s of Maine, Naked Juice: Your Favorite Brands? Take Another Look — They May Not Be What They Seem

http://www.alternet.org/story/131910/

Wow, amazing story.  But it does not surprise me a bit.

Small, cottage industries that manufactured natural products were bought out by large corporations.

Greed?  Perhaps.

Control?  Definitely.

Better off making your own products!  Stop relying on large corporations.  For they are only out to make a profit and could care less whether the products are natural or good for you.