“Self-sufficient gardens are beautiful: a ramble of productivity, a profusion of smells and colour. We’ve forgotten how beautiful edible plants can be: fat, red apples and trendrils of grapes; bountiful red-flowering perennial beans, and soft, feathery fennel; the wide, bright blooms of passionfruit, and the scent of orange blossom on a summer night. It’s like a Garden of Eden in your own backyard!”
Though she lives in Australia and her garden advice is based on Australian seasons and soil, Jackie French offers many ideas and suggestions that will be useful in moving forward with the development of our own self-sufficiency here in small town America.
You may recognize Jackie as the author of Diary of a Wombat, a delightful children’s book with whimsical illustrations. Diary of a Wombat is an ALA Notable Children’s Book, Younger Reader Awards Winner. When I was teaching fulltime, I used Diary of a Wombatin lesson plans and Writer’s Workshop. It is a great book for classroom filled with diverse learners and is mentioned in other educational/teacher resource books.
Mostly thought, Diary of a Wombatis just fun to read whether by an adult or child.
AP – First lady Michelle Obama takes part in the groundbreaking of the White House Kitchen Garden on the South {~snip~}
WASHINGTON – Twenty-six elementary schoolchildren wielded shovels, rakes, pitchforks and wheelbarrows to help first lady Michelle Obama break ground for a produce and herb garden on the White House grounds.
Crops to be planted in the coming weeks on the 1,100-square-foot, L-shaped patch near the fountain on the South Lawn include spinach, broccoli, various lettuces, kale and collard greens, assorted herbs and blueberries, blackberries and raspberries.
There will also be a beehive.
“We’re going to try to make our own honey here as well,” Mrs. Obama told the students from Bancroft Elementary School in Washington. The school has its own community garden.
{~snip~}
I am the most excited to hear more about the on-grounds apiary!
suggested the White House develop five south acres for growing fruits and vegetables for the First Family and staff. Farmer in Chief was an open letter to the then President-Elect, published in the New York Times Magazine.
There is no way that I can do justice to the article by writing a synopsis, so I will include a very small exerpt…..
“After cars, the food system uses more fossil fuel than any other sector of the economy — 19 percent. And while the experts disagree about the exact amount, the way we feed ourselves contributes more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere than anything else we do — as much as 37 percent, according to one study. Whenever farmers clear land for crops and till the soil, large quantities of carbon are released into the air. But the 20th-century industrialization of agriculture has increased the amount of greenhouse gases emitted by the food system by an order of magnitude; chemical fertilizers (made from natural gas), pesticides (made from petroleum), farm machinery, modern food processing and packaging and transportation have together transformed a system that in 1940 produced 2.3 calories of food energy for every calorie of fossil-fuel energy it used into one that now takes 10 calories of fossil-fuel energy to produce a single calorie of modern supermarket food. Put another way, when we eat from the industrial-food system, we are eating oil and spewing greenhouse gases. This state of affairs appears all the more absurd when you recall that every calorie we eat is ultimately the product of photosynthesis — a process based on making food energy from sunshine. There is hope and possibility in that simple fact.”
Would you support a National Backyard Farming Movement? This morning I have read two articles about how the Philipines Department of Agriculture is promoting their national vegetable program to help improve productions and consumption of homegrown goods. Their Dept. of Ag “will provide seeds, technology, and greenhouses, as well as help market linkages”.
Perusing further, I came across a poll from the Bahamas asking participants if they would support a National Backyard Farming Project and a news article, Home Garden Flourishing, at thebahamasweekly.com–which displays a few photos of a backyard farming project.
To me, this is an interesting consideration and I am certain I will fill many hours with further research on the topic, but meanwhile, would YOU support a National Movement toward this kind of sustainability?
I have written about Kitchen Gardener’s International recently, but they have come up with something even a bit out of the ordinary for them….so I thought I would share….{snip}
“Dear Kitchen Gardener,
I am writing to invite you to join me in a group internet action that will cost you but a small amount of time and money and that - if carried out by enough people - could help raise the stature of gardening and local foods in society while raising much needed funds for KGI’s core activities and garden grants program.
So here’s the deal: with one First Family moving out 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in the next few months and a new one moving in, KGI is taking it upon itself to organize a little “lawn sale” on their behalf, but not type you might think.
We’re selling the White House lawn itself on eBay in parcels of 1′ x 1′ at a fixed price of $10 each. Please allow me to explain. As a law-abiding nonprofit group, we of course can’t really sell you the South Lawn any more than we can sell you the South Pole or the Brooklyn Bridge. We can’t do it and we don’t have to. The First Lawn already has an owner: the American people!
But, if you’re like me, the White House’s sprawling grassy landscape doesn’t feel like it’s yours. It doesn’t look like it would look if you were Landscaper-in-Chief because it’s missing a key element: an organic kitchen garden. It’s had one before and, given the changing times, it should have one again. Hence the idea of a “lawn sale.” What better way to give people a renewed sense of ownership and control over something than to give them a chance to buy it back?”
