Michelle Obama Watch

It’s a miracle! WhiteHouse.gov actually had a photo up about something First Lady MIchelle Obama Did today!

Today the First Lady hosted Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and students from Bancroft Elementary, in the White House Kitchen Garden on the South Lawn of the White House to plant the garden and highlight healthy eating. The same school participated in the groundbreaking of the Garden on March 20 and will return later this year for harvesting and cooking with the food grown. WhiteHouse.gov

To all those who talked smack chattered incessantly about the First Lady not actually getting her hands dirty gardening in the White House veggie garden once again, she proved you wrong. Not only did she get her hands dirty, but her clothes got dirty too.

Bees Update

She was also serious about introducing a hive of stinging insects into the garden. Yes, the White House beehive has arrived. I need to take a benadryl just thinking about it.

Buzzing nearby while the group toiled away was another new addition to the culinary resources of the White House; a beehive. Apparently one of the White House’s carpenters is a bee enthusiast, if you will. He loaned the White House some bees to produce honey…a “substantial amount,” we’re told. Charlie the carpenter’s keeping the bees. The first family’s keeping the honey. SOURCE

I’m a fan of the First Lady, but “No Maam!” on the bee hive. Did I tell y’all about the time I got stung in the eye? Or on my foot? Finger? Arm? Yes, two of those times I was playing with the bees, but the other two times were unprovoked attacks.

About that Michelle Obama Watch  Indoor Garden

As for me and my indoor gardening experiment, well it’s kind of becoming an addiction. I’ve spent far too much time at Lowes and Home Deport. I’ve even started a succulent container garden after Mama insisted that I purchase  plants that she said I would “have to work really hard to kill.” They are not dead yet, they are actually growing.

As for this “grow your own food bit”, I don’t know about that. It took almost two weeks just for the sage seeds to germinate. The basil is doing well. I don’t know what the cilantro and chives are doing. They’ve gone all haywire. I don’t know if I should water them or give them more direct sunlight.

I also planted red beans which are growing like weeds (pun intended), some spinach, carrots, onions, and some other plant( I don’t know what it is exactly, but it looked pretty in the store at the time).  The beans by far are the most interesting because they literally grow overnight. It’s like having a puppy, you rush home to see what the plants did today.

But If I was trying to live off of what I was growing, I would starve. Not to mention that between all the pots and the soil and the cute spritzer bottle that coordinates with the watering jug and the spouters and the plant liners and the little plant labels that you have to stick in the pot so you can tell the difference between spinach and carrots, I think I’ve spent a grip just on planting supplies. Did I mention the container for the succulent garden and the river rocks to go on top of the planting soil.

I’ll still keep it up because I enjoy watching them grow, but if you are trying to live off of an indoor garden, good luck with that! Or perhaps I am just too impatient… gardening might l help me work on that

From the Department of Agriculture:
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack joined First Lady Michelle Obama and a group of 5th graders on the South Lawn of the White House today to talk about healthy eating, the availability of locally grown fruits and vegetables, and bees.

“Growing your own fruits and vegetables is one of the best ways to have healthy food,” Vilsack said. “Working in a garden is a great way to stay physically active and maintain a healthy body. And, USDA is helping schools make sure that every student in America has a healthy and nutritious lunch to eat at school.”

This July, USDA will be providing two types of parasite-resistant honey bees developed by U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientists to pollinate the plants in the new White House garden this summer. Both of these bees are rapidly gaining in popularity with bee keepers.

Honey bees enhance any garden, because they increase the yields of plants that require pollination, they produce honey, and they are one of Nature’s most fascinating creatures to observe. Unfortunately, parasitic mites cause serious health problems for most varieties of honey bees, and many beekeepers must use pesticides to combat the mites in the hives. But these USDA-developed bees are mite-resistant, offering a more natural, organic alternative for the White House garden.

Honey bees are crucial to American agriculture, adding some $15 billion in value in the nation’s crops, particularly specialty crops such as almonds and other nuts, berries, fruits, and vegetables. In California, the almond crop alone uses 1.3 million colonies of bees, approximately one half of all honey bees in the United States, and this need is projected to grow to 1.5 million colonies by 2010. Ag Department

Posted by Gina.