March 19th, 2009
White House becoming Green House?
The First Lady is breaking ground on a major new White House project: a kitchen garden. The produce will go to the White House kitchen. A nearby elementary school class will also help with the labor, like planting and weed-pulling.
On a recent “Sixty Minutes” program Alice Waters, Berkeley “slow-food” crusader, said it was her dream to see a kitchen garden at the White House. You can see the video clip here. She’s happy tonight.
A combo of worries over pesticides, and the cost of groceries is driving a big increase in American gardening. One survey suggests double-digit growth in gardening, replacing hedge funds as the real growth industry in America.
My Depression-era hardened parents had a half-acre garden every summer. I hated the weed-pulling, but loved the grasshopper “harvest.” Bonus: I got to eat all the fresh peas right out of the pod. Best fresh food on earth. But in honor of recent St. Patty’s Day, I gotta add, garden fresh potatoes are hard to match. Ditto, a sun-warm, just-picked tomato. For many city-reared Americans this may be the greenest tech of all: working with a chlorophyll-rich environment. It’s renewable, and solar powered if you avoid the oil-based fertilizers.
My free hint to Mrs. Obama, get a few chickens, and then….
A newsman since 1969, Harry Fuller has worked for CBS, ABC, CNBC Europe, CNET and was founding news director at TechTV. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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