Doesn't much matter what you do, you can't please everyone. LOL
White House vegetable garden
I hear Bo is also fond of tomatoes....
Maybe a few of the kind of garden stories we all have will follow
=)
My old boxer would eat the cherry tomatoes right off the part of the vine she could reach through the fence. I swear she smiled as she licked her mouth off.
LOL, My dog Buddy would jump up and pick apples off the apple tree, then lay on the deck and eat them. We have a fenced dog yard and there were two apple trees planted there, one of them had some lower branches and he could just reach them with a good jump. I'm sorry to say that he's too old to do that any more and the Apple Tree needed to be taken out this fall. This pic taken a few years ago shows Buddy, his Apple Tree and our GS JR.
What a cute and talented dog and GS.
Unfortunately the Obamas have found that sludge applied to the White House lawn is going to render their vegetables inedible. See the story here:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-kimbrell/the-obama-organic-family_b_224398.html
There's a lesson in this, but what a shame.
That's so disappointing! And the EPA is ok with it? Any idiot knows that there are toxins in wastewater. Sounds like someone in the sewage industry has deep pockets and lots of pull in government.
I'm wondering . . . I've heard people here mention using Milorganite. I'm wondering how safe that really is.
More positive news: Mrs. Obama is still looking fabulous in the garden! :o) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/16/michelle-obama-garden-har_n_216467.html
O now there is a surprise....more money wasted. Even in the garden a little research would go a long way lolol. Besides not reading legislation...looks like directions are out to.. No problem...you and I paid for that.
Milorganite is advertised as a LAWN fertilizer. iirc it is not recommended for growing crops.
http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/970312/
This subject first came to my attention a few months ago when I heard there was proposed legislation to limit the practice but I've failed to follow up. There are so many uncertainties in our food supply that I've just been busy trying to grow my own.
The proposed legislation is to demand a fallow period of only one year for farmland having sewage sludge applied. If the White House grounds have such high toxic levels of lead from the Clinton years then obviously a far longer fallow period is needed. This does not raise my confidence in the EPA.
I guess the lesson to us is, have your soil tested! You just don't know what's in there until you do.
We were encouraged to buy sludge to put on our orchard in the early 70's when we moved here. I wonder whether whatever was in it has leached out by now. I did know enough not to use it for my vegetable garden, and was concerned about the orchard use, too. Not to worry; we never really got any fruit out of those trees - wrong climate for most of them.
The Pinelands Commission is very strict about not allowing sludge to be applied within its jurisdiction, except for uses like turf farms, and even there it's monitored carefully because of the impact on the water supply. Treated water can also be a problem because some substances like viruses and pharmaceuticals may not be filtered out using the standard techniques. Recent articles about impacts on humans from such substances are scary.
Leslie I think there was a lot less hazardous waste by volume entering our sewers back in the early 70s. My property has been in my family and mostly fallow since 1962 so I know I'm safe there.
One thing that worries me is that there is no accountability anywhere at any level. People will dump anything at all down a drain. In my county, there are only 2 days a year that people can drop off containers of left over chemicals or other toxic substances at a collection point that supposedly disposes of them safely. I'd have to travel 12 miles to get there. I don't think a lot of people would bother to even walk across the street any day of the week when they can just pour it down the drain or dump it by the back fence.
The good news is that scientist are learning more everyday about microbes that can sequester or transform many toxins. We have answers but lack the funds or the political will to implement them. So far we have taken the course of least resistance and mostly ignored the costs of poisoning the earth.
Maybe Ms. Obama's failed organic White House garden will have a far greater impact in the end than had it succeeded. Anything that raises awareness has to be good.
Milorganite was considered very wholesome because of the brewery waste that was a large component of it.
Twiggy, I hope you're right, that the failed garden will have a greater impact than a successful one. What a shocker, though! I can imagine how the Obamas must feel about that! But I only saw it on Huffington Post; I have no idea how widely-spread this news will be.
with MJ sucking all the oxygen out of the room--alot of things haven't hit MSM yet
True.... I wonder whether this will, though.
If this news survives (I really like dmj's reference to diminished oxygen) I do hope that Twiggy's excellent analysis will come true. All I can say is rock on and spread the word as best we can.
Oh, wait. I just found an AP story and noticed it said 93 ppm. And it says 500 ppm is dangerous. I don't know anything about lead toxicity levels . . .
Here's a rebuttable from the group that started the garden: http://obamafoodorama.blogspot.com/2009/06/white-house-kitchen-garden-as-media.html
Dividedsky, thanks for posting that rebuttal! I'm so glad to read that it's not true, but I certainly would have expected Huffington Post, which likes the Obamas, to be more scrupulous about what it features on its site. Good to have the record set straight, and I wonder where it all came from in the first place!
Whatever the truth is, and the rebuttal sounds very convincing, I doubt it will make the news one way or another. (Well, there may be a few who will rant and maybe even confuse lead with mercury.) The positive result would be a good scientific debate about "sludge" about which I know nothing.
Even if they got the numbers wrong, I'll agree with the following statement from that article.
"Dr. Johnson and Dr. Gray both pointed out that perhaps the accusations against the White House Kitchen Garden have a positive side, from a public health stand point, in terms of raising public awareness about lead in particular and other toxins in general."
I still think sludge as it currently is disposed of is a bad idea and that alternative means of cleaning up all of our man-made messes needs serious attention.
Sewage sludge and animal waste from large production farms should be fed into methane digestors.