The White House Vegetable Garden

I've been away for a few days visiting family and friends but look what sensational news reached me as soon as I got back.

Back in February of last year, Roger Doiron of Kitchen Gardeners International started a campaign to persuade the new incumbent at The White House to turn over some of the high profile lawns to grow vegetables.

Well, on Friday last, First Lady Michelle Obama was joined by school children and broke ground to create an 1100 square foot Vegetable Garden on the South Lawn.

You can read all about it in Roger's report in the KGI Newsletter..

Let me join people all around the world in congratulating Roger on this wonderful achievement and in hoping that the example being set by the Obama's will be taken up by other leaders.

The news is particularly good as I believe that gardening is new to First Lady Michelle Obama and that she intends to involve all her family in the creation of an organic vegetable and herb garden.

Picture from dailymail.co.uk

SPRING ARRIVES

Now, at last, the vegetable seedlings can spend the days out in the sunshine, covering tables and window sills in every vantage point on the south side of the house, as well as in the cold frame. Here are just some of them.	Ian's cherry tomatoes are very strong and are being given away to neighbours as they prove  that even mouldy seeds should be given a chance to grow.100% germination means there are hundreds of them!
The lawns are a profusion of colour as tiny violets, polyanthus, daffodils and other bulbs and several wildflowers burst into life. I feel like a buddhist as I tiptoe across the grass, trying not to step on anything in flower! Every day something new appears. The trees, such as this willow, below, have buds bursting forth as the days warm. The raspberries and hazelnuts so recently planted all have their first leaves and the cuttings we took when we pruned them are making more plants for planting later.
	At left is the first shrub to colour here. It is a forsythia and you see it everywhere, forming vibrant yellow hedges while other shrubs are still dormant. I can see how spring is such a time of joy in the garden, in these colder climates, as so much is deciduous and colourless over winter.

Clam Dip

We have had a couple of days off from our garden whilst we have entertained some family.

A few friends came for dinner last night and I made a nice clam dip which we served with a second, avocado, dip and raw vegetables as part of the aperitifs.

Here is the recipe for the Clam Dip:

INGREDIENTS

2 x 61/2 oz cans chopped clams
5 small cloves of garlic, thinly sliced
750 grams Fromage Blanc
125ml single cream
Juice of half a lemon
Good dash Worcestershire Sauce
A few drops of Tabasco (to your own taste)
Salt and ground black pepper to taste

METHOD

Drain clams.
Mix garlic, Fromage Blanc, single cream, lemon, sauces and salt and pepper and adjust to a thin dip consistency by adding cream or fromage blanc.  The mixture will thicken in the Fridge!.
Add Chopped Clams and blend with a stick blender
Blend until the clams are small enough.
Put into fridge for at least two hours before

Hazelnuts

We spent the weekend preparing our next bed in the new vegetable garden.  This time the prepared bed was planted with three hazelnut bushes which we bought on Friday.

We visited a small nursery, not far from here and were delighted that they had bare rooted hazelnut bushes at a reasonable price.   We decided to buy three as we were advised to plant them about 2m (6'6") apart.

We also bought a dozen lettuce seedlings which looked superb and were so much further advanced than our own ones, grown from seed.  The lettuce seedlings were being sold in packs of 6 growing in the squares from the 1" size soil blocker.  In another part of the nursery there were hundreds and hundreds of these blocks with all manner of seedlings growing in them, with not a plastic pot in sight!!!

The new vegetable garden is on a slight slope and this bed is the farthest down the slope that we will be working this year and it was interesting to note how much better the soil was as we moved down the hill.  I say better, but please don't think that I mean good!!!  It was still a heavy clay in need of a lot of amendment....   just not quite as heavy as the top beds we had made already.

On Sunday we opened up three large holes and planted the three bushes in good compost.

Hazelnuts are the first nut trees we have planted here, but a neighbour tells me that he has a hedge of hazelnuts which is growing quite happily.   Of course, we do have three large walnut trees.