Plant a kitchen garden like Michelle Obama

April 1, 11:10 PMMiami Home Improvement ExaminerMeera Lester

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Spring  is here and the economy still sucks. Prices of food are rising but people still want to eat fresh, wholesome, and healthy food. And that’s also true for First Lady Michelle Obama, who, with the help of over two dozen children from Bancroft Elementary School in Washington D.C., picked up a shovel and started digging on March 20. Her purpose wasn’t a home improvement project, per se, but to make sure that the First Family and visitors to the White House had access to home-grown, fresh foods like the corn, squash, and beans from her kitchen garden. 

A kitchen garden can add a lot to the value of a home, especially when you consider that a few packets of seed can produce a vegetable garden that will feed a family of four. And an additional bonus is that a vegetable garden with fruit trees and berry vines and bushes adds value to your property. Consider it a home improvement investment. 

The French call a kitchen garden a potage or “soup” garden because it provides herbs and vegetables for all types of dishes. Such a garden won’t cost much. The expenditure will be on soil amendments (if your soil is poor), seeds, and stakes (for tomatoes, pole beans, and plants that need support).

Don’t have much space? You can plant a postage-stamp size garden, putting tall plants a bit closer to create favorable microclimates for smaller, shorter, and slower-growing plants that you put between them. Some vegetables won’t even mind if you grow them in planting boxes or containers. Peppers and also tomatoes, if properly supported, can be grown that way and so can herbs such as basil, chives, cilantro, oregano, and thyme.

First Lady Michelle Obama turned a 1, 100 square-foot plot into a garden and expects most of her garden’s bounty to be ready by Independence Day. Maybe you, like her, have enough space to accommodate some neat rows. And if you hate the soil you have, dig it up and then trench in nutrients such as planting mix, bone meal, blood meal, chicken manure, and the like to create an ideal medium for the seeds to germinate and grow. Or, build a frame for a raised bed and put in the nutrients with some top soil. With a raised bed, you won’t have to bend over so much to tend to the digging and weeding.

Start now and you’ll have something fresh to put on your own Fourth of July picnic table. With a kitchen garden as your home improvement project, you might be surprised to see others following your example.