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Kitchen Garden Harvest at the White House Today

We just read that there is going to be an early harvest at the White House today: some of that big, beautiful vegetable garden is getting harvested by kids from Bancroft Elementary, the same kids who helped First Lady Michelle Obama plant the garden to begin with. We're slightly jealous: our garden doesn't have much to harvest yet! What about yours?

Our guess is that the White House garden is yielding plenty of herbs, as well as lettuce, radishes, and some peas. Perhaps some spinach, too. Those are some of the classic early summer and spring crops. Unless you live quite far South and are already looking at blushing tomatoes, those are probably the things ready for harvest in your garden.

We got a late start, so herbs are the main thing we're using from the garden. The lovage and summer savory have skyrocketed!

We're curious what will actually be harvested today at the White House. Any guesses? The kids get to eat it, too; they will cook a meal with their harvest bounty in the kitchen with White House chefs. Sounds like fun!

• Original story: White House vegetable garden at Baltimore Sun

(Image: The Official White House Photostream)

Comments (5)

I live in the Princeton NJ area, and we harvested our first few shelling peas last night! The broccolli is just about ready, and we had our first bright red tomato last weekend. It was from the "4th of July Tomato" plant that promises red toms before the 4th, but we were amazed that we had a lovely ruby red speciman already! YAY!

posted by hoxit_rocks_it on June 16th 2009 at 3:44pm
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Zone 4b - New Hampshire here... lettuce, asian greens, radishes, beet and kohlrabi thinnings in a salad... and basil and mint pinchings (to make the plant bushier)... oh, and parsley. I have a few flowers on my peppers and tomato plants even though they're less than a foot high. More seeds to be planted tomorrow... lettuce, radish and more beans.

I'm envious hoxit_rocks_it... my peas are up but not even flowers yet... I was very late planting them.

posted by burrda2000 on June 16th 2009 at 4:43pm
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Mostly we have herbs. We've been eating a lot of pestos (oops--nearly wrote "pests"; there are a few of those, but we haven't been eating them). We made lemon bars with thyme in the crust, roasted a chicken with sage leaves and butter tucked under the skin, roasted a pork loin with rosemary/thyme/mustard rub, and have been decorating salads with nasturtium flowers. Oh, and the delicious snazziness of snipping chives onto fancy Sunday eggs. Good stuff.

posted by klt108 on June 16th 2009 at 6:51pm
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I live in Vancouver, where our weather has been unusually sunny and hot for this time of year. My mixed greens are INSANE - I've been harvesting a huge salad for dinner every evening for the past two weeks - and my herbs are almost as crazy. If the weather holds, it looks like my tomato and zucchini plants are going to be big producers, too. And I didn't even get most of my seeds started until mid-May!

posted by TammyE on June 17th 2009 at 2:26am
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I just picked up our first CSA box of the season yesterday, whoohoo!
We got leaf and boston lettuce, rapini, arugula, radishes, snap peas, freshly ground whole kernel cornmeal and an herb pot. As usual, our farmer has surprised me with what he manages to pull off so early in our (so far not very friendly) MN growing season.

Did I mention, !whoohoo! for 17 more weeks of garden deliciousness!

posted by splatgirl on June 17th 2009 at 11:17am
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