Each year, as spring sets in and the ground thaws, First Lady Michelle Obama takes to the White House’s Kitchen Garden to replant it for the season. Naturally, she doesn’t do this alone! Tackling the task alongside the First Lady this year were several of The New York Botanical Garden’s own greenthumbs who’d made the trek down to Washington, D.C., as part of the Let’s Move! fifth anniversary.
Students Nare Kande, a fourth-grader from Harlem; and Sarala Beepat, a sixth-grader from the Bronx; joined Toby Adams, the Director of NYBG’s Edible Academy, to help plant radish seeds, bok choy, and other vegetables with Mrs. Obama on April 15. Each student has plenty of experience planting and tending the vegetable beds of NYBG’s Ruth Rea Howell Family Garden as part of our Children’s Gardening Program, so they certainly had the skills needed to help kickstart spring at the White House.
They really do laugh uncontrollably and without cause while working in the Ruth Rea Howell Family Garden. Well, all right, Ivo was probably telling a patently terrible joke at the time this photo was taken. Here’s a big thanks and hello to Annie Novak and Toby Adams, whose tireless efforts have kept us knee-deep in vegetables all through the summer and into fall. They’re buttoning up the Family Garden’s edible options until spring, but we’ll be waiting patiently for the next harvest!
On Saturday, September 22, the autumnal equinox comes along to peg the exact moment when the northern hemisphere tilts its way into the colder months, leaving many northeastern green thumbs with a bittersweet goodbye on their hands; it’s ciao to cucumbers and adios to eggplants until 2013. But just because summer’s warmth is tipping its hat, that doesn’t mean you need to stow your trowels and pack up your gardening gloves! As explained by Toby Adams, manager of the Ruth Rea Howell Family Garden, fall can be just as bountiful with a little savvy under your belt.
For the cooler seasons, we’re giving a farewell salute to tomatoes, summer squash, and fresh beans, but welcoming an entirely new class of crops to our one-acre vegetable garden; all sorts of hardy vegetables will be taking root, including mustard greens, broccoli, and prolific plots of radishes to be harvested later in fall. And if the fresh start wasn’t reason enough for fanfare, we’re marking the first day of fall with the long-awaited Edible Garden Festival on Sunday, September 23. It’s as proper a send-off to summer as I can imagine, with all-day gardening activities, cooking demonstrations, and a gourmand’s getaway in Mario Batali‘s garden-to-table dinner event.
Toby Adams is Manager of the Ruth Rea Howell Family Garden.
Vegetables and kids: two of my favorite things, growing together in the Ruth Rea Howell Family Garden! Each year we open the gates of our one-and-a-half-acre garden to thousands of children and invite them to help us in our annual effort to grow thousands of plants.
Sitting here now, among the tangles of tomato vines heavy with fruit and rows of sunflowers standing tall, it takes a leap of faith to believe this site was nearly bare when we began. Only a short time ago, I’m certain I was sitting in this same spot bundled in countless layers of thermal fabric with my eyes closed imagining the fragrances that envelope me now, straining to hear the drones of the pollinators patrolling the plots, and wondering at what point in the summer the garlic leaves would collapse under the weight of themselves.
A little over one hundred days later, my imaginations have been realized. The freshly harvested basil leaves stain fingers with their pungent perfume, the bees are busy buzzing in and out of the squash blossoms, and the garlic has already been harvested, braided, and hung in the garage to cure.
