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WHITE HOUSE GARDEN INSPIRES

WASHINGTON - The White House kitchen garden is surely home grown, but it is not organic, and there are no plans for it to be.

WASHINGTON - The White House kitchen garden is surely home grown, but it is not organic, and there are no plans for it to be.

Assistant White House chef Sam Kass, an old friend of President Barack Obama who oversees the garden, says labelling the crops "organic" is not the point, though the White House uses only natural, not synthetic, fertilisers and pesticides.

"To come out and say (organic) is the one and only way, which is how this would be interpreted, doesn't make any sense," Kass said as he walked among the garden's newly planted broccoli, rhubarb, carrots and spinach. "This is not about getting into all that. This is about kids."

Still, it has become a curiosity around the world and a big part of first lady Michelle Obama's pitch for healthy eating.

She clearly is proud of it, and she is asked about the garden everywhere she goes, her aides say.

Embassies and organisations often call the White House with questions about how they can replicate it.

The kids to whom Kass refers are from local schools and are sometimes invited to the White House to help plant and harvest vegetables as part of the first lady's campaign to stem childhood obesity.

Kass says they often say they did not like certain vegetables - peas, lettuce, spinach - until they ate the fresh veggies they harvested from the garden.

"They've never seen what broccoli looks like or where peas come from," Kass said.

Last year the White House garden produced 55 kinds of fruits and vegetables and 455kg of food, about half of which went to local charities.

Though the crop was not large enough to feed guests for state dinners, some of its herbs were used for seasoning.

The patch of lawn includes a beehive tended by a carpenter who has worked at the White House for more than two decades and tends bees on the side.

The hive has produced 60kg of honey so far, and the first lady packaged some of it as gifts to the spouses of the world leaders who attended the G20 summit in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, last year.

The honey has also found its way into the White House kitchen.

Presidential chefs have used it for honey cupcakes and honey vinaigrette salad dressing.

The chefs are harvesting the garden year-round. When snowstorms hit Washington early this year, Kass and his staff kept the veggies warm by setting up "hoop houses," - plastic covers that trap heat from the sun.

In early March the chefs picked lettuce, spinach, turnips, arugula and carrots grown through the winter.

Kass, who cooked for the Obamas in Chicago, says the garden is partly tended by White House volunteers who shed their suits for jeans and come down to the lawn periodically to work in the dirt. - Sapa-AP

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