Michael Pollan+Bill Moyers=Grow Your Own

Anyone else watch Michael Pollan on Bill Moyers' NOW this week? If you missed it, click here.
One idea with real merit is for the president-elect to hire a White House chef who would source food from local farms.

And naturally we support turning at least five acres of the White House lawn (lawn? that's ridiculous...) into an organic farm.

A friend asked how our greens were doing upstairs, so here's an update. (Double-click photos for larger views.)

The sub-irrigated planters (SIPs) are growing beautifully. It's about 50 degrees F on the second floor (about 32 degrees F outside), an ideal temperature for cool-weather greens. I rotate the planters every few days to accommodate the single southern exposure light source.

Here's a close-up of one planter. We're getting a nice salad or stir-fry for two every other day. I'm amazed it's working, but then I still marvel at the power of a few minuscule seeds to deliver this much food. This after 50 years of growing stuff.

One issue with the Pollan/Moyers program: it took them a long time to get around to suggesting that people start a garden to grow their own food.

As you know if you read our blog, you don't need a turned-earth plot to do it. And you don't need a rooftop either--SIPs can be positioned anywhere on the ground where you have sun. Some people even put them in a wagon so they can be moved into the sun.

And as Bruce says, you can also view growing your own food as political act. Pollan and Moyers touched on that too.

At left is a view of one of the sub-irrigated pop-bottle planters seeded in October. It won't be long before it too becomes a windowsill salad generator.

I don't pretend that everyone can haul bucket planters inside and grow food in Chicago during the winter. But if you've got a window with strong light, these pop bottle planters are an amazing demonstration of sub-irrigation in action. For more on all things sub-irrigated, go to Bob Hyland's site Inside Urban Green and have a look around.

Finally, I reuse the small plastic Earthbound Farms boxes to hold our harvest. It's a good reminder of the $2.99 we save each time we cut and savor this beautiful food.

Conservatively, that's $9.00 per week plus the cost of transport, which in our case means giving the legs a good work-out on the stairs to the second floor.