Oh, and they didn’t think it was important to consider the effects of eating pesticides, many of which are carcinogenic. Thanks, Food Standards Agency; I could have made a terrible environmentally conscious decision if you hadn’t opened my eyes (again)! Eat on…

Via BBC

Seriously, the human body provides an excellent source of nutrients to your plants that you may not have considered:

Hair: chemical (dye/perm) free hair provides an excellent source of slow release nitrogen to your soil.
Finger/toenails:  Put your clippings in the garden.  They’re a source of calcium.
Blood: an excellent source of nitrogen.  If you use a menstrual cup, or have a nasty blood spill to clean up, empty it out in the garden. Of course, blood meal works too.
Bones: bones are very high in calcium and phosphorous, which is essential for healthy root and fruit development.  If you don’t want your plants to eye your limbs hungrily, I recommend bone meal.

Urine: is a convenient nitrogen-packed liquid fertilizer.  It’s safe to pee directly on most mature plants, but it’s easier and safer if you just pee in your watering can and dilute it.  The smell of your territorial markings will also help deter animals that want to steal your food.
Feces: Human waste is sold as “malorganite”  in garden stores.  General knowledge tells us that we should never use manure from animals that aren’t vegetarian, but no one told the guys who make this shit.  What you should never use is waste from animals that eat chemicals that they can’t pronounce, and are passing things like fluoride and lead through their bodies.  Did you hear about the lead contamination in the Michelle Obama’s organic Whitehouse garden?  From malorganite being used on the lawn.   It’s a great way to poison yourself twice: the lead that passes through your system can be absorbed by your plants so that you can eat it again.  yum!  That being said, vegitarians can make excellent use of composting toilets for an eco-friendly way to flush, to recycle those waste nutrients.

Squirrels.
Bane of my existance! Oh why do you torment me so?

So, I reached for my handy dandy secret weapon. Cayenne Pepper. Yup, just plain old cayenne pepper. You can sprinkle it right on your young plants, the soil, and even mature leaves, without harming anything. My only problem is remembering to reapply after rain and waterings.

The Brooklyn Botanical Garden suggests a more peaceful method: Feed the squirrels. They claim that squirrels are territorial, so it won’t increase your squirrel problem, and if they’re well fed, they won’t bother digging in the dirt. It’s a lovely thought, but I don’t negotiate with terrorists.

Although Michelle Obama had her own reasons for starting the garden, it started with a non-partisan, petition-based initiative called The WhoFarm (White House Organic Farm) Project. The Project, lead by Daniel Bowman Simon, 28, and Casey Gustowarow, 27, acquired the WHOFarmMobile, (two school buses fused together with an organic edible garden on the roof) and drove across 25 states to raise awareness and gather signatures for their petition.

As the first harvest comes off the garden, we can see a positive example of how a grass roots movement made a huge difference. Now “every single person from Prince Charles on down” are talking about it:

More on what people are saying later.

Think about The WHOFarm the next time you think, “why bother, the government isn’t going to do anything”.

EDIT:
evidently the WHOFarm wasn’t the only group petitioning for a Whitehouse garden. Roger Doiron started a project called Eat The View in Feb 2008, which gathered 100 000 signatures.