Vegetable Garden

Bill Dupper Jr. of Swedesboro carries on a family tradition of maintaining a vegetable garden that belonged to his grandfather. Dupper yesterday spread lime to neutralize the acid in the soil.

You can tell Joy Larkcom's had decades of experience growing vegetables. One clue is her long list of books, which includes Organic Salad Garden , Oriental Vegetables , and The Vegetable Garden Displayed . Another clue is the sheer number of practical ideas in the newly revised edition of her 1997 book Creative Vegetable Gardening (Sterling Publishing, $19.95). Larkcom has been ahead of the vegetable-gardening trend, documented anew last month by the Garden Writers Association Foundation.

Dr. Jeffrey P. Weiss, 47, of Chestnut Hill, an interventional radiologist, died Oct. 31 at Albert Einstein Medical Center from injuries suffered when he was hit by a school bus outside his home Oct. 30. Philadelphia police are investigating the accident. Since 2004, Dr. Weiss had been on the staff of Temple University Hospital, where he was associate professor of vascular/interventional radiology. Doctors in his specialty insert tubes and catheters into patients for diagnostic and treatment purposes.

The battle of the soil is about to begin. The gardening partner is itching to get out his spade and turn over the vegetable garden; I'm cautioning him that it's too soggy and too soon. You've heard this before, either from me or in your own house. "Those peas," the partner says, "should be in the ground by St. Patrick's Day. " For years, we've turned over our hillside vegetable garden in the fall, then sowed winter rye as a cover to hold the soil from eroding and to provide green manure to turn into the ground the following spring.

Have a friend harvest the vegetable garden while you're away, so that when you return more will be ripening for you. Sow fall crops in the vegetable garden, planting seed a bit deeper than in spring. If rain is scarce, turn on the sprinkler. Lettuce and spinach can wait a few weeks. Limit fertilizing to the vegetable garden and annuals you have cut back for a second flush of bloom. Hold off pruning shrubs till late November. Late pruning induces new growth that may not have time to harden off for surviving winter.

IN SOME WAYS, it's no surprise that local grocer Jeff Brown was Michelle Obama's guest of honor at last night's State of the Union address. The first lady, who is championing fresh food with a White House vegetable garden, would naturally be a fan of Brown's Shop Rite stores. Brown has brought a number of his supermarkets into poorer neighborhoods that traditionally must rely on high-priced bodegas and convenience stores. This may seem a small thing, but it's revolutionary for a number of reasons: It ensures that poor urban neighborhoods have access to fresh produce and fresh foods.

Her "smokers' rights" platform includes legalizing marijuana. Her education program includes revitalizing 4-H clubs. And her energy-conservation plan includes clotheslines. Caroline P. Killeen is running on a low-tech, "back-to-the-'40s" campaign for president of the United States. A longtime bicyclist, Killeen, 66, wants to establish bicycle lanes across America. Playing to the long-standing incompatibility between bikers and runners, Killeen says the country needs a cyclist president because it already has a jogger.

First Lady Michelle Obama has invited the sixth graders from Chester's Stetser Elementary School to join her and schoolchildren from around the country at the White House Monday for the spring planting of her kitchen garden, the White House announced this morning. The children wrote to Mrs. Obama, who has made healthy eating her cause, about having planted a butterfly garden at the school and their plans to start a vegetable garden there. Principal Janet Baldwin wrote that the garden will "make connections for our students around growing and tasting fresh fruits and vegetables," Baldwin wrote in the letter to the first lady.

DID YOU know you could save anywhere from $500 to $1,000 a year by growing your own vegetables? They will be fresher and tastier than store-bought, too. And you don't need a huge plot of land; many varieties can be grown in containers. My lovely mother-in-law, who has a green thumb and a wonderful vegetable garden of her own, has agreed to school me on the fine art of home-growing fruits and vegetables. Here are the five I plan to start with: 1. CUCUMBERS A good source of B vitamins.