Mrs. Obama invited about 30 fifth-graders from two District of Columbia public elementary schools to help with the project. One of the schools, Bancroft Elementary, has helped with the garden since it began, preparing the soil, planting the crops and harvesting in the spring.
"Are you guys ready to do some work? Are you ready to work really hard? Are you ready to get dirty?" she asked them. "All right, let's go! Let's go, let's do it, let's do it."
The students were divided into groups of three and paired with an adult who showed them what to do. All told, they spent about a half-hour jabbing and digging at the plot on the South Lawn with pitchforks and other tools.
They filled one wheelbarrow with huge sweet potatoes, and filled baskets and bowls with carrots, fennel, lettuce, tomatoes, broccoli, turnips, eggplant, peppers, tomatillos and greens, for a total of 223 pounds, Mrs. Obama's office said later in the day. Most of the produce is being given to Miriam's Kitchen for the next days' meals. Mrs. Obama helped serve lunch there earlier this year.
Before Thursday, the garden already had produced more than 740 pounds of food, Mrs. Obama said, bringing the total for the year to more than 960 pounds. Some has been served at White House events.
The first lady and her group first tackled sweet potatoes before moving on to carrots and big bulbs of fennel. At one point, she held up one of the larger orange-colored spuds and said: "This can feed an army."
Before the harvesting began, she said she and daughters, Malia, 11, and Sasha, 8, already had helped themselves to some sweet potatoes.
The harvest was the second for the garden. More than 70 pounds of lettuce and 12 pounds of peas came out of a springtime harvest of the 1,100-square-foot, L-shaped plot. After that, fall crops were planted, leading to Thursday's event.
Mrs. Obama started the garden in March, saying she wanted to use it to talk about the importance of eating a nutritious diet and show what good, fresh food tastes like. She said it cost about $180 to prepare the soil and plant the seeds and seedlings.
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