[ Another great post from Rob at One Straw. ]

A huge focus of this blog is finding creative, sustainable ways to eek more produce from small spaces.  I also love growing calorie crops, especially potatoes, and furthermore I really enjoy building things.  So when a friend recently recommended the use of potato towers, I was very interested.  So yesterday I was off to buy materials for several compost bin orders I have and wouldn’t ya know?  2×6 pine was on sale.

The theory is simple – solancea plants will root from any stalk that has ground contact – I’ve seen both peppers and tomatoes rooting from their stalks.  The important part with potatoes is that they will lay tubers anywhere between the original “seed” potato and the soil surface.  Every time the potato plant gets about 6 inches above ground, add  more soil – this is why you mound potatoes in the field.  These towers just take the mounding to crazy logical conclusions – the tower is essentially a three foot “mound”.  What I like most about this kind of tower is the ability to “sneak” potatoes as the season progresses by removing a lower strip of 2×6 and grubbing around.  As most suburbanites don’t have root cellars (yet!) this is a huge plus if you are growing 100 lbs of spuds.  Also, as the sides are opaque, spud production will occur right up to the sides, maximizing space and using less water compared to wire mesh designs.  Also, the lumber avoids some concerns that may be present with using old tires.  Old garbage cans, etc would also work.

The only major change I did for mine was that I used 2×4’s for the uprights as I had 10′ of them laying around the garage and I also put a sheet of cardboard under it to thwart the quack.  Speaking of which, this could be considered a hyper productive way to sheet mulch - cardboard out next years beds, and build potato towers along them – one could get (in theory) 600 lbs of spuds form one 20-foot bed (6 towers with 18-inch spacing) and when the towers come down you have a raised bed about 2 feet deep with compost when you’re done.  Hmmmm…

Planting the tower is easy, I took four medium seed potatoes (1 lb exactly) and cut them in half.  In the spirit of science, I used one each of Kennebec, Purple Viking, Carola, and Yukon Gold to see which liked this method more.  The growing medium I used for the first layer is two-year-old leaf mold, to which I added some pelletized chicken manure for nitrogen as it looked a little “carbon-ey”.  Weather here is mild and rainy, so they should be sprouting in no time.  The only down side is that right after the photo shoot, our new adolescent dog decided that this was a fantastic play pen and tore into it with abandon – I think I found all eight seeds, but she may have eaten one or two.

The claim is that the towers will produce 100 lbs of spuds with about 1 lb planted in 4 sqare feet.  That is freakish considering a record yield for field sown spuds is about 14:1; I was very pleased with my 8.5:1 last year.  In typical culture, 100 lbs would take at least 75 square feet, but more likely 150.  I am stoked to see this work and will certainly keep you posted.  Other great advantages – you do not need any heavy equipment to grow these – and harvesting is super easy.  Just be sure to save the soil somewhere for next year – mixing it with fall leaves and grass clippings in a compost bin would be a fantastic way to rejuvenate the soil.

Couple of post-scripts. This thing is crazy overbuilt – I would feel comfortable parking a car on it if it had a cross tie across the top!  I think the prime driver of the dimensions is cost.  In the irony of modern economics, 2×6×8′ lumber is cheaper than 1×6×8′ lumber.  Also, pine rots quickly, so using 2x lumber will buy you a few extra years -though by Year Four I expect these to be falling apart.  If it works I will likely build the next one using cedar decking for the sides and 2×2 cedar for the uprights.  That should last a decade, but would cost about double.  Another advantage would be that it would weigh half as much – this thing is heavy when built!

To make it more fun, we will likely be painting the sides with the kids – I have the idea of making each side a different person, and then we can mix and match the parts each year to create silly combinations.  I would also like to enlist my wife (waaaaay more talented artist) to paint a picture of a potato plant with a “soil view” of roots on one side.

All in all the total cost was about $30 (8 2×6×8, screws, and 12′ of 2×2) and about an hour of time in the workshop -mostly becuase my kids were running the screw guns and they are 5 and 7.  If you can truly get 100 lbs of spuds that is crazy cheap – down to literally a few cents per pound over the lifetime of the tower.  Combine that with the ability for literally every single homeowner to grow all their potatoes for a year in as little as 8 square feet, this could be huge!

Treehugger featured a story recently discussing ways to keep the costs of a garden down. Some ideas are good, although they could use expansion, and some were really not that great. Let’s have a look-see….

1. Plan Ahead
–Decide what kind of garden you want. Unstructured, informal ones with wildflowers and random containers are cheaper than formal gardens.

Matt’s comment: Sort of. I find structured raised beds gardens easier to care for, which means more use around my house. They also produce more heavily as they can be planted more intensively. By planning ahead I also can make sure I have enough mulching material and compost around to build or enrich the beds as needed. Even better, if you know you’ll be gardening in the spring you can set up some sheet-mulched beds for use in the spring.

–Vegetable gardens can work out to be cheaper than flower gardens and more productive.

Matt’s comment: True that. I like a 70/30 or 80/20 veg to flower mix in my tended gardens. My permanent plantings tend towards fruiting trees, edible bushes and perennial flowers to keep my expenses to a one time expense, and produce year after year.

–Plan projects that you can do yourself, rather than hiring someone.

Matt’s comment: Duh.


2. Cut the Cost of Plants

–Compare prices–often supermarkets and hardware stores are cheaper than garden centres and the quality can be just as good.

Matt’s comment: Disagree emphatically. They are cheaper, for a reason. Usually plants that are started (and you purchase) will grow as well if they are from a store vs. a garden center, but beware the seed packets. They are cheap, but they don’t have the same germination rates. A 20 cent packet of seeds that only produces a few plants isn’t a useful as a $1 packet where almost every seeds grows. Packets last a couple years with good storage so there is no need to worry about them going bad. Buy the quality ones, but hopefully not the ones owned by Monsanto.

–Planting from seed is cheaper than buying individual plants.

Matt’s comment: True. Especially useful if watching for people to throw out their empty plant containers, and then using them at home to start your own plants from seeds. It’s like a low cost nursery to you. Also save the trays from any plants you do buy for the same reason

–Take cuttings from fellow gardeners.

Matt’s comment: I would suggest you reciprocate when you can as well.

–Split plants when they are big enough
–Go to local plant sales, often at churches or people’s gardens.

Matt’s comment: I like these options, and they need to get better promotion and see better traffic. Also don’t be afraid to save your own seeds. Many plants like peas, potatoes and beans are easy to save from year to year.

–Buy small specimens of plants–they are cheaper and still grow bigger over the long run
–Perennials come up every year–try not to buy annuals which are finished after one season.

Matt’s comment: Personally I’ve never understood the appeal of an annual unless it feeds me. There are a lot of perennial vegetable plants as well. Check out Bountiful Gardens for some options.

–Herbs go on and and can be grown outside or on the window sill.

Matt’s comment: Herbs are great to grow anywhere. Most are pretty and can be both edible and ornamental in your formal gardens.

Matt’s addition: Sign up to receive seed catalogs in the mail (as well as plant catalogs). Most have a section for plants that have produced extra that year and you can get some fairly large discounts if you are willing to accept the overruns.

3. Don’t Invest in Lots of Equipment

–Most gardening can be done with a few tools: a lawnmower, a hoe, spade, trowel and secateurs.

Matt’s comment: So true. The Path to Freedom folks garden almost exclusively with a hand trowel. If your soil is in the right shape you probably can too. Instead of a tiller use a broad fork. Use plants to break up the soil with their roots instead of digging and tilling. They do it better and cheaper. Worms will make your soil nice and loamy if you continually keep the soil mulched. Don’t expect overnight success. It takes a while, but you’ll see the benefit eventually.

–Check the clearance section of the hardware store for deals on larger, heavier items
–Borrow the bigger tools that you use less frequently from a friendly neighbour.

Matt’s comment: Or, check out a tool lending library in your area. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tool-lending_libraries) Don’t have one? Start one!

–Or rent them for a day
–Or go on the net and buy them second hand.

Matt’s comment: I would encourage you to purchase one time at good quality rather than 2, 3, or 4 times at poor quality. Good quality tools just work. And they work well. I really love the quality of the tools I’ve gotten from Earth Tools (http://www.earthtoolsbcs.com/html/garden_tools.html). Look for a review in the near future!

–Keep a compost heap so that you don’t have to spend on fertilizers.

Matt’s addition: Don’t be afraid to scavenge compost materials from neighbors. I harvest yard containers from all my neighbors for their grass and leaves. My son and I drive around the night before trash pick up and load our truck up with paper bags full of leaves and grass clippings. It’s great material and it’s great for the garden.

If you want raised beds on a budget just pile compost on top of cardboard or newspaper. Sure edging would make it look better, but the plants don’t care. Plant it that way and over time you could edge the beds with materials you scavenge.

4. Containers On a Budget

–Ceramic pots can turn into a fortune once you start buying lots of them for the patio
–Check the hardware store, they often have sales
–Be creative: use empty olive oil cans, old kitchen sinks, old buckets, teapots, chimney stacks and beer cans–your imagination is the limit.

Matt’s comment: My local grocery store will sell the empty plastic buckets their ingredients come in for $1 a piece. They work great for a ton of uses. Growing things. Storing things. I’m not much of a container person so I can’t be much help on this topic

Follow along with the discussion to this post in the Barnyard as all of our citizen experts talk about how they keep costs down when they are gardening.

[ A great idea courtesy of Peak Oil Hausfrau. ]

A gardening craze seems to be sweeping the nation, goosed by the First Family planting a garden on their lawn. As gardening becomes something interesting, popular, and increasingly accepted, you may find your skills are suddenly in demand.

Gardening can seem simple, but a novice will soon run into plenty of complications. An experienced gardener will know the difference between seed and transplant veggies, cool and warm season crops, compost and cover cropping. A gardener who knows the area will have invaluable knowledge about great varieties, special tricks, and keeping out the critters.

Advice is free, and tours of your garden might be gratis, but when people start needing help with actual physical labor, or want you to visit their yard – consider starting a business. Providing your knowledge and skills can make the difference between success and failure, or gardens getting started or languishing on paper. Offering your knowledge can save your friends and neighbors countless hours of research, reading, and trial and error.

Don’t feel bad for charging a fee to help someone set up their garden. Personally, I would be glad to pay someone to save me the labor of creating a raised bed. I imagine many older folks, families with young children, or simply out-of-shape or time-constrained people would be glad as well. People who are planting a garden for fresh taste or to have organic produce will be less price-sensitive than people who are planting gardens to save money. People charge to clean homes, cook food, do taxes, wash laundry, and cut hair. Why not charge for starting a garden?

Consider a “First Time Gardening” Package, priced reasonably for your area. Don’t price it too low – you need to make it worth your time or you will swiftly either burn out or go out of business.

Your package might include:

• One hour of preliminary consulting (you send them homework to do first – like listing their favorite herbs and veggies), to include site selection and veggie selection
• The building and filling of one or two 4 x 8 raised beds
• Planting one or two 4 x 8 beds with veggies in the spring, complete with mulch
• Printed instructions on how to care for a garden
• Printed instructions on common pests for your area and how to deal with them
• One hour of free troubleshooting time
• Money-back guarantee

You could also offer a bare-bones package that just includes the building and filling of the beds, for people who have the knowledge but not the manpower to create a raised bed. Alternatively, you could offer a platinum package for people who want edible landscaping or permaculture features – a more time intensive process.

Personally, I have always offered a money-back guarantee in my business. No one has ever taken me up on it, although I have the money-back guarantee displayed prominently on my website and even on signs in my office. A money-back guarantee builds confidence and trust. Have some faith in your fellow neighbors – it could pay you back in spades. On the other hand, there are some shady characters out there. Be sure to evaluate your clients before agreeing to do work for them.

Word of mouth and referrals are usually the best marketing, but a website can be a cheap and effective way of advertising if you make it yourself. Business cards are also cost-effective. Regardless of whether you give out free help or charge for your services, be confident that you are helping people improve their health, feel more secure, and enjoy the pleasure of freshly picked produce. The more gardens there are, the more distributed and organic our food production is, the better we’ll all be in a recession or oil crisis.

My last post was rapturous about springtime, and it is a time of rapture and delight, especially in cold places. However, it has its less rapturous bits as well, and one of them is the annual barn cleaning that follows the melting of the snow that has been blocking off the wide double doors through which we can take a wheelbarrow.

From December to March or April, we simply don’t clean out the barn. This sounds as if it might be gross, but it really isn’t – we keep layering on bedding, and sufficient carbon keeps it from smelling bad – earthy and barnish, sure, but not particularly icky. We don’t just do this because we’re lazy – this is good husbandry for our climate. The barn has cement floors, left over from its days as a garage, and those cement floors get cold in the winter. A very thick layer of bedding, some of it composting at the bottom and giving off heat is better for the animals. Moreover, cleaning out the barn would involve throwing open the doors for the whole day – some days this is good, but our barn is already pretty well ventilated, and during the coldest weather (-27 was our lowest temp this year), throwing all the accumulated heat of composting and the heat the animals give off out of the barn. Plus we’d have to kick the critters out, and frankly, the chickens especially have no interest in going out in 3 foot drifts of snow.

So there are several months of accumulated manure, plus the food scraps that the chickens didn’t eat, plus bit of food, hair, feathers that come off the critters. Cleaning this sounds like it would be rather horrible, but oddly, both Eric and I find it kind of fun. It is physical and strenuous, but not that unpleasant. We have both found that the easiest way to clean the barn is with snow shovels, which do a great job of getting down the bottom of the mess. Once we’ve got a wheelbarrow full, we start dividing up the rest of the work, he shovels, I put the top layer on the compost pile and the rest of it on the garden beds, and then hack up with a hoe anyplace it has become too dry and calcified. The whole project is the kind of afternoon’s work that makes you feel like you are fully entitled to collapse on the couch with a cup of tea afterwards.

This year’s manure accumulation was sufficient to almost entirely cover the garden beds and fruit trees on the side yard, plus the courtyard permaculture plantings. I’ll be able to finish off the rest of that part of the yard with the remaining compost from the load of horse manure I bartered with a neighbor (she gets room in our hay barn to store her horse’s hay for the winter, we get composted manure – yay!) last fall and never got onto the garden.

The front yard garden and plantings, however, are sadly unmanured. Which means we have to go seeking the stuff. Fortunately, we have a horse farm across the street, another around the corner, alpacas down the road and four dairy farms within short range. The barter arrangement I mentioned before, plus the results of other farmer’s barn cleanings (the standard response to requests for manure here is “Please, take it!”) means that we will be rich with organic matter and fertility for our gardens.

And this is no small issue. It is tough to make enough compost to cover even a moderate sized garden, much less the one we have. One can purchase inputs for one’s farm, but these are costly, and many come from far away places. Animal manures represent (mostly) a balanced fertilizer, when they are properly used to fertilize pasture, or handled correctly. Unfortunately, nearly all industrial animal agriculture treats animal manures in ways that not only unfit them for garden use, but make them contaminants and destructive toxins. Industrial manures, often laden with antibiotics and chemicals, and held in vast lagoons, unmixed with the carbonaceous material that renders the stuff into usable compost and mutes the odor, are toxic, atmosphere destroying, water contaminating, and deeply destructive. On that scale, they are as unlike the manure in my barn as anything could be.

And this is one of the big deals – perhaps the biggest. Decent food yields depend on decent soil fertility. Most of our fertilizers are mined or chemically produced using large quantities of fossil fuels – and, as last year showed, are vulnerable to dramatic price increases, when fossil fuels do. There are also long term isues with phosphorous availability, as well as high costs to divorcing the organic matter in manures from the chemical constituents of fertility – ie, from dumping chemical fertilizers on the ground instead of manuring. Plus, marginally profitable as most farming is, having to buy more inputs can be the difference between making a profit or not.

Now out in the country where I am, manure access not a major problem. But in denser areas, where most people purchase compost or manures or other inputs that are trucked in, the question of fertility is a long term concern – and a serious one, because in a lower energy world, we’re going to need to grow more food where people actually live.

One possible answer is to divert urine, which is (mostly) sterile, and can provide much of the fertility (without the quantity of organic matter) that a garden needs. Another possibility is large scale humanure composting, on the municipal level. One way or another, we’re going to have to deal with the fact that in the US, the major source of manure comes from an animal with two legs, a large brain and a beer can . There is a very good chance that in the next few decades we will no longer have the option of treating our manures as waste. The project of readapting our infrastructure to use them should be a priority, because of the terrible consequences of not carefully handling human outputs.

Meanwhile, back to my barn, we spread the partly composted manures on the side yard garden – I won’t be planting there until the fence goes up in a couple of weeks (keeping the poultry and goats out), so there’s time for everything to settle in. I’ll go out and broadfork the beds to loosen things up and begin to incorporate today or tomorrow, depending on whether the predicted rain shows up or not.

Shoveling manure is one of those things that we imagine, if we haven’t done it, to be intolerable, the symbol of the misery of agriculture, the horrible side effect of our reliance on animals. And if I were channelling pig shit from a thousand industrially raised pigs into a giant manure lagoon, or cleaning out a chicken house with 60,000 hens in it, I’d sure agree. But my animals don’t produce manure as a unpleasant consequence of being alive – manure is one of their gifts to me. We don’t see their manure as a waste product to be managed, but as an output that we benefit from – my goats produce milk *and* manure for my garden. My chickens give me eggs *and* chicken manure that makes my corn grow tall. Viewed this way, and on a human, rather than industrial scale, it becomes not only a manageable, but desirable thing.

And while I don’t always love doing it, with good management, on a home scale, it is really no more unpleasant than changing diapers, perhaps a bit less. And at the root, I know that the decentralization of animal production that I’m practicing, modelling and that I can perhaps help others begin is the answer to much of the contaminating effect of industrial animal production, and also to the problem of how to get a decent yield out of your cucumbers. Cleaning out the barn is just one small step in solving our larger problems.

Sharon

I’m not real zen.  That is, I am not the sort of person who finds it easy to simply be in the moment.  Ok, I’m really awful at it.  Which is one of the reasons I enjoy reading Colin over at NoImpactMan so much – there’s a mindfulness that comes across in his posts that you simply will not find in mine.

I’m very good at multitasking, and am often contemplating my next post or something I should be writing while I’m simultaneously sorting laundry and helping Isaiah write his name.  And while that ability makes parts of my life more manageable, I have a very hard time getting to a place where my mind and body are doing the same thing at once.  It is a useful skill when it is wanted – but it doesn’t have an off button.  Sometimes all that stuff, all that thinking about the next thing and the next gets tiresome, and I wouldn’t mind if it would simply get a little quieter in my brain.  I’m told meditation techinques could help me with this – and it is something that’s on the 50,000 item list of “things to do when I get a chance.”

Today, however, I am reminded of why all this noise in my brain does not drive me stark raving mad.  I had almost forgotten, in the months since I touched dirt out in its natural habitat, what it is like to go into the garden.  And then I got to do it.

Today it was *finally* warm enough and dry enough to plant out in the garden – pansies along the side of the house, peas, mustards, tatsoi, mache and spinach in the main garden.  And so we trooped out, the three boys and I (Eli was at school, Daddy off teaching astronomy) with our respective tools (Asher had a spoon and bucket, Simon a trowel, Isaiah a small garden claw (not sharp), me my big pointy serious one), our seeds, inoculant for the peas, greensand and kelpmeal to feed the plants.  It was rather a production, and we made a proper bit of pomp and circumstance about this first venture.

And then we were out there, and getting dirt under our nails (and in our hair in Asher’s case).  And all of a sudden, things went quiet.  I don’t mean the children were quiet – they weren’t.  We discussed earthworms and why plants need minerals and what molecules are.  They were doodling about and being their usual noisy selves.  But instead of spending the time working in my head on an essay about what to do with your appliances once you don’t need them anymore, I just gardened.  I just touched and smelled, put my hands into the soil, and loosened it.  I was just there.  I could hear myself again in the quiet.  And I remembered – I garden for food, but also, I garden because it is the best way into myself that I know of.

In springtime, we say a lot of schechechayanu.  This is the Jewish blessing for things you haven’t done in a long time, as they come around in cycles again.  We say the blessing at each holiday and special occasion, when we first seen the trees bloom and the birds return.  And the kids and I said one today, for the planting of the first seeds of our season. For me, it was a moment of gratitude, as the season of raucous, noisy life begins again – and the season of quiet starts too.

Sharon

We recently featured a video from the Garden Girl discussing how to make herbal teas.  And we’ve featured other posts like that.

The Times in England featured an article this week discussing growing our own herbs.

Story here.

Roger Doiron wrote this piece for his website, Kitchen Gardeners International.  Great piece about the cost savings of growing your own food in your yard.  Money may not grow on trees, but it does look like it can grow from your yard.

With the global economy spiraling downward and Mother Nature preparing to reach upward, it’s a good question to ask and a good time to ask it.

There isn’t one right answer, of course, but I’ll give you mine: $2149.15. Last year, my wife Jacqueline suggested to me that we calculate the total value of the produce coming out of our garden over the course of the growing season. Initially, the thought of doing that was about as appealing to me as a recreational root canal. I remember replying something like: “OK, so let me get this right: in addition to raising three busy boys, managing two careers, volunteering in a school garden, and growing most of our own produce, you’re proposing that we weigh every item that comes out of our garden, write it down in a log book, and spend a few leisurely evenings doing math?” Jacqueline, an economics major in college and a native French speaker, answered with a simple “oui” and so the project began.

There was a lot of work involved, mostly for Jacqueline, but as with gardening itself, it was work with a purpose. It didn’t take long for our log book to start filling up with dates and figures. Although we started eating our first garden salads in late April, we only began recording our harvests as of May 10th, starting first with greens and asparagus. Our last weighable harvest was two weeks ago in the form of a final cutting of Belgian endives forced from roots in our basement.

By the time we had finished weighing it all, we had grown 834 pounds and over six months worth of organic food (we’re still eating our own winter squash, onions, garlic, and frozen items like strawberries, green beans, and pesto cubes). Once we had the weights of the 35 main crops we grew, we then calculated what it would have cost us to buy the same items using three different sets of prices: conventional grocery store, farmers’ market and organic grocery store (Whole Foods, in our case). The total value came to $2196.50, $2431.15, and $2548.93 respectively. For the other economics majors and number crunchers among you, you can see our crunchy, raw data here.

There are things we didn’t include like the wild dandelion greens which we reaped but did not sow, the six or so carving pumpkins which we ultimately fed to our compost pile, and the countless snacks of strawberries, beans, peas, and tomatoes that never made it as far as our kitchen scale. There were also things we forgot to weigh like several pounds of grapes which turned into about 12 jars of jam. As with any growing season, there were hits and misses. The heaviest and most valuable crop was our tomatoes (158 lb/72 kg for a total value of $524). In terms of misses, our apple tree decided to take the year off and very few of our onions started from seed made it requiring me to buy onion plants.

On the cost side, we had $130 for seeds and supplies, $12 for a soil test, and exceptional costs of $100 for some locally-made organic compost we bought for our “This Lawn is Your Lawn” frontyard garden (normally, we meet most of our soil fertility needs through our own composting). I don’t have a scientific calculation for water costs, but we don’t need to water much and, when we do, water is relatively cheap in Maine. Also, I mulch my beds pretty heavily to keep moisture in and weeds down. Let’s say $40 in water. So, if we consider that our out-of-pocket costs were $282 and the total value generated was $2431, that means we had a return on investment of 862%. The cost of our labor is not included because we enjoy gardening and the physical work involved. If I am to include my labor costs, I feel I should also include the gym membership fees, country club dues, or doctors’ bills I didn’t have.

If you really want to play around with the data, you can calculate how much a home garden like ours produces on a per acre basis. If you use the $2400 figure and consider that our garden is roughly 1/25th of an acre, it means that home gardens like ours can gross $60,000/acre. You can also calculate it on a square foot basis which in our case works out to be roughly $1.50/ft2. That would mean that a smaller garden of say 400ft2 would produce $600 of produce. Keep in mind that these are averages and that certain crops are more profitable and space efficient than others. A small garden planted primarily with salad greens and trellised tomatoes, for example, is going to produce more economic value per square foot more than one planted with potatoes and squash. We plant a bit of everything because that’s the way we like to garden and eat.

Clearly, this data is just for one family (of five), one yard (.3 acre), one garden (roughly 1600 square feet), and one climate (Maine, zone 5b/6), but it gives you some sense of what’s possible. If you consider that there are about 90 million households in the US that have some sort of yard, factor in the thousands of new community and school gardens we could be planting, this really could add up. Our savings allowed us to do different things including investing in some weatherization work for our house last fall that is making us a greener household in another way. Some might ask what this would mean for farmers to have more people growing their own food. The local farmers I know welcome it because they correctly believe that the more people discover what fresh, real food tastes like, the more they’ll want to taste. In our case, part of our savings helped us to buy better quality, sustainably-raised meat from a local CSA farmer.

The economics of home gardening may not be enough to convince President Obama or UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown to plant new gardens at the White House or 10 Downing Street, but the healthy savings their citizens could be making and then reinvesting in their local economies could.

In the end, it might come down to the language we use. Instead of saying “Honey, I’m going out to the garden to turn the compost pile”, perhaps we should say “Honey, I’m going outside to do a ‘green job’ and work on our ‘organic stimulus package.’” I bet that would get the attention of a few economists, if not a few psychologists!

Announcing the 2009 Hen & Harvest Garden Challenge:

If you are reading this, chances are food is important to you. You are passionate about gardening, or local food, or healthy eating, food security, organic farming methods, land stewardship… All of the above?

Maybe the seed catalogs are piling up. Maybe next year’s garden is taking shape in your head — and this time it’s going to be perfect. Maybe you’ve decided to take the plunge and finally get a few chickens. Maybe you want to give your children the healthiest food possible, or restore the land in your care to a more natural state. Maybe the headlines you see every day scare you just enough to browse that seed potato catalog. Or maybe you’ve been running a successful market garden for years now and are thinking about how to make it just a little bit better.

And who could blame you? Our primary food system is a mess. We increasingly rely on fossil fuels and chemicals to create processed foods that are probably eligible for frequent flyer miles. Poor nutrition is leading to increased obesity and other health problems. We have no idea who grew our food or how it got to our table. Or even what it’s made of in some cases. Large-scale farmers are struggling to get credit from banks, and commodity prices have fallen so far they may have trouble making their money back anyway. When you walk into the store, you worry that the milk is full of hormones, the grains are genetically modified, the meat is irradiated, the vegetables are contaminated, and the soil that produced it is lifeless and disappearing all too quickly.

For all his charisma and leadership, Barack Obama can’t fix this problem. Tom Vilsack won’t fix it either. Michael Pollan and Barbara Kingsolver and Wendell Berry can’t even fix it. Fixing it is up to me, and you ,and anyone else we can influence.

This is why we are challenging you, right now, to turn your passion into something bigger.

It’s no secret that food pantries all over the country are struggling right now. As the economy falters, soup kitchens, shelters, and other under-the-safety-net entities are getting fewer donations and more clients every day. But… If we were to collectively donate ten percent of our harvest to our nearest food banks, soup kitchens, or other appropriate organizations, think of all the positive benefits. The people with the worst access to healthy food would at least get a little delicious, fresh, local produce. Kids whose only fault has been bad luck will get nutrition from something other than a box. Chances are very high that we’d get to meet some wonderful, dedicated people. We’d have one more excuse to get dirt under our fingernails and sunshine on our faces. And our gardens might even have fewer weeds if we’re doing it for a cause, rather than just killing time on the weekends.

Besides all that, it probably won’t even take much extra time, effort, or money on our parts. So our seed packets are a little lighter at the end of planting. So our lawns are a little smaller. In exchange, our local food security will get a little better, and our hearts might feel a little bigger. And we can drool over those seed catalogs a just little longer.

We’re challenging you to give at least one tenth of your produce to some worthy cause. If you can’t find a charity or other appropriate organization, see if a school cafeteria can use it. Or even your neighbors. Maybe it’ll inspire them to start a garden of their own. Food security is food security. And if the economy keeps going down the path it’s on now, food security is going to become more important all the time.

If you’ve never grown a garden before, we’d suggest you not worry about donating this year, and just get your hands dirty. Learn from the rest of us, and aim for donating next year. And if you get a bumper crop of something the first time out, find it a good home.

To keep everybody honest and on the ball, we’re going to have regular check-ins and discussions in The Barnyard, on the fifteenth of every month. In February, we’ll ask you about your plans, and maybe have some discussions about starting seeds indoors. In March we’ll look at some more details on what you’re doing, whether you’re using cold frames, row covers or any other tricks to get an early start. As the season progresses, we can all share tips, ideas, troubleshooting techniques, successes, and failures.

Once that garden finally starts to produce, we’ll have you report back with what’s growing well for you, how much you’ve been able to harvest, and who you found to donate it to.

Remember that every garden has its duds from year to year. If something’s not growing well, let us know and somebody will share ideas for next time. And there will be no garden police. If you only harvested ten strawberries, you don’t have to deliver one of them to the church basement. You can make it up in zucchini later.

We know we’re not the first to come up with an idea like this. (Plant a Row for the Hungry has been around for more than a decade.) But we also think that it’s more important than ever to issue a challenge like this.

We’ll primarily focus on gardening, but maybe you’re in a better position to donate baked goods, or eggs, or meat, or honey… whatever you feel is appropriate is fair game and welcome in the discussion.

So who’s in?

Head on over to The Barnyard’s brand new Garden Challenge group and tell us about yourself. Maybe where you live, how long you’ve been growing food, how big of a garden you’re hoping to grow, what level of commitment you’re willing to take on, who you might donate to, and anything else you want to share.

Let’s see what we can do…

[ NOTE - You don't have to join The Barnyard to participate. You can also just leave a comment on this post to let us know you're in. ]