Dedicate a small chunk of your yard to growing cheap, delicious vegetables to save major cash in this tough economy.

The ultimate economic bail-out plan: growing your own food.

STATE COLLEGE, PA—The unemployment rate’s flirting with the 8% mark, and the country’s facing its biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression. Instead of an economic stimulus package, Congress should be pushing a biointensive stimulus package, says Tania Slawecki, PhD, former director of Pennsylvania State University’s Center for Sustainability. Encouraging Americans to turn their turf-style suburban yards into productive, food-producing minifarms would yield psychological as well as agricultural benefits, she says. “What could be more empowering and stabilizing in this country than people growing most of their food in their backyards?” she said last weekend at the Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture’s 18th annual Farming for the Future conference in State College, PA.

THE DETAILS: Slawecki teamed up with her husband to create Neo-Terra, an organization focusing on ecologically friendly home growing methods and green building techniques. Their suburban backyard in Lemont, PA, is their science lab, where they’ve created an organic system that provides the bulk of their fruit and veggies year-round. In fact, when they actually have to go to the grocery store to get something, they say it feels like an “alien” environment.

Although the couple’s recent presentation at PASA was geared toward farmers and experienced gardeners, she believes the economic downturn and staggering number of layoffs open up a wonderful opportunity for anyone to save money and eat better through a new hobby: edible landscaping. “If someone is unemployed, they’ve got time on their hands. Why not take the time to prepare a garden bed this year?” Slawecki suggests. “What could be more empowering and stabilizing in this country than people growing most of their food in their backyards?” Gardeners, she adds, will be one up on everyone else should a complete economic apocalypse actually happen. “If we did have a serious economic crash, most people are ill prepared to grow their own food,” she explains.

WHAT IT MEANS: Hopefully, the worst won’t happen. But you can still save money and enjoy a healthier diet by growing food for yourself and your family. If you’re not sure what to plant, begin by preparing a garden bed so your soil will be ready for whatever you decide to grow.

Here are some easy ways to prepare a garden bed so it’s ready for emergency planting: