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:
• Start small. Let’s repeat that—start small. Slawecki says the converting lawn to garden space is always a work in progress, and recommends people start with just one garden bed. To avoid overdoing it, she suggests double-digging one 4-by-25-foot bed to start. Organic Gardening researcher Pam Ruch recommends these crops for beginners:
1. Tomatoes—loosen the soil, add some compost, and plant a seedling that you buy from a nursery. “Staking is a good idea but optional,” Ruch says.
2. Lettuce—easy to plant from seed; plant in the spring.
3. Arugula—same deal as lettuce.
4. Bush beans—start from seed planted directly in the ground after the last frost.
5. Zucchini—same deal as bush beans.
• Study reputable resources. Tap Rodale’s Organic Gardening website for tips on sustainable growing. Slawecki also has posted a reading list on her website to help you get started. Focus on cover crops, composting, crop rotation, and companion planting to keep your soil fertile and pest-free without shelling out a lot of money on unnecessary and unsafe pesticides and chemical fertilizers. Now is a perfect time to plan a garden; if you won’t be ready to grow early-spring crops, you can plant a cover crop now that will serve as fertilizer for later-season crops.
• Make your bed. You don’t eat cover crops, but they are essential in biointensive gardening. Often called “green manure,” cover crops keep your soil fertile and get it ready when it’s time to grow veggies. Learn cover crop basics from organic gardening pros. (The easiest to grow are rye, clover, and buckwheat.) But don’t get too attached—when cover crops set to seed, it’s time to kill them: Cut at the base of the plant; then, let them sit a few days until they turn brown and turn the dead plants into the soil. Wait two or three weeks before planting your veggies.
• Learn with the kids. A garden can save you money in more than one way. Sure, the vegetables are a fraction of what they’d cost at the supermarket. But by getting your kids involved in the garden, you’re opening them up to a new hobby that’s cheaper and certainly more educational than going to the mall.
• Enjoy your harvest, and build on it every year. Of course, you’ll still have to buy your grains, dry beans, and other odds and ends at the store, but you can slash the grocery bills by trading some lawn for productive garden space. Just avoid the “all-or-nothing” approach—whatever you can grow will be worth it. Gardening is an art, and the only way to learn is to get your hands dirty, one bed at a time.
And after you eat your first garden tomato, you’ll likely view the cash-saving benefits of a family garden as secondary to the great taste. “It’s eating food fresh out of your garden that starts to sell you on this,” Slawecki says.