Food Stamp Challenge + Garden

[Amaranth]

In the thread on Food Challenges for 2013, Gregg said:

[QUOTEThis is possibly DD2's last semester at home as she graduates HS in May. I've been using a modified food stamp challenge to help her learn about nutritional budgeting. I'm not sure which one of us has learned more! Our garden is a HUGE part of our planning for 2013. Right now the planning is geared to augment the holes left by shopping on a tight budget. There is a disclaimer in that this ends up being more an experiment on paper because we have a big pantry and a big spice cabinet to work out of and because I tend to go back to the store to just get what we are in the mood for, but I still think it's worth doing all the tracking we do for DD's sake. QUOTE]

Would you tell us more about how you do this? What food stamp level do you think is the best to use for this challenge?

[Gregg]

It's really all pretty basic. The exercise we are doing right now has DD menu planning based on the average SNAP benefit paid to a single person: $152/month ($38/week). What we do with that is, like anyone, take sale ads from the local grocery stores and figure out what gives us the most bang for the buck that week and make a shopping list. We take those items and figure out what recipes can be made with them to provide reasonably balanced nutrition and a decent variety. Those recipes are what starts to give us a clue of what a garden could best do for her. Even though we aren't actually living the challenge we do try to make the recipes that we come up with and we are recording the good ones in a card file for DD to take with her when she heads out on her own.

It really doesn't involve a whole lot beyond seasonal eating and, in her case, looking at what are the most nutritionally dense crops that can be grown in a very small space or in containers (think fire escape garden). The in-season crops are usually what will be the best value at the store as well so there is always a strong element of seasonal menu planning. Of course the summer diet is going to be heavy on veggies and salads and a fall-winter diet has a lot of root vegetables, squash, kale, etc. In our exercise we are not planning on her canning or otherwise preserving any great quantity of food because we're trying to look at this from a real world perspective of a teenage girl living on her own.

Our exercise has proven to have two parts. For DD it is a way to really learn how to budget and how to plan for both value and nutrition. For me it is a way to try to understand the challenges of living on quite a bit less than what we actually spend on food. The garden aspect was originally just a way to get a lot of nearly free food for part of the year. It's totally a work in progress, but when we really look at it even just a few containers with greens, cherry tomatoes, green beans, herbs, etc. can have a huge impact on the nutrition, variety and flavor of the diet purchased with a very modest budget. In the spring DW and I will have all the garden space we need to grow whatever we want, but it is very interesting to design a crop rotation using 3 or 4 medium sized containers that can fit on an apartment balcony and trying to get multiple harvests from them. It can be done, but it takes some real planning to maximize what you can get from it.

[Amaranth]

That sounds like it would give her a big boost. If she has some 2x2x2 ft wooden (cedar) containers on sturdy wheels. She can grow a lot. Design it so a trellis can go on one side of the container.

Also it's worth it to check that the apartment complex welcomes all sorts of plants, that the balcony can hold the load (pots will weigh around 110 pounds with just the soil.), and that the balcony is south facing and not shaded by trees or adjacent buildings. May want to build her a ramp to roll pots inside incase of frost.

Agree about the careful planning. Also if she focuses on expensive nutrient dense vegetables that helps too. Jeavons How to Grow More Vegetables book has good info to help with maximizing succession planting. Also some vegetables give a lot for the space. In this circumstance a tomato or a pepper is a better choice for the same space over a broccoli plant.

A salad table, but a deeper version with more bracing and wheels, is also good to round out the growing on a balcony.
http://growit.umd.edu/saladtablesandsaladboxes/index.cfm

[Gregg]

We've been talking about companion plantings. Green beans and salad greens for example. The beans affix nitrogen to the soil and the greens need that to be prolific. The beans can also grow up a trellis behind the pot so only take up a couple inches of soil space. There are lots of greens that grow quickly enough that she could have a salad almost every day from a medium sized pot and the beans will keep on producing as long as it doesn't get terribly hot and dry. We've talked a lot about sun exposure. DD's been around gardening her whole life so knows a shade garden can produce some beautiful flowers, but doesn't do so well with food. It's a good tip to check with the management to make sure they don't mind plants in pots. The size we're talking about should never pose a structural threat to a balcony. Since this is, for now, a purely intellectual exercise we're simply assuming we will be able to find her a suitable spot when the time comes.

The main things we are looking at are nutrition, ease of growing in containers, expected yield, how much similar produce will cost at the store, versatility in recipes and how much she likes it. It's been a fun challenge trying to balance those out. There are some things that meet most of the criteria, but are so cheap at the store it just doesn't make sense to use up space on them. Carrots are one. A three pound bag is on sale this week for $.78. The seeds cost more than that. DD loves using habenero peppers and the plant is small and pretty, but I bought 6 of them the other day and it was about $.50 so no real reason to grow them in limited space. Spinach is a good container crop and several kinds of small leafy greens have a pretty good nutritional profile. Green beans are custom made if you can trellis them. Same with cucumbers. Radishes work well. I like cherry tomatoes more than bigger ones because there are so many varieties that produce tons of fruit on relatively small plants. Peas might be an early season option followed by beans when it gets warmer. We will be looking at all kinds of other ideas as the seed catalogs start showing up this winter.

[Amaranth]

Wow, your area has some great produce deals.

Grape and sungold tomatoes tend to do really well.
Another one that is very prolific up a trellis is the Mexican Sour Gherkin--like a grape sized cucumber. It is slightly sour as though it's slightly pickled.
SSE and Landreth have the seeds along with a few other places.

[Gregg]

The produce deals are from one store in particular. They toss out some pretty good loss leaders every week. If you can be creative with those you can shave down the budget in a hurry. I made approx. 2 gallons of really good carrot soup a couple days ago. The total cost was about $3 (sale carrots, homemade chicken stock, onions, habeneros, ginger, spices). It's tough to do better than that.

[Gardenarian]

I'm finding this discussion very interesting! Are you planning on making food storage (canning, drying) part of the experiment?

[Amaranth]

I'm finding this discussion very interesting! Are you planning on making food storage (canning, drying) part of the experiment?

Seems like it would be an important part. The complicating factor is that with SNAP benefits you can buy food seeds and plants, but not canning jars/lids. Usually though people can get as many canning jars as they need on freecycle, so they would just need the lids from non-SNAP money.

Another important skill would be planning the garden for staggered harvests and for winter harvesting as well as for things that keep naturally like winter squash, wintermelons, potatoes, or onions as they would avoid added food preservation costs.

Gregg, how are you handling this with your family?

[Gregg]

As I mentioned, at this point in time our experiment is on paper, not really in the kitchen beyond trying some recipes based on sale items. It was a great segue for us to be able to teach DD2 how to look at food and budgets while she is still at home. We may actually bring it into the real world after the holidays, but we just have too much company and too many events lined up to take that part on until after New Years.

Staggered harvests are, IMO, one of the keys to any successful gardening venture. The more you can spread things out, the better. For DW and I it is easy because we have plenty of garden space, plenty of pantry space, a vacuum sealer, a big freezer, pressure canners, probably 25 dozen jars, etc. We can very easily just grow what we want and can or freeze it when we get a big batch. For us it's more about getting higher quality food than it is about saving money (not that saving hurts).

The challenge with DD has been different. In the real world she is not planning to go far so will just come raid our pantry when she needs something, but we are approaching this as though she will be 1,000 miles from home. I don't think a teenager on their own will realistically have any way to preserve much food for the long term so we are mainly looking at ways to stretch out the harvest as much as possible. Staggered and secondary plantings for some things will be essential. You can plant green beans in the early spring and again in the late summer, for example. Using varieties of things like the cherry tomatoes that produce over the entire season is the other important part of the mix. Short term, low tech preservation like putting a few servings of green beans or a few tomatoes in baggies in the freezer should help extend the food beyond harvest time. October's last tomatoes, frozen, will be great in marinara in January. By February or March things will get pretty slim, but (around here) by April you can be harvesting enough leaf lettuce for salads. Part of the experiment with DD involves learning to eat what is available when it's fresh and saving the money she didn't spend then for that late winter stretch when nothing is growing and the freezer is bare. For most of us its second nature to do that, but to a teenager its still a new adventure.