Grow your own food to eat better, save money

What is happening to America?

Martha Stewart is promoting tearing up your lawn and planting a vegetable garden.

The cover of the summer edition of the White Flower Farm catalog, that bastion of tasteful perennial planting, features eggplants and tomatoes.

Michele Obama is planting vegetables on the south lawn of the White House.

A perfect storm seems to have settled over our country. The economy tanked. Energy and food prices soared. Tainted tomatoes hit the grocery market. The local-foods movement gained mainstream attention. Three books on The New York Times' best-seller list were about the food system and eating locally.

A growing sense of insecurity settled in and the reaction has been to take matters in to our own hands in that most American of ways -- grow your own.

It's not a new response. Victory gardens date back to 1918 and the beginnings of the War Garden Commission, when the government postered and pamphleteered its way toward a country of community and school gardens, back-yard lots, church gardens and abandoned city lots.

The civilian nation was asked to do its part to relieve stress on the food system by growing and canning its own food. The movement returned at the onset of World War II and waned at the end of the war and the beginning of the industrialized farm system.

Michele Obama's efforts with local schoolchildren are garnering media attention. The media tend to look at these efforts with bemusement, as if planting a vegetable garden on the south lawn is cute and entertaining -- in the same league as the new White House puppy.

These efforts deserve better. Though they may be seen as largely symbolic, the measure of a nation's greatness is taken in simple acts at the grassroots level and the ground level. And, yes, the garden is the ground level.

If Michelle Obama's efforts are symbolic, they represent an act that should be seen as radically practical. We have the land and we have the labor to produce fresh, nutritious food for a nation that counts anywhere from 33.3 to 38.2 million people as food-insecure and hungry. The first lady's intention to turn fresh food over to the local food bank is a practical response to the problem.

Then there is the opposite issue -- obesity.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, over a third of U.S. adults, nearly 72 million people, and 16 percent of U.S. children are obese. Everyone knows that it's a lot easier and cheaper to buy a hamburger than a healthy meal.

The work and the production of the vegetable garden addresses this trend.

What is the economic benefit of a garden? The National Gardening Association estimates a $500 return on a vegetable garden. Some estimates see that as conservative. They estimate that a well-maintained food garden can yield a half pound of produce per square foot of garden area. At in-season prices, they calculate that that produce is worth $2 per pound.

George Ball, the chairman of W. Atlee Burpee & Co. and a former president of the American Horticultural Society, wrote in the Atlanta Journal Constitution that there is about a 25-to-1 return on a food-gardening investment. He said that a packet of butterhead lettuce containing 350 seeds costs $3 at Burpees. At the grocery, a single head of lettuce on sale would cost $1.75.

Roger Doiron, the founder and director of Kitchen Gardeners International (www.kitchengardenrs.org), weighed the produce that he and his wife harvested on their 1/25th of an acre in Maine. Over a six-month period they calculated its value against three scales -- a conventional grocery store, a farmers market and an organic grocery store.

Their yield was 834 pounds. The comparable cost came to $2,196, $2,431 and $2,548, respectively. They considered an out of pocket cost of $282, making the return on their investment 862 percent. A study by Burpee Seeds claims that $50 spent on gardening supplies can multiply into $1,250 worth of produce annually

Seed companies are most definitely not suffering in the economic downturn.

Ball recently said that the company is running out of some of the more popular vegetable seeds. The major seed companies have seen spikes as high as 25 percent in the sale of vegetable seeds. The National Gardening Association is calculating a 19 percent increase in home-food gardening in 2009.

Welcome, new gardeners, and thank you, Michelle Obama and Roger Doiron and all the other promoters of the garden way. Times are tough, so lace up your boots, sharpen your spades and let's break some new ground.