Something Good

Here is another silver lining on the economy. People are planting more home gardens. All the seed companies are experiencing double digit growth. People are beginning to realize for $10 worth of seeds and some not so hard work you can reap hundreds of dollars worth of food right in your backyard. Even if you don't have a backyard you can sometimes lease a small spot in a community garden. One of the commenters here, Flying Squirrel, is doing that in Long Island. Another good thing is that growing your own food means you are going to have to cook it yourself and not rely on preprocessed food. You are going to get more wholesome food and less chemicals on top of saving money. In spite of lower fuel costs and commodity costs food prices are rising so now is the best time possible to try your hand at a little backyard farming.

Oh! and if you have any questions about how to go about your backyard gardening please feel free to ask here in some thread. Just enter your question "off topic" and I will try and answer. I have been doing the organic gardening thing off and on since I was a kid and that means slightly more than a half century of experience. If I don't know the answer I will find it.

Hard economic times are acting like instant fertilizer on an industry that had been growing slowly: home vegetable gardening.

Amid the Washington talk of "shovel-ready" recession projects, it appears few projects are more shovel-ready than backyard gardens. Veggie seed sales are up double-digits at the nation's biggest seed sellers this year.

What's more, the number of homes growing vegetables will jump more than 40% this year compared with just two years ago, projects the National Gardening Association, a non-profit organization for gardening education.

"As the economy goes down, food gardening goes up," says Bruce Butterfield, the group's research director. "We haven't seen this kind of spike in 30 years."

At W. Atlee Burpee, the world's largest seed company, seed sales will jump 25% this year, Chairman George Ball estimates. "It's weird to have everyone else you talk to experiencing plunging markets. We're on a roll."