Backyard Dinner: Beat the Recession with Gardening!

Growing your own food is a great way to fight rising prices at the grocery store and the gas pump. Every meal you can pull from your own ground is one less trip to the grocery store, not to mention that much less demand for the unhealthy long-distance transportation that brings us the harvest from California and other faraway places.

But if everyone tried to be more food self-sufficient, might that not hurt the economy as overall sales dip?

Ah, but where there's a will to make a buck, there's a way to make even self-sufficiency a boost for the broader economy. Last night's Marketplace tells us about "edible landscaping companies" that make their living helping newbie gardeners turn their boring old lawns into do-it-yourself cornucopiae:

It's part of a day-long organic gardening crash-course by Weihmann's company, All Edibles. They design and build your garden and teach you how to take care of it.

First-time gardeners Paul Silverman and Laura Shapiro are doing a new low-budget package developed by All Edibles. The entire garden gets built in one day, and the clients have to help do the work....

This one-day build costs $1,400. Not cheap, but the garden planted today should produce enough vegatables and herbs to feed a small family for the entire year [Andrew Stelzer, "Cheaper Dinner Grown in the Backyard," Marketplace, 2009.03.23].

Even in the self-sufficient local economy, the smart businessperson can find a way to provide a service that helps the neighbors and puts food on everyone's table.