GAMCOD 2025: 200 square feet; Zero degrees F or colder; calories cheap and easy

big names that might wanna be part of it:

       helen atthowe
       ben falk
       mark shepherd
       Sean Dembrosky
       Brad Lancaster
       David the Good (too warm?)
       Richard Perkins
       Joseph Lofthouse
       Nicole Sauce (too warm?)
       Thomas Elpel

The hope is to have 100 try and maybe 20 make it to the finish line with good video.  And out of those 20 we will pick the best 5 based on all sorts of thing.

For 2024 12 people started and we had the following results:

Rebekah
Crops grown: 9
Calories: 34,323 (7.4 million calories per acre)
Time spent: 49 hours
Monies: $41

Stephen:
Crops grown: 3
Calories: 20,570.5 (4.5 million calories per acre)
Time spent: 20 plus 12 = 32 hours
Monies spent: $30

Mike:
Crops grown: 6
Calories: 14,326.28 (3.1 million calories per acre)
Time spent: 4.65 hours
Monies spent: $1

Thomas Michael:
Crops grown: 5
Calories: 1,193.33
Time spent: 10 hours
Monies spent: $59.41

This time, the benefactor has added a LOT of money to the pot so the payout per minute is much larger.  Maybe we can get enough submissions at the end of 2025 to make a movie!

I plan to participate - hugel planning for spring 2025 is a preview of the plot I intend to create.  It is more or less surrounded by the ghost acre for mulch.

Ah, Looks like I'm doing GAMCOD - not GAMCOD again and I've thought up some secret weapons for next year

I think that the OD part will hold some people back from participating. It would be very hard for me to find a dirt patch, since I spend the last 9 years transforming said dirt into dark rich soil.
It’s still inspiring. It made me up my gardening game this year, and it paid off. I grew 2206 pounds aka a metric ton of produce, nuts and grains this year. With total calories over 560k. These numbers will keep growing as the food forest garden matures.
There are probably going to be many, that like me get inspiration from it.

I received a maybe from mark shepard, thomas elpel, helen atthowe, joseph lofthouse, and sean dembrosky.

I am building a house next year. It would be so challenging for me to do another plot next year. Perhaps I could use a hugel? I built two hugels this year that I didn't water and didn't grow anything before the snow flew. Could I use one of these? They are still  "dirt" not soil.

Rebekah Harmon wrote:It would be so challenging for me to do another plot next year.

What about having some help to build one if you track the time? A mutual friend might be in the area:
https://permies.com/t/271021/volunteering/experiences/Stephen-Snowbirding-Sustainability-Sojourn-February#2840135

replying to rebekah's thing here

https://permies.com/t/271048/reason-gamcod#2840658

Clay McGowen wrote:What about having some help ...

I gotta say that if you have help, it is better.  Of course, you still need to keep track of the hours for everybody.

Of course, if you are an adult and you "program" kids to do a lot of it, so that the adult hours end up being something close to "2" and the kids are kept busy with gardening, then I think that is a huge win!

Maybe we need a huge thread that is all about getting the kids involved in gamcod.

A few other notes ...

I plan on using the 2024 results in the movie depending on how good the 2025 stuff is.  The 2025 payout rates are higher, so if we use 2024 footage, the pay is the higher pay.

I think that the core of the movie is going to be five people starting with dirt and growing a lot of calories, but if those same five people point out that they had more than one plot, or have some other gardens, that could be touched on a tiny bit.  Maybe something about "here is my gamcod plot from last year, and this year it produced 50% more calories!" or "here is my other gamcod plot from this year, and i picked a different strategy that almost worked. oh well."  Or "here is 200 square foot plot I made in my regular garden using my excellent soil, and you can see what a difference really great soil makes."  

I got an email from thomas elpel where he said that there is a spot where he is feeding sheep hay all winter and he wants to mark off 200 square feet of that.  I think that is an excellent plot to show off "in addition" to a proper gamcod plot.

I've been thinking more about this and guestimate I might be able to produce 100,000 calories in that space and staying well within the bounds of the project. It would however employ all I've learned about gardening over the last sixty years and utilizing all of the free natural materials I have immediately on hand. Things a new gardener would definitely lack.

On the other hand, if my math is right, you only need to produce less than 5000 calories to meet the million per acre goal.

I have plenty of space to put in two plots side by side in the exact same conditions, might be fun to compare one, with all the bells and whistles, shooting for a 100,000 and one doing little more than scraping the surface a bit with a sharp hoe and planting the same crops in both. 100,000 in the one might actually be more realistic than 5000 in the other. I admit I'm tempted to find out.

I love that idea Mark.  I'd be really intrigued to see that comparison.  

Hi, great project ! I am wondering : why calories and not "nutrition" ?
Nutrition is what makes us thrive.
Nutrition is measurable using brix tests or other tools that measure the nutritional density of products.

Louis Romain wrote:Hi, great project ! I am wondering : why calories and not "nutrition" ?
Nutrition is what makes us thrive.
Nutrition is measurable using brix tests or other tools that measure the nutritional density of products.

https://permies.com/t/271048/reason-gamcod

Ulla Bisgaard wrote:I think that the OD part will hold some people back from participating. It would be very hard for me to find a dirt patch, since I spend the last 9 years transforming said dirt into dark rich soil.
It’s still inspiring. It made me up my gardening game this year, and it paid off. I grew 2206 pounds aka a metric ton of produce, nuts and grains this year. With total calories over 560k. These numbers will keep growing as the food forest garden matures.
There are probably going to be many, that like me get inspiration from it.

What methods did you employ for your soil building? I've been composting for a few years now and this year did a cover crop. Always looking to learn more.

Brian Holmes wrote:

Ulla Bisgaard wrote:I think that the OD part will hold some people back from participating. It would be very hard for me to find a dirt patch, since I spend the last 9 years transforming said dirt into dark rich soil.
It’s still inspiring. It made me up my gardening game this year, and it paid off. I grew 2206 pounds aka a metric ton of produce, nuts and grains this year. With total calories over 560k. These numbers will keep growing as the food forest garden matures.
There are probably going to be many, that like me get inspiration from it.

What methods did you employ for your soil building? I've been composting for a few years now and this year did a cover crop. Always looking to learn more.

Well we live in SoCal, so we have many gophers. They are very good at turning the soil. I just cover everything in partly composted mulch, leaves, garden clippings and compost. After making and spreading our own compost for several years, we realized that we couldn’t keep up. We have added more places to compost, but as a one off, I bought organic mulch and compost October last year. In total I got 50 yards, which is 2 full truck loads. Over the last year, we have covered the entire forest garden with a thick layer, and then let the gophers dig and mix it with the sand and clay soil we have here. Then when the rainy season hit in February I spread out a cover of wild flowers, herbs and red clover, in order to get different types and sizes of roots. Once the hot season arrives the cover started dying down, and the gophers went back to work, mixing them back into the soil. Before that they would just eat a plant here and there, which isn’t a problem. You need to keep your workers well fed LOL.  Anything I don’t want them to eat, I cover in metal netting.
There is still a spot here and there, where the soil is harder than the rest, but all in all it’s great. We are still adding more compost and green manure and will keep doing so in the future. The soils color went from a very light sandy brown color to and dark brown color that’s almost black. We also went from having no insects and worms in the soil to having lot of them and everything is thriving. Next up will probably be to spread out grain mushroom sparn, to add fungi to the soil. For healthy bacteria, I throw out water from making kefir cheese, kombucha and the like. I also use probiotics in producing compost.

We have some warm days forcasted this weekend so I'm thinking about possibly doing some prep but wanted to check a few things.

1. I went back through the "dirt vs soil" thread and want to know if the "must be tested to confirm no more than 2% OM" rule still holds for this year?

2. If that dirt requirement does hold, and I do the not-gamcod, is just working with a chunk of former lawn going to be acceptable?

3. Can we count volunteers as part of our calories or does it all have to be stuff that was planted? For example, in the beds I did in this area last year, smothering worked except for the dandelions. I expect that I will get a good number coming up in my project bed but the leaves will be tender and blanched due to the leaf cover and the sandy soil means I can pull nice whole roots. Can I count what we eat?

4. Considering that showing how gardening can be yummy is part of what you want to show, do you want a bit of footage of prepped food with the produce? I have found that how to use garden veg can be a barrier for some people so some simple preps might help. An example might be barbecueing zucchini with a bit of vinegrette. I assume any of this is to be done with skip type utensils/equipment.

5. For the video style. Is footage of the space with narration good enough or do you really want a face talking to the camera? I have good radio voice but not a very marketable face or body.

6. I can do the no plastic pots, watering can and harvest basket but our hoses are the standard ones  and the wheelbarrow has a plastic body. ( one rake has a plastic head too) Can they be used but need to be kept out of frame?

Now that I've got a year on this property, a big leaf mold stash and a supply of some seeds and tubers, I feel like I can give this a shot so want to make sure I'm doing it right. Thanks!

6b, Norfolk county Ontario, sandy loam with high water table. Planning on: sunchokes, beans, romanesco zucchini, small pumpkins, garlic, walking onions, with possible: turnip/daikon/carrot, dandelions, peas, herbs, raspberries and tomatillos.

1.  You need to show that it is dirt and not soil.  If you cannot show this, then I think you are not qualified to enter into gamcod.   I bet there are more than a dozen ways to show that it is dirt and not soil.  Only one of those ways would be a formal soil test.  

2.  transforming a lawn to a garden is one of the very best gamcod submissions.  After all, the core mission is to show people "anybody can do it" and we demonstrate starting from "nothing" where "nothing" could be dirt, or a lawn.

3.  definitely count volunteers.

4.  I like the idea.  But if we use, say, 20 minutes of the movie for you, it might be only 45 seconds of showing the cooked meals.  So, YES!  Great content.  Just that the gardening part will be bigger.

5. Up to you.  In the end, I hope that we will have 100 submissions to pick from from, and then we will narrow it down to "the best 6".  We have tried to convey what we think "best" will be made of, but I suspect that there will be at least one submission where we will add it because it has qualities that are excellent that we had not thought of before hand.

6.  Your strategy sounds wise.

I apologize, but I can't deal with current tech, with an early stage Alzheimer's diagnosis**, I am finding things like driving and gardening are great fun and rewarding but digital tech gear is muy dificile, pura fracaso no mas! Like getting into a google conference: I gotta go to a friend's place and do it with a capable partner: that's OK.

Not understanding the 'dirt' requirement. Does this mean it cannot have been a garden plot last year? Or, cannot have been heavily amended with mulch?

paul wheaton wrote:The hope is to have 100 try and maybe 20 make it to the finish line with good video.  And out of those 20 we will pick the best 5 based on all sorts of thing.

For 2024 12 people started and we had the following results:

Rebekah
Crops grown: 9
Calories: 34,323 (7.4 million calories per acre)
Time spent: 49 hours
Monies: $41

Stephen:
Crops grown: 3
Calories: 20,570.5 (4.5 million calories per acre)
Time spent: 20 plus 12 = 32 hours
Monies spent: $30

Mike:
Crops grown: 6
Calories: 14,326.28 (3.1 million calories per acre)
Time spent: 4.65 hours
Monies spent: $1

Thomas Michael:
Crops grown: 5
Calories: 1,193.33
Time spent: 10 hours
Monies spent: $59.41

This time, the benefactor has added a LOT of money to the pot so the payout per minute is much larger.  Maybe we can get enough submissions at the end of 2025 to make a movie!

Maybe I'm not getting something or thinking too much again.

I was thinking a raw forest/cutover plot, or unclean roadside plot.

Here in Newfoundland we can get upto 0.4 acres Home Garden lot, for $25.

A shovel will cost more than what anyone spent, above.

So I'm drastic missing something. 4.65hr to 49 and $1 to $59.41.

Seems like numbers are way to low or off

Seems like a dirt plot is ready to go, with birds dropping seed right into the grown lol

If the goal is to make it seem like Gardening is cheap and simple, better to be more realistic and practical, about starting out.

How long is this movies overall?

If 5 are chose and get 10 mins each $4k. Maybe 5 seconds off all that submit a start. And 10 seconds of all that completed. ( not over 1min, gets nothing??)

OK now you have a movie.

I've been thinking of starting a garden.  

Thom Bri wrote:Not understanding the 'dirt' requirement. Does this mean it cannot have been a garden plot last year? Or, cannot have been heavily amended with mulch?

We want to make a movie showing people that even if you are starting with dirt which has never had a garden, that you can grow a lot of food with little effort and little coin.  

While it is true that you can do the same starting with a great garden plot, that is not what this movie is about.

Craig Lewis wrote:Maybe I'm not getting something or thinking too much again.

I was thinking a raw forest/cutover plot, or unclean roadside plot.

Here in Newfoundland we can get upto 0.4 acres Home Garden lot, for $25.

A shovel will cost more than what anyone spent, above.

So I'm drastic missing something. 4.65hr to 49 and $1 to $59.41.

Seems like numbers are way to low or off

Seems like a dirt plot is ready to go, with birds dropping seed right into the grown lol

If the goal is to make it seem like Gardening is cheap and simple, better to be more realistic and practical, about starting out.

How long is this movies overall?

If 5 are chose and get 10 mins each $4k. Maybe 5 seconds off all that submit a start. And 10 seconds of all that completed. ( not over 1min, gets nothing??)

OK now you have a movie.

I've been thinking of starting a garden.  

Craig,

I am willing to try to answer all of your questions.  But there appears to be too much here for me to unravel at once.  Maybe we can start with clearing up one thing, and then moving on to the next thing?

If the goal is to make it seem like Gardening is cheap and simple, better to be more realistic and practical, about starting out.

The goal is to demonstrated that gardening is cheap and simple, even if starting from dirt.  

When you say "better to be more realistic and practical", the subtext is that the goal is not realistic nor is it practical.  But it seems that the 2024 attempts proved it would be realistic and practical.  

So my guess is that I am not understanding what you are trying to say?

A shovel will cost more than what anyone spent, above

Wow, expencive.

On the left coast of canada, shovels are regularly in the second hand store for 1 to 4 dollars CAD.  What we call a 2-year shovel (as in how long it lasts untill I snap the handle, would last a normal human about 20 years) is $4 on sale, or about $12 regular in the shops.

There are usually some nice ones free at every other garage sale in the summer.  

Of course, one could always go to lee valley and get the $99 one, but it's very use specific and only ergonomic for some body types

A shovel will cost more than what anyone spent, above

Why buy a shovel?

My gamcod type bed was no-dig. The only time I used a shovel-type tool was to set the tiles around the edge, which was just because I happened to have some surplus old roof tiles and a suitable tool for putting them in. It wasn't strictly necessary to make a pretty raised edge for the bed. Putting those tiles in was also by far the most time consuming part of the whole experiment, and I only did it because I wanted the bed to become a permanent feature.

I understand the overall goal and outcome.

Yet by placing limitations it can make it more difficult.

For example. Not using cardboard. We can do a lot of things with cardboard. Ground cover, composting, seedpots, ...

Not starting seedling. In the North, depending on the crops, we need to start seeds inside. Dame winters are too long lol.

Recycling plastic bottles, be it for seedlings and or micro greenhouses, slow water release units, hanging gardens. Many using to make gardening cheaper.

Yes I understand the micro plastic issue and being more down to Earth, about it. Yet being realistic about where most people are at or living. They have these items around them. As to those that do not.

The goal is to get people growing food.
The rules 200sqft plot of virgin land, perfered dirt, (most land has topsoil on it, in the North)
Grow a minimum of 5 crops (pick most nutrients packed, or region grown)

Although it be cool to get into the Doc Video, and win a prize. Yet better to have many getting out, and making gardening.

I suggest making a video of this, or maybe there is. I have not yet seen it.

Thanks for replying Paul.

I did a search and there are many 200sqft gardens

This is cool

https://youtu.be/IbgYv3mE3Lw?si=uTpLjrWvbXcvMzM-

I've made gardens from waste or abandoned land quite a few times in my life.  Usually starting with borrowed or free equipment, kitchen scraps, and https://permies.com/t/free-seed .  I don't think I've ever started with more than three quarters of an inch of soil.

Favourite and fastest method of building soil.
https://permies.com/t/68883/permaculture/keyhole-garden-summer-drought

I will have to look back and check, but I think the most expencive was renting an allotment (abandoned lot) from the city for $50cad per year plus I had to make raised beds to their standards.   By year three, I was growing enough food on a little over 400sq foot to feed the main veg for three households, and sell to upgrade my equipment.   While working full time and going to uni.  About 20 min a day to garden.  But, alas, humans are human and it was easier to avoid conflict and let someone else use the land.

Remove the limits and we get the whole heap of...but you can't do it good enough, why try?

To do it to a standard that keeps the ick out of our food is kind of the point.  

But I also think people have been doing this for thousands of years so that we now have a divide between those who think it's normal, easy, and uninteresting. And those raised in a plastic world who don't even know it's possible,  level on easy.  

Craig Lewis wrote:For example. Not using cardboard. We can do a lot of things with cardboard. Ground cover, composting, seedpots, ...

It is my opinion that adding cardboard to horticultural endeavors, transforms the food that you grow there from "food" to "food with toxins."  I wish to make a movie about growing food without toxins.  

And, I confess, that there is a thousand hour debate here, backed by several hundred white papers on each side of the debate.  I further confess that I am tired of the debate and have made my choice.  I prefer to focus on growing food rather than re-enter that debate.  

And I understand that this is an uncomfortable choice for you:  grow food my way and get paid, or grow food your way.  

paul wheaton wrote:

Craig Lewis wrote:For example. Not using cardboard. We can do a lot of things with cardboard. Ground cover, composting, seedpots, ...

It is my opinion that adding cardboard to horticultural endeavors, transforms the food that you grow there from "food" to "food with toxins."  I wish to make a movie about growing food without toxins.  

And, I confess, that there is a thousand hour debate here, backed by several hundred white papers on each side of the debate.  I further confess that I am tired of the debate and have made my choice.  I prefer to focus on growing food rather than re-enter that debate.  

And I understand that this is an uncomfortable choice for you:  grow food my way and get paid, or grow food your way.  

Lol I'm not debating 🤣

Relax Paul.

If you want to do things, do so, it's your site after all.

You ask for thoughts and opinions and then shared, this is the results. No worries mate.

There are as many ways to grow things as there are people.

One is not better than another. Just personal preferences.

I followed many, as many do. Best is learning along the way.

I do appreciate the site, and info I learned along the way.

And of course I grow my way, when I do grow. I'm the one growing it ;)  😆 🤣 😂  

No reply needed, it's not a debate. Just inquiry. Now I know.

Cheers

I was the $1 GAMCOD person above.  I used seeds I saved myself which saved money.  Without a previous garden a person could have saved some of those seeds from their groceries.  I did use a pitchfork that I already owned and a wagon I built years ago.  The area of crappy soil (dirt) I used was luckily inside a fenced area so I didn't have to build a deer fence. I did start seedlings inside without plastic or cardboard pots as part of my experimentation.

It would be interesting to see how cheap the GAMCOD plots would be if we accounted for everything we're using/borrowing that a total newbie might need to source to copy us.

Mike Haasl wrote:I was the $1 GAMCOD person above.  I used seeds I saved myself which saved money.  Without a previous garden a person could have saved some of those seeds from their groceries.  I did use a pitchfork that I already owned and a wagon I built years ago.  The area of crappy soil (dirt) I used was luckily inside a fenced area so I didn't have to build a deer fence. I did start seedlings inside without plastic or cardboard pots as part of my experimentation.

It would be interesting to see how cheap the GAMCOD plots would be if we accounted for everything we're using/borrowing that a total newbie might need to source to copy us.

Your not normal Mike.
It's a good thing  👍

As for $1. What can you buy at a supermarket for $1

So the truth comes out lol
You had to buy the fruit/vegetable that the seeds came in
Got ya lol.

Yet someone can do any of this for $0 or cost to them self. Asking others for, seeds, tool, land, time. And one can have a garden.  

I'm sure a sweet senior with her cookies 🍪 😋  can get others within her community to help, when asked, or bribes lol

I'm liking the keyway design idea, with compost in the middle, and growing layers on the outside.

So 7.979 of 8ft radius

With 1.5ft radius compost and with 2 or 3 layers rings the some trellis walls for vertical growing.

Still in the thinking and design phase.

I do have seeds yet years old now. But time to start saving. Or go shopping ;)

Trying to figure out how to get the grass under control given the rules.

Thom Bri wrote:Trying to figure out how to get the grass under control given the rules.

I'm hopelessly behind updating my thread, and I'm not doing 'proper' GAMCOD because I'm not in the right climate zone, but we smothered the grass in our bed using grass cut from other areas around the place. If it's laid on thick enough, the grass underneath dies off enough that other stuff can be planted through it, which then gets a good head start.

Thom Bri wrote:Trying to figure out how to get the grass under control given the rules.

Depending on the type of grass (e.g. sod versus wilder deeper-rooted varieties), one way to deal with it is to lift the sod, then if you turn it upside down (one your plot or in a compost pile or wherever), it generally dies.

I spent a summer as a landscape labourer decades ago.  If it was a small enough area, we did it with a square spade - pushed down to cut an edge, then get under the edge and dig nearly horizontally to lift the sod.  If it is the commonly used varieties for lawn grass, their roots aren't very deep and you wind up picking up a mat overall.  A sod cutter does much the same thing but uses a mechanized blade to go down as far as about 2" (the height is usually adjustable).  The first option would be labour intensive for a 200 sf plot.  The latter option could be cost-intensive (assuming renting a sod cutting machine) as well as using fuel.  There are manual sod cutters as well, but I have no experience with them - I know a rental place here offers them as well.

I intend to cut the plot outline by hand, then hopefully use my tractor's front end loader to lift the sod.  It's a trade-off, but I already own the tractor and would be a tremendous time and energy saver.

You had to buy the fruit/vegetable that the seeds came in

??
Where do you get your food if you don't have a garden?
??

It doesn't have to be a supermarket,  I suppose, but the assumption is that humans eat food.

If someone is interested in growing their own food without extra toxins, they not only know how to cook from raw veg, but also do from time to time.

So, they are buying the food for eating and instead of tossing away the extra bits in the garbage, use them to create soil and more veg.

See the thread linked above about how easy it is to get free seeds from groceries.

Also, during harvest time, keep an eye on UsedAnywhere for free fruit and veg.  

If you are really nice to the grocery store manager, and say it's for your chickens, loads of free produce filled with seeds there.