A better name for GAMCOD - suggestion thread

It started out as 'Grow A Million Calories On Dirt' - hence the GAMCOD tag, however that was for an acre of land. Now we're trying to demonstrate how easy growing your own food can be on a smaller area - 200 sq feet is the sort of area almost anyone with a yard could turn over to food growing.

The project will help 'level 1' people get growing their own food by overcoming some of the false assumptions people have on gardening:

Look what May did last year!





(May's project thread)


So let's come up with some possible alternate names for the project!

I'll make a start:

Great Green Grow Off!

The Paul Wheaton Challenge: From dirt to calories.

Easy Peasy Calories-y
The Free Groceries From Crummy Dirt Showdown
The $100/Hour First Year Gardening Challenge
Free & Easy Meal Demonstration
Grocery Growing Gala
Proof of Painless Produce (Provision) on any Patch

Dirt Patch Garden Challenge. "Let's check on the Dirt Patch Garden."

CHOW Challenge
(Capture Harvest On Wasteland)

Nancy Reading wrote:Showing how little needs to be spent ..
Demonstrating easy techniques ..
Recording little time spent on the plots ..
Showing that starting with dirt can still produce a yield in the first year ..
Growing a range of calorie rich crops

.. So let's come up with some possible alternate names for the project!

Hmm ..

You CAN Grow Food In Your Yard This Year?

shortened to:

YouCANGrow

I could imagine one name for the contest and a different name for a future kickstarter or movie title...

Victory Garden Challenge
Yard to Food Challenge
Grow Food Instead of Grass Contest
Grass meh, Food good challenge
Grow $500 of food with $50 and 5 hours  (500/50/5 challenge)
Grow 50,000 calories with $50 and 5 hours (50k/50/5 challenge)
Dirt to Garden as easy as possible

Dirt 200
Garden 200
Food 200
200 sq ft Challenge
200 ft of Calories

earth to edibles - a journey to grow (E2E)

Dirt to Food - $10 and 4 hours can feed you for a month

...   the idea is to emphasize it being cheap and easy.  To mitigate the misconceptions about huge cost and huge time.

Of course, the $10 bit and the 4 hour bit and the "month" bit all depend on the results.

One person needs 60,000 calories for a month.  Do we wanna explore 3 plots or keep it to one?

Maybe the focus should be on the 200 square feet.  Maybe teach people to limit their focus on 200 square feet.  Too often, beginners will attempt bigger gardens and get frustrated.  Maybe if they do well with 200 square feet, they can 200 more square feet the second year.  Or maybe have a primary plot that is 200 square feet that gets your first attention, and a secondary plot that might get spotty attention.  The key is that the focus of the movie is for first time gardeners.

First Time Gardening - cheap and easy on dirt

             Five experts demonstrate what they think will be best for a first time gardener.  
             Focus on growing lots of calories on very poor soil for low cost and low effort.

??

Ok, ill play. Maybe these will help get some more creative juices flowing:

FOOD - Feed Ourselves On Dirt

FOODIE - Feeding Ourselves On Dirt Is Easy

CROPS. - Calorie Riches On Poor Soils

"Project Plot Twist" - Growing food isn't as hard or expensive as you think.  

From my daughter: Don't Mow It, Grow It!

Other suggestions:

"Grow a LOT" (LOT = LawnOrganicTransformation)

"A Lot of Harvest"

Don't Care, Grow There

The Plot Quickens ("quickens" as in the old fashioned usage, "comes to life")

paul wheaton wrote:Dirt to Food - $10 and 4 hours can feed you for a month
Maybe the focus should be on the 200 square feet.  Maybe teach people to limit their focus on 200 square feet.  Too often, beginners will attempt bigger gardens and get frustrated.  Maybe if they do well with 200 square feet, they can 200 more square feet the second year.  Or maybe have a primary plot that is 200 square feet that gets your first attention, and a secondary plot that might get spotty attention.  The key is that the focus of the movie is for first time gardeners.

I think this is spot on.  A bed 20 feet by 10 feet is doable for most people and not overwhelming for a novice gardener.  It is a good size to introduce some polyculture.

Dirt Cheap Food: easy entry food gardening

Let's F-ing Grow! Food for ( nearly) free from your lawn.

Convert That Dirt

or maybe

Dirt Convert Challenge?

If Nancy writes:
Showing... Demonstrating easy techniques... Recording...Showing ...dirt can ...produce a yield

And Paul writes:
Dirt to Food..cheap and easy...mitigate the misconceptions...teach people to limit their focus...[avoid] getting frustrated...the focus of the movie is for (beginner) gardeners...Focus on growing lots of calories on very poor soil for low cost and low effort...

And Wikipedia writes:
[Tao] means a road, path, way; and hence, the way in which one does something; method, doctrine, principle

And Amy writes:
Capture Harvest On Wasteland

Then maybe the name could be:

The Tao of CHOW

Amy Gardener wrote:The Tao of CHOW

Oooh clever!

I keep coming back to the competition aspect - so

paul wheaton wrote:Dirt to Food - $10 and 4 hours can feed you for a month

...  
First Time Gardening - cheap and easy on dirt

Again, depending on the results ...

Grow all of your food for $10


GAMCOD works for now.  But if we get enough submissions that we can actually make a movie, then, sure, let's come up with a better movie title!  :)

I hate the acronyms.  If I don't understand it, I usually skip past it, rather than taking the time to look it up.

Also, since all of the alphabet agencies and NGOs these days are let's just say...off-puting...why not just be more direct?

To play off a previous idea, how about:
From dirt to food?

Or,
From Dirt to Food...Cheap.

Alina Green wrote:I hate the acronyms.  If I don't understand it, I usually skip past it, rather than taking the time to look it up.

Also, since all of the alphabet agencies and NGOs these days are let's just say...off-puting...why not just be more direct?

To play off a previous idea, how about:
From dirt to food?

Or,
From Dirt to Food...Cheap.

or

Dirt to Food - cheap and easy

I wonder, depending on results, if it could be fun to say "pay yourself $100 per hour growing your own food."

PAYDIRT Gardening

Pleasantly Abundantly Yielding,
Delightfully Inexpensive,
Reduced Time Gardening

My suburban garden was a bit smaller than 200 sq ft, and it always helped to say "it's about the size of a parking spot"; then they'd go "OH!" and be able to grasp the size easily. Or the size of a car. Especially for people living in smaller areas or who can't grasp measurements well, it could be a fun way to describe the garden size.
The Car-Sized Garden?
Or something else common to compare it to?

Kim Wills wrote:My suburban garden was a bit smaller than 200 sq ft, and it always helped to say "it's about the size of a parking spot"; then they'd go "OH!" and be able to grasp the size easily. Or the size of a car. Especially for people living in smaller areas or who can't grasp measurements well, it could be a fun way to describe the garden size.
The Car-Sized Garden?
Or something else common to compare it to?

Google says

In the United States, the standard size of a parking space is 8–9 ft wide and 18–20 ft long.

Well done!