GAMCOD Poll: Do you plan to participate?

James Bridger wrote:Maybe-what is GAMCOD? I gather it has something to do with making a garden in a currently crap location. I've seen the freaky cheap movie thread, which I don't qualify to participate in, it seems this GAMCOD thing is along similar lines.

EDIT-found it...grow a million calories from one acre of dirt. I don't have that much space. My whole lot is 1/4ish of an acre, my garden is something like 13x20.

r ranson wrote:
My climate doesn't qualify for this round - but I'm thinking of doing and documenting it here to see if I can.

... it would be planning this summer, then starting over winter while the rain is here

If you wanna play, but your climate is too warm, or your soil is too good, or some other reason ...

You are welcome to get as close as you can and provide that video.  I'm not sure what all we might do with it, but maybe we can think of something.

May Lotito wrote:I will probably do the non-gamcod gamcod. My climate qualifies and the soil is poor enough with <2% OM. I will be able to 100% free range the chickens for manure when it warms up. But I can't do without my 32 gal plastic trash cans. They will be used for rain harvesting, fermentation and making liquid fertilizer. It's a lot more work to substitute one big can with 10 small stainless steel pots.

Su MacLean wrote:I’m thinking about participating. I certainly have no shortage of hard packed clay dirt covered in aggressive weeds and grasses that I already want to start gardening in. Welcome to Western North Carolina! My question is, what about cultivating 200 square feet of weeds without at least a pile of imported wood chips is easy? I would never use plastic barrier as I don’t want to introduce that to my soil, but I’ve been thinking about getting wood chips or hay (I have an organic source).

Paul suggested a seven foot hugel which is a good idea because I’m on a hill and need swales anyway to capture water. That might be easy to build with an army of volunteers at hand, but we’re just two people.

Maybe this challenge is my incentive to try it and see how easy I can make it.

paul wheaton wrote:

Plastic is discouraged but not forbidden.

Plus, that stuff is outside of the 200 square feet, right?  More like it is part of your "ghost acres".

Rebekah Harmon wrote:Do participants have to be 18 years old?

paul wheaton wrote:

Rebekah Harmon wrote:Do participants have to be 18 years old?

Nope.

paul wheaton wrote: "I would just bury the sod"

yeah, I was pretty limited with ghost acre mulch at the beginning of the season, because I had been thorough in fall cleanup before I decided to do GAMCOD last spring. This year, I saved more mulches to collect


I also think that for 2025 it would be good to give a one minute re-visit to the 2024 plot which now has something getting close to "soil" - so it is probably doing better.

I will definitely do that!

Klaus Wolfgang wrote:Will there be a GAMCOD for 2026?

I'm definitely interested but won't be back to my home country until around June or July which is a bit too late, and I doubt I could grow much prior to winter other than some cover crops...

Either way I'll probably do it since I've never done much of any gardening and haven't had any land until this point, so it'll be my first opportunity to start putting permaculture ideas into practice, even if it's too late for any sort of contest.