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.