Use Your Food Stamps to GROW Your Food

As a single mom, with two kids in daycare and zero child support, I'm not afraid to confess that we receive food stamps. I paid into the system when I was working full time, I'm paying into the system now that I'm working part-time, and I'd be happy to work full-time again if I could find a decent job in this junky economy. I'm not at all ashamed to take the help where I can get it.

For whatever reason, the state thinks that my kids and I need to eat like rabid wolves, because we get a LOT more money in food stamps than we can use. But, they just keep piling up. I find bargain shopping to be a fun hobby (you know you're a domestic goddess when you think combining coupons with a buy one get one free sale is considered an exciting hobby), and very rarely buy anything unless it's on sale (except at the health food store, where nothing I want is ever on sale). So that adds to the food stamp surplus.

Somewhere along the line, someone from a parenting message board told me that food stamps can be used to purchase seeds for fruits and vegetables, as well as any fruit or vegetable plant. I pick on the state and their "services" a lot (I spend a lot more time than I'd like jumping through their hoops to be able to receive the help that we do get, the workers resent the fact that I can do basic math, and many of the workers I have encountered border on lazy and/or less-than-intelligent, and, overall, it's stressful and exhausting, but that's another post for another day.) But whoever decided that these items would be approved for purchase with food stamps is a Godsend.

Now, of course, they have to be used at a store that accepts food stamps, so home improvement stores and gardening stores/nurseries are out, at least in my area. That means grocery stores and mass retailers (Wal-mart and K-mart in my area), and that's it. Still, that's plenty.

So, while I do much prefer heirloom/open pollinated seed, it is expensive, and I'm slowly building my seed collection. But, I have yet to be able to save seed from spinach or lettuce, or any herbs, so all of those seeds were purchased at a retail store, since it's cheap. I've also bought four blueberry bushes, and will likely go back and get more, if I can remember to before they completely run out. And when I discovered luffa seeds at Target, technically luffa is a vegetable, and it qualified to be paid for with food stamps.

If you don't grow things like tomatoes and peppers and whatnot from seed, the seedlings/small plants are also covered by food stamps.

I keep toying with the idea of getting an apple tree, but I kind of like the fact that my entire front yard ISN'T shaded, so I can actually grow stuff there, and if I go and buy an apple tree, it's going to have to go in the front yard, and it's just going to make me angry.

Most cashiers I have encountered either don't know that food stamps can be used for seed/fruiting plant purposes at all, or they like to spout off misinformation. (The last time I was at Wal-mart, a cashier happily informed me that my blueberry bush was covered by food stamps, and food stamps cover all plants, but not seeds. Wrong. She didn't believe me when I said she was wrong, and I told her to ask her manager later, because she was definitely wrong. I felt bad, because she was actually giving out the information that SOMETHING could be purchased with food stamps, but it helps to give out completely accurate information.) I've had others tell me that ONLY seeds for food-related plants count.

So, if you are one of the bajillion Americans who receive food stamps/EBT benefits, and you are a gardener, or you know someone who does, take advantage of the gardening enabling (or pass the word along.) Instead of spending $2 on a bag of potato chips that are horribly bad for you and will only last a week, if that, spend $2 on a couple of packages of seed that will grow healthy things to last you much, much longer, and give you the priceless benefit of time in fresh air, communing with Mother Earth. (Oh man, that's my hippie side coming out. It sneaks up on you from time to time.)

Now if only food stamps covered dirt to grow the seeds in...then it would be a perfect program.