A Reddit user has shared a potentially life-saving piece of advice for people receiving food stamps: They can help you start your own garden.
In a popular post on the r/Frugal subreddit, a user explains that you can purchase plant seeds with food stamps, as well as live plants that you can plant in a garden as long as they're edible.
"This absolutely saved me a couple of years back as a single mother," the user writes. "I was living downtown Nashville and managed to gather enough pallets and scrap wood from construction in my area to build planter beds, and I turned my own compost. I was able to grow enough food to feed the neighborhood for $150 worth of food stamps."
By growing her own food, the user saved an impressive amount of money while supporting her family and her community on a tight budget.
By maintaining your own garden of fruits, vegetables, and herbs, you can not only save money but also avoid synthetic chemicals and harmful packaging from supermarket produce, which eventually ends up in landfills, polluting our communities and contributing to the dangerous overheating of our planet.
Other Reddit users shared their advice in the comment section of the post.
"Also worth mentioning that a lot of farmers markets have programs where $1 of EBT is worth 2-3x as much at the market vendors," one user writes. "So you're literally getting more per dollar spent."
"ProTip: 48 states … have master gardener programs," another user writes. "These are volunteers trained in residential gardening (vegetables, container plants, decorative etc). They are trained in association with land grand universities. So, it's not woo-woo or motivated by a company that wants to make money. You can contact them and get free advice on how to grow your plants. Many of them have web pages and even youtube videos that you can read or watch at your leisure."
"Bought too many potatoes, onions, garlic, etc and they're going bad? Store them in the ground! Best case, you have more than you started with," a third user shares.
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