Learning to Grow Collards

My wife and I live in Michigan, which is several states away from our families in Tennessee and Missouri.  We generally exchange gifts with my family during the second weekend in December each year. This year I spent an hour catching up with my eldest uncle, who also does some amateur cattle ranching to supplement his retirement income. We talked about his growing herd of black hereford cattle (who knew?), politics, and eventually the conversation turned to food.

We don't always agree with each other, but we generally gravitate toward common ground during our talks. Putting it all together, so to speak, we ended up agreeing that some of the stress for families who are less fortunate financially than we are, could be reduced if more people learned to grow some of their own food.

It doesn't take a lot of land to grow enough food to supplement several meals a week. And...if you want to get serious about it, you could grow a substantial amount of food in the backyard to reduce the family grocery bill significantly.

What strategy could you use to get started on a small scale to learn the how to's and why not's for growing your own food? Plant some collards.

Collards are easy to grow.
If I can do it, anyone can. They grow like weeds almost.

Collards give you multiple harvests.
You can harvest them once and they'll grow back in a couple weeks.
You can harvest them a second time, a third, or maybe a fourth before they become a little bitter.

Collards grow well in cool weather.
You can plant them early in the spring and again in the late summer to get eight harvests per plant.

They are easy to cook.
Boil them. Cook them in a crock pot. Saute them with some bacon (my favorite). Use your imagination.

Once you get some confidence growing collards, it's easy to add lettuce, spinach, radishes, carrots, and much more to the backyard food distribution system.

I'll leave out some of the colorful language my uncle used, but to summarize in politically correct terms...growing some of your own food really can save you money and stretch the money you have just a little farther.