Maintaining a home garden has a lot of advantages, but it can be tricky to make the best use of your homegrown haul besides just eating a good meal.
Thankfully, Jordan Tony and Silvan Goddin, the duo behind the Instagram page homegrown_handgathered (@homegrown_handgathered), have a clever hack to use up their corn plants after they've harvested their crop.
The scoop
Once you've taken corn off the stalk, you're left with tons of plant material that could potentially go to waste. Instead, Tony and Goddin use the stalks to effectively compost the spent plants as a base for the oyster mushrooms they like to grow.
Once the mushrooms grow, they take all that material (the eco-friendly bags the mushrooms come in and the corn plants) and use it as mulch and fertilizer for the next season's corn crop. They use their corn for tortillas, tamales, cornbread, pupusas, and a whole lot more, which they say "basically keep[s] us fed over the winter" and start the process all over again come spring.
How it's working
Tony and Goddin describe their system as "closing the loop" on their garden, which means they don't use anything external to grow and maintain it.
As the site Treehugger puts it, "Closed-loop gardens do not require us to bring in materials, seeds, or other items to maintain the system. Rather, the garden works with nature and relies on internal resources for its own perpetuation."
Operating a closed-loop system like this is a great money saver since you're not paying for extra material to maintain your garden. It also helps keep the environment cleaner by avoiding fertilizers and pesticides that are damaging to ecosystems.
Keeping a home garden also has a myriad of health benefits, both physical and mental. A recent study from the University of Colorado showed that not only did people working in a garden eat more fiber from their veggies, but they also reported a reduction in stress and anxiety. The satisfaction of picking your own home-grown produce at its peak ripeness is a feeling that's hard to match.
What people are saying
People in the comments of the post loved the example set by the Instagram duo.
"That is awesome! Love that full circle use!" one person declared, praising the closed-loop gardening system.
"You guys have inspired me to try and grow corn this year," said another, adding, "Excited but nervous! This is another great use for the leftovers."
"I love how much use you get out of those corn stalks," another person wrote. "Makes me wish I had the room to grow corn."
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