Announcing MOTHER's Gardening and Home-Building Contests!

Image Gallery LEFT TO RIGHT: Your well-planned, productive, one-person or single-family food garden... or well-designed, low-cost (MOTHER's low-cost shelter is shown here) ... can win you cash and be featured in a future issue of MOTHER!

Here's a chance to share your success with other readers and maybe win some cash, too

As we've often said in the past, the people who write the best articles for MOTHER are, more often than not, the very same people who read this magazine. In fact, to a large extent MOM functions as a sort of bulletin board, allowing you folks to pass along information about your successes and failures . . . and to learn from each other's mistakes and triumphs. Furthermore, we've always known that there's more knowledge in our pool of hands-on experts (that is, you people) than shows up here in the form of manuscripts. After all, it's one thing to know your way around a garden or construction site, but it's often another thing entirely to have the confidence to sit down and try to put that information in the form of an article. So, in an effort to mine that till now untapped vein of expertise, we've decided to sponsor the following contests, and you don't need to be a trained journalist to enter. If you do enter, you can have the satisfaction of helping others duplicate your home-building or gardening successes and perhaps win a cash prize to boot!

HOW DOES YOUR GARDEN GROW?

Our first contest ought to provide a little nudge of inspiration to all of you backyard gardeners (according to our latest survey, that includes more than 86% of the people who read MOTHER). We'll be looking for the best individual or family-size food gardens we can find. Our judging standards will, of course, have to be somewhat subjective—taking into account the fact that people's gardening aims vary—but, in general, we're looking for plots that are [I] space-efficient, [2] sized to feed the individual or family tending them (sorry, community and organization gardens are not eligible), [3] capable of producing a variety of foods (as well as, perhaps, some herbs and flowers), and, of course, [4] grown without toxic pesticides, herbicides, or petroleum-based (or otherwise non-organic, synthesized) fertilizers.

We'll award a check for $300 to the winner and $50 to each of the four runners-up. (If no plot stands clearly above the rest, we'll simply give the top five finishers $100 apiece.) In addition, all of the semifinalists will receive a free one-year subscription to THE MOTHER EARTH NEWS.

To enter, submit—by May 1—a complete plan for your 1985 garden. This should include a diagram showing the spatial layout of your plot (with dimensions) and a thorough written explanation of the design (giving the reasons behind your plan, what succession plantings, if any, you'll be making, the goals for your garden, and so forth).