With grocery shopping on Saturday fresh on our minds, my wife and I set out to 'invest' our $10 on a small organic garden, set aside to grow salad greens for us all summer.

We went to a Wisconsin owned store, Jung Garden Center to see how far $10 would take us. We picked up a bag of organic seed starting mix for $4.95, a packet of 350 spinach seeds for $1.55, a 72 count seed starting tray for .99, and a tray to hold the starter pots for $1.49.

The bag of starting mix is enough to fill the tray at least twice.

Spinach seeds are considered food, and food has no sales tax in Wisconsin, so the total purchase was $9.47, taxes included.  To our surprise, at the store's checkout they offered a free packet of lettuce seeds with each purchase, as well as a $1 coupon on future purchases, so we actually got a "rebate" of $2.50, making our "real" purchase price about $7.50.

We'll use a broadfork to work the new garden bed in our nice, organic topsoil, and we'll have fresh greens for many families in a few weeks.

If you want to know how much money will be saved on spinach and lettuce this year, you can watch the progress of our $10 challenge on our website at http://www.gullandforge.com

Gulland