Grocery costs have been increasing for years, but Americans are bracing for even higher prices due to President Donald Trump’s new round of tariffs.
Kendall Brown, a content creator based in Wichita, Kansas, has found ways to save up to $50 a week on food: by cultivating a victory garden. Also known as war gardening, victory gardens were first promoted during World War I as a way for Americans to grow their own food and assist with war efforts.
The practice has become popular again amid a vibecession and the romanticization of trad wife culture — a lifestyle that promotes traditional roles for women in the home — Brown said.
“I think there’s a lot of signs that we could be headed into similar dire economic straits,” said Brown, referring to the stories she heard from her grandparents, who lived during the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl.
To be sure, unemployment is still low in the US but other economic indicators, like declining consumer sentiment, reveal how Americans feel.
Brown, who usually posts political content, is now using her platform to empower her audience to find affordable ways to cut spending on food. Her videos offering tips for growing your own produce at home have garnered over 1.8 million views on TikTok.
Figure out what vegetables you eat the most and what you can grow
Brown grew up in rural Oklahoma, where she spent every summer helping her mother weed their home garden. From a young age, she learned to live off the land.
The first step to building a functioning victory garden is to be realistic about what will fit your needs, Brown said. To do that, identify the vegetables or fruits that you consume frequently that are easy to grow in your living space.
“I also always encourage people to start small,” said Brown. When she started her garden, she made some mistakes by going all in. “I ended up costing myself a lot of money rather than saving myself a lot of money.”
Brown encourages aspiring gardeners to consider how much light they get, what they eat, and how much those items cost at the grocery store. For example, leafy greens and herbs can be forgiving on how much light they need and tend to be some of the more expensive items at the store, Brown added.
She and her husband eat a lot of salads so she said her priority is growing lettuce heads in rotation so that they always have some ready to put on a plate.
Tap free resources like a community garden
It can be tantalizing to go all in on a new hobby, but if you’re not careful, you can end up spending more money on gardening tools than saving through growing food. To ensure you’re not investing more than you need to in your garden, Brown recommends taping free resources like community gardens and libraries.
“If you find a place that already has established beds with soil in them, that can save you hundreds of dollars,” said Brown, adding that buying the necessary soil can be pricey. Additionally, members of a community garden may be willing to share tools.
Some libraries offer gardening tools or seed libraries that members can use, Brown said. And if those options aren’t available, Brown shared 10 different tools people can also buy for cheap at discount stores.
For example, Brown said that Dollar Tree’s basic laundry baskets are the perfect cover for protecting your plants during heavy winds, hail, and rains.
Choose plants based on your environment
As a former renter, Brown knows it can be difficult to plant without access to outdoor spaces and arable land. But that’s where the creativity kicks in.
“You can grow strawberries out of a laundry hamper,” Brown said.
She also recommends looking into the vegetables that have dwarf or bush varieties, which can grow in compact containers. This can also make it easier for a gardener to move their plants outside during peak sunlight hours.
Don’t get scammed
Brown doesn’t want beginners to get sucked into perfectionism. Novices can be easily swayed into developing unrealistic expectations for their garden if they’re just looking at examples online.
“A huge percentage of the photos of ‘gardens’ out there on social media right now, are not real gardens, they’re AI-generated,” said Brown. “A lot of times, they are deeply unrealistic.”
In reality, Brown’s garden looks a lot messier and chaotic than some of the others portrayed online. “I don’t care if it’s hideous, as long as it makes the food that my husband and I can consume.”
The post Where trad wives and the vibecession intersect: growing a victory garden to save money appeared first on Business Insider.
