Special to the Mirror By Jane McKinley
With more time on our hands these days due to Stay at Home orders throughout the country, more and more people are wondering how to stay occupied. We could take a walk, visit with friends via social media, read a good book or binge those series that we’ve been wanting to watch. But we could also consider improving our health and sense of wellbeing by planting a Victory Garden.
The term “Victory Garden” was coined during World War II with credit going to George Washington Carver who encouraged people to supplement their diets in the face of produce shortages during the war. His bulletin entitled “Nature’s Garden for Victory and Peace,” published in March 1942, got the ball rolling on this idea. Wartime needs stretched the limits of agricultural production. The United States not only had to feed its own civilian and military population, but many of its Allies relied on America’s breadbasket. While the need expanded, the number of farm workers decreased due to the draft and other factors.
For the average American, the Victory Garden was a practical way to contribute to the war effort. These gardens were used along with Rationing Stamps and Cards to supplement the diminishing public food supply. Besides indirectly aiding the war effort, these gardens were also considered a civilian “morale booster,” empowering gardeners through their contribution of labor and enabling them to receive the tangible reward of feeding their families better through growing their own produce. This made Victory Gardens a part of daily life on the home front.
Some 20 million Victory Gardens were planted (US population in 1940 was 132 million – today it’s over 330 million), and by 1943, these little plots produced 40 percent of all vegetables consumed in the US. It’s estimated that 9-10 million tons of vegetables were grown. Victory Gardens sprang up on farms, in backyards, and on city rooftops. Even some window boxes were converted from flowers to vegetables. Communal gardens were planted in public spaces such as parks, vacant lots and baseball fields. Sites for these gardens included San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, Boston’s Copley Square and Fenway Park which is still an active Victory Garden today.
In today’s world, we are lucky to have the basics of what we need available at the grocery store, albeit, prices continue to rise and it can be hard to find local produce there. If our garden fails due to factors outside of our control such as drought or disease, we won’t go hungry. Thousands of seed varieties from anywhere around the world are available to us online, and we don’t have to rely on seed saving for next year’s crop. We have easy access to supplies and ingredients to enable us to freeze and can our fresh vegetables. With all these current day benefits and with time on our hands as we fill our available at-home hours, it just might be the right time to try your hand at growing a Victory Garden!
The advantages of growing your own fruits and vegetables are many. Gardening can be a family activity with children and grandchildren often fascinated by the process of planting and watching the garden grow. They may even be bold enough to sample an unknown vegetable if they had their hand in growing it! Gardening offers health benefits such as burning calories (one can burn about 330 calories in one hour of light gardening work), lowering blood pressure ( The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute recommends gardening or raking leaves for 30-45 minutes to control blood pressure). Gardening exposes you to vitamin D for strong bones and fresh air to clean your lungs and give you more energy. And, of course, gardening motivates you to eat a healthier diet. The gardener can enjoy fresh, locally grown, organic produce and feel good that no harmful byproducts were released in transporting them.
Spring is a perfect time to get started on growing your own garden. Cool weather vegetables such as lettuces, arugula, kale, spinach, and radishes have a short time to maturity and produce a robust yield. The growing conditions at this time of year are relatively low maintenance with plenty of rain and fewer weeds and bugs. Summer months give us delicious tomatoes, melons, beans and peppers. By starting small with a garden more easily managed, one can learn the tricks of how to best irrigate and fight off disease and insects. And a fall garden can repeat the pattern of the spring, with some produce surviving into the winter months.
There’s nothing better than a warm tomato picked fresh from the vine! And there’s no more tangible measure of one’s power to cause positive change than to nurture a plant from seed to fruit-bearing! Growing a Victory Garden is a good way to improve your outlook and get a little healthier. What’s to stop you from giving it a try!
Here are some of the tips from a U.S. Dept of Agriculture bulletin on growing a Victory Garden. This advice is still good today:
- DO prepare the soil. You can’t live without food and neither can a plant. You need air – so does a plant! So break that soil up. Make it rich with humus and fertilizer.”
- DO cultivate your garden. “If you want your plants to grow up and be nice to you, shower them with loving care (and cultivation).”
- DO make a compost heap. “It’s nature’s gift to gardeners and a lazy man’s joy!”
- DO plan your garden on paper before you start. “You are going to have a big family of vegetables this summer – better plan for them now!”
- DON’T think gardening is mysterious or difficult. “It does take planning – it does take work – but a lot less then you may think it does.”
- DON’T kill yourself. “If you plan too much space and do not have the time to take care of it, well, that’s silly!”
- DON’T think you know more than the man who grew your seeds. “You will find directions on the back of every packet of seeds. Read them carefully and follow them faithfully!”
An excellent article Jane! Practical, economical, and earth-friendly!
Jane gives everyone excellent advice. This should be something people do every year, not just due to the Kung Flu. The rule of short distances tells us that what we get from near our back door will be fresher, more full of vitamins and naturally less subject to spoilage (you eat it right away) on top of all that – your own produce tastes ten times better than what you buy at Food Lion!
‘The term “Victory Garden” was coined during World War II with credit going to George Washington Carver who encouraged people to supplement their diets in the face of produce shortages during the war. ‘
No, Not Really.
Victory gardens were initially a military effort started during World War I. Agricultural workers and farmers in America and Europe were enlisted to fight in the war. This meant that there was less food being produced and many places in Europe were having a food shortage crisis. Food rations were common during WWI and the government wanted to avoid civil unrest. On top of that, soldiers overseas needed to be fed, but commercially produced food was being used to feed Americans at home.
By promoting the idea of the victory garden, the military was helping to ensure that citizens at home had enough to eat while still having enough left over to send to the troops fighting in the war. This practice was again copied during the second world war.
For those who are limited in space may I suggest the book, The Square Foot Garden. The author does a great job of breaking down growth requirements for various garden plants and utilizes a square to maximize plants per sq ft. It does a great job eliminating the rows commonly needed. You can adjust size of your “square” also to your needs.
I grow all my plants except for butternut squash in pots now, as it is so much more convenient, all the way around, and I’m talking herbs as well as squash and egg plant, and tomatoes do quite well in pots, and my potatoes I grow in garbage cans, and I can get a yield of thirty or so Russets and Yukon Gold per barrel.
I’ve got spearmint inside now and Rosemary and Thyme and parsley which have lasted through the winter inside.
Seems silly not to do so, when it is so easy to do.
Did you have to drill drainage holes into your garbage can for the potatoes? Also, are you talking inside 13 gallon trash can, or outdoor 40 gallon?
I drilled holes in the bottom an then in the sides, as well, about 3 inches up, and I use black plastic full size outdoor garbage cans which I think are 32-gallon or so.
I put six inched of soil with a half-cup of 10-10-10 mixed in in the bottom, and then an inch of regular soil over that to keep the potato cuttings away from the fertilizer, and then I cover those over with a few more inches, and I will keep adding soil very four inches or so when the plants are eight inches high, so there will be soil right up to the top at the end of the season.
Some people use straw, which makes it easy to get the potatoes out, but the yield is said to be lower.
Mulched leaves also work.
Potatoes like an acid soil, so that has to be considered.
Nothing like fresh potatoes for flavor.
This year, I grew my potatoes using pine needles or pine straw, as it is called, instead of soil in my garbage cans which are the black plastic 32-gallon ones sold at the hardware store.
Today I harvested two of the cans which had Yukon Gold potatoes in them.
One can yielded 34 potatoes and the other 24 potatoes.
I still have 6 more cans to go, some with Russets.
The pine straw made it very easy to harvest the potatoes, since there was no need for digging – just grabbing it out by the handful.
Rosemary Arp is hardy and will grow outside all year. I have a couple of rather old plants. They do like a rather sheltered spot in the sun. I don’t bring my parsley inside either; but it’s biennial and the 2nd year it will bolt rather early in the season; time to get another. I never had much luck with thyme lasting over the winter.
Too cold up here to do that, was down in the 20s this morning.
But I too will get a new plant this year.
Been having a lot of homemade chicken soup with fresh parsley in it, so it was nice the plant I have flourished in a window through the winter.
Same with the mint.
Outside in a pot I have chives which don’t mind the freezing, and my rhubarb out in back, which I just separated and re-planted.
That don’t mind the cold, either.
I have a fig in a pot, but that is inside in the dark yet.
And I have two lemon trees in the house, which smell awesome when they blossom, which is quite often.
And I just got a regular basil and two African Blue yesterday.
Never had either go more than one season.
Oh, I thought you were in Cape Charles.
I’d have a longer growing season if I was, but alas.
My thyme is in a south facing window and is doing quite well there.
Nice article Jane. I have somewhere an old newspaper article about my father who was then assistant principal of a school near Utica NY when he teamed up with the ag instructer to teach people how to plant Victory Gardens during the war and they held home canning sessions in the school cafeteria for the public.
Excellent article – inspired us to incorporate more edible plants in our ornamental gardens. Found plants at our local hardware store, hope the grocery will offer additional soon.
The VA Cooperative Extension service has excellent short publications on tool safety, composting, soil preparation, vegetable plants and their care, etc – google VCE Publications. They even have a publication on what and how to safely grow above a drain field – if you must.
I’ve got chard growing in large pots, one plant per pot.
Six plants in pots are keeping two of us well supplied with chard which is making for some delicious Mediterranean salads!
https://www.feastingathome.com/mediterranean-chard-salad/
Thank for the recipe; I’m going to give it a try.
Awesome!
Enjoy!
It’s great with some kind of chewy bread to accompany it, as well!
Paul,
I’m interested in your opinion of Governor Andrew Cuomo.
It’s not really a subject for in here, where we are talking about good things, wholesome things, healthful things, spiritual things, which is what growing your own food can be about, but suffice to say that it is very low.
He is a man with a true Teflon coating who will never in any way be held to account for spreading COVID all over New York state and into the nursing homes.
So in this thread, where I just got done praising chard in a Mediterranean Sald, my opinion of Andy “He’s The KING and He Knows It” Cuomo would be unprintable.
And if anyone likes a hearty soup and eggplant, this makes for a delicious meal:
https://www.today.com/recipes/ina-garten-s-tomato-eggplant-soup-recipe-t140481
That same soup can then be used to make a baked pasta dish, as well.
I harvested two pails yesterday of Russets and between them got 25 nice-sized potatoes.
And 24 more Yukon Golds today, which completes my crop of them for this year.
The Yukon Golds are good producers because they produce potatoes all along that portion of the stalk that is covered, which is a garbage can is several feet if mulched to the top of the container, so the higher column of pine needles, or other mulch, the better.
The Russets only have potatoes at the bottom of the stalk, so they produce less, but bigger potatoes.
So it’s just a pail full of pine needles, no soil. Fertilizer? anything else. I tried growning potatoes once and just got a handful of little ones. I said these are the most expensive potatoes you will ever eat! Beause I had bought the seeds, a potato bag, & soil.
Essentially, yes, it is a garbage can full of pine needles.
In the bottom of the can, I have some stones for drainage, and over them, about 6 inches of soil with a half-cup of 10-10-10 mixed in, and about an inch of soil without fertilizer, on which I set the potato slices with the eyes up.
Then I cover those with four to six inches of pine needles and when the potato leafs and stalk break through, I keep adding pine needles around the stalk, making sure to keep any branches folded in toward the main stem as I go up.
I do that all the way up, just keep adding pine needles and fitting them around the stalk, or stalks if you have multiple eyes all growing at once, which I generally do.
Once a month, I feed them with a half-cup of molasses in five gallons of water, left to set for a day or two while being stirred every now and then, and that’s it. really.
Potatoes like an acid soil and pine needles give them what they want, plus it is easier for the potatoes to grow in the pine needles than in dirt.
Some people dig a shallow trench, put in the potatoes, eyes up, and cover them with a foot of pine needles, but if I did that, one, I would have to bother with digging the trench and two the deer would eat the plants as soon as they came up.
The garbage cans are so much easier, everything is contained in a small space, and I really don’t have to bend or kneel down, which my over-70 body appreciates.
I started with dirt for several years, and yes, in the beginning, I got a handful of marbles, so I started getting smarter at it, and every variety of potato is going to be different.
I have grown the red ones, but since I have eight garbage cans, and prefer the Russets and especially the Yukon Golds, of which the minimum I got back was 24 per can, I stopped growing the red ones.
As I said above, the Yukon Golds produce potatoes all the way up the stalk, but not so the Russets.
All those potatoes are down by the roots, so next year, perhaps I’ll put more mulch under them.
I finished my harvest and got 22 more nice Russets.
So that goes into the planning – what particular type of potato you personally, and there are a myriad of varieties out there to choose from depending on how you want to use them.
And it’s not necessary to buy any special seed potatoes.
Any potato that gets eyes will work.
I get mine at a health food co-op where the potatoes they sell for regular eating aren’t treated with whatever retardant the big markets use to keep them from sprouting, and in the spring, when it is time to plant, whatever has the best eyes is what I use.
It is that simple, in the end, but like all things, I had to jettison the more complicated to get there.
And thanks for asking the questions.
You have to let them grow until they flower, and I let them go until the vines die before I harvest them.