Planet Veggie Garden

We’re in a Victory Garden revival period.
It’s commonly believed the Victory Garden movement started during World War II… and it did… under that title.
It’s predecessor was the War Garden which started during World War I.

The intentions were similar… have the population produce most of the food they need to free up large farm-produced food and transportation resources for the troops and allies. The tone was different tho.

Laura Lawson details “Community Gardening” in City Bountiful: A Century of Community Gardening in America.

There’s a great recap in Remembering the Victory Garden in the San Francisco Chronicle.

The languaging is quite interesting…
~ Sauerkraut was renamed “liberty cabbage.” (Hmm, remember “Freedom Fries” a couple years ago).
~ In kicking off the festivities it was declared “the first food gun of the nation” had been fired.
~ Participating school children were called “soldiers of the soil”.
~ Land that wasn’t put to productive use was called “slacker land.” (Umm, gee, sounds like something I’d say).

The War Garden project was more militant in tone than the Victory Garden project. It was quite successful – 5 million gardens and $875 million worth of food grown. However, the Victory Garden project produced 20 million gardens.

Victory Garden leaders did position them as “for the cause”, but also emphasized the health and morale benefits.

I suspect folks acted more in National interests back then rather than self-interest.

Today’s gardeners – I believe – are acting partly in self-interest (economic, health, environmental), and partly in global interests (climate challenge, environmental pollution and population health).

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