Plant a Garden for Victory

Nearly 70 years ago the US government encouraged its citizens to plant Victory Gardens. The victory garden was to help provide your family with fruits and vegetables because of a national shortage of these items and the want to supply the troops overseas with canned vegetables. To help their nation, the American people planted gardens in backyards, empty lots and even rooftops. Neighbors shared land and worked together to bring forth a bountiful harvest. In 1943 the purchase of pressure cookers (used in the canning process) quadrupled in numbers from 1942. It is estimated that more than 20 million victory gardens were planted.

With food shortages around the world and gas and food prices rising, it's time to take a look back at the Victory Garden and begin a national campaign to reinstate this wonderful program. My husband and I have already started to discuss what we might plant (which is hard seeing as I have two picky eaters) and am kind of looking forward to this adventure in gardening. I have done a flower garden the past few years and once attempted tomatoes. My tomatoes actually turned out well and made good salsa, but I ran out of refrigerator space and time to make all the salsa. (Again I'm the only one that eats tomatoes, but the other two love all the things that you can make with tomatoes - salsa, pizza sauce, ketchup etc.) The experience also made my sister and I actually work together (that never happens). She taught me how to make and jar the salsa.

Those are the wonderful byproducts of gardening - family time and learning. As a family you can plant, weed and harvest your vegetables. Canning, freezing etc. is a time to draw everyone you might know (and in some cases, people you know and don't want to talk to again because once they can, they may never want to see you again!) together and admist the many vegetables you can share memories, and times you may never forget.

Being as not everyone has the space for a garden, I would also encourage the citizens of Le Mars and any town for that matter to lobby the city for community gardens. Each town does them different, but as my sister lives in Brookings, SD, I have found out a lot about their community gardens. The Brookings Parks and Rec Dept. rents out 20ft x 25ft plots of land for $15 per season. Each plot is roto-tilled, fertilized, measured and numbered. There is an underground irrigation system which is turned on when the Parks Department determines that the gardens are stressed. Additionally, there are hose bibs in each row, so gardeners can take out there own garden hose and water their own plot. Most gardeners prefer to water their own garden as the underground system is used sparingly. My sister's family has utilized these wonderful garden plots because of apartment living and now because of lack of regular sunlight in their backyard.

Community Gardens could also be a big garden where anybody in the community can come and help weed and plant and be part of the harvest. It once again brings people together and helps produce the basic needs of good fruits and vegetables for human beings. So it doesn't really matter if the garden is in your backyard, your windowsill, porch or down the street in a community garden, you're helping your family survive and you could be spending quality time with them as well. If you have any doubts about what the original victory gardens did for americans, check out these quotes at Vintage Veggies.

In closing, though the thought of victory gardens went away with the end of World War II, it may be time for the American family to start creating their own Victory gardens once again.