Victory Garden (1942)

This is the original government film from World War II.
It has had 'subtitles' added to make it more modern/organic.

I wonder if Dick made it to the end of the war after all that pesticide exposure.

A little off tangent, but this film was very Northern-centric with its planting recommendations. Although not a native Southerner, I have come to realize that gardening down here is very different from up north. Right now is prime time to be planting a winter garden, but the big home and garden centers have their seed displays broken down or shoved off into a corner until next spring rolls around. Seems they think (like in the film) that there is one way to garden, planting in the spring and harvesting in the fall, and if you are fortunate, you can squeeze in an early and a late crop. Contrary to what the film implies, collards are not a summer vegetable. You are supposed to plant them now and have greens to cut-and-come-again all winter.

But we will get the last say in all of this. With climate change moving zones further and further north, more people are going to have to adopt the Southern ways of gardening and leave the recommendations in this film to the history books.

I wonder if Dick made it to the end of the war after all that pesticide exposure.

At least the cabbage worms didn't eat him !

BUMP! I was reading the Podcast 243 thread, and Sue's post reminded me of the Victory Gardens we learned about in high school when studying the wars. At times of great need, the USA was able feed most of their own people and a lot of Europe and Great Britain by making every piece of land productive and full of life. They also had a lot of creativity with how well they upcycled and reused materials during the wars.

Similarly, victory gardens are starting to make a return through permaculture, urban permaculture, and frugality.

Here is an older news report of victory gardens returning:


There is a nice discussion hosted by the Library of Congress about Victory Gardens Then as to Now:


More recently, local gardens are entering the news like in Houston and Detroit- like Chris notes in his thread.