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[Special Bulletin : Addressed to Victory Speakers. No. 3]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

﻿SPECIAL BULLETIN
Addressed to Victory Speakers
Prepared Especially for Them by the Office of W ar Information
Issue No. 3—March 22, 1943
CAMPAIGN FOR VICTORY GARDENS
Victory Speakers Should Urge People Who Can Do So to Conserve Food for War by Raising Fruits and Vegetables at Home
Eighteen million American families are being asked by the United States Department of Agriculture to plant Victory Gardens. This is one way by which every family capable of growing a good garden can help to produce the food needed to win the war.
These eighteen million families are scattered all over the country. They live on farms, in country towns, in suburbs, and in cities. Wherever you may be, they live next door. They are your neighbors.
The climatic and other conditions which will determine the way you plant your own Victory Garden are the conditions which will determine the way they will plant theirs. So when you talk to them you will be giving advice, as neighbor to neighbor, over the backyard fence, on problems of mutual concern.
If you live in a farm area, you can talk to your farm neighbors about planting Victory Gardens which will produce enough vegetables and fruits—for seasonal consumption and for canning—to supply family needs for a year. (It may seem odd to make this appeal to farmers, whose business it is to raise food, but the fact remains that 1,000,000 farms were without gardens in 1942.)
If your farm neighbors already have gardens, encourage them to enlarge those gardens, to extend the months of production by successive plantings, and to provide more food for canning.
If you live in a town or suburb, you can point out to your neighbors who have open, sunny garden space and fertile ground in backyards and adjacent lots how large a supply of vegetables and small fruits can be grown in those small areas.
If you live in a city, you can suggest that your neighbors join together to turn some vacant property—readily accessible by bus or streetcar—into a community Victory Garden. Manufacturers are often willing to make the land around their plants available for this purpose. Each family participating can grow on a plot 30 x 50 feet enough vegetables for home consumption during an entire season. Sometimes city families can arrange with a farmer near the city limits to plant, cultivate, and harvest a Victory Garden in exchange for their help and a share of the produce.
Wherever you live, you can encourage your neighbors and your neighbors’ children to develop school and church gardens worked cooperatively to provide supplies
NOTICE
To Directors of Speakers Bureaus
Every Director of a Victory Speakers Bureau who organizes a campaign on Victory Gardens should:
1.	Cooperate in planning the campaign with the Victory Garden Committee of his Defense Council.
2.	Make sure that his Speakers are provided with information suited to the soil and weather conditions of his immediate locality.
3.	Find out from local merchants what seeds, fertilizers, insecticides, and tools are available.
of fresh vegetables for school lunches and for the needs of local charities.
You can explain to your neighbors that the food they choose to raise in their Victory Gardens should be chosen for the greatest contribution it will make to the family diet. You can tell them to pay special attention to growing through successive plantings the fullest supply of foods rich in minerals and vitamins—green and leafy vegetables, yellow vegetables and tomatoes.
At the same time you can emphasize the fact that no benefit will be derived from the efforts of prospective Victory Gardeners if energy, seeds, fertilizer, and tools are used under unfavorable conditions. We cannot afford to have seeds and fertilizer wasted. Nor can we afford to have gardens,
planted in a burst of patriotic fervor, dry up and go to weeds through neglect and abandonment.
No one should undertake a Victory Garden until he understands that it must be properly sown, carefully tended, harvested at the right time, and utilized without waste.
Audiences, therefore, should be impressed with the necessity of finding out, if they don’t already know, exactly how Victory Gardens should be planted. Caution them against planting too much of any one vegetable lest there be surplus and waste, followed by a period when no garden products
APPEAL FOR VICTORY GARDENS
Editor’s Note: Material relating to Victory Gardens might well be utilized by Victory Speakers as indicated in the following paragraphs.
Last year 5,000,000 rural and 10,000,000 urban Victory Gardens helped this country produce more food than it ever had produced before. The families who planted and tended those 15,000,000 Victory Gardens served their country through their labors and at the same time received direct benefits in better food and better health.
This year at least 3,000,000 more families must plant Victory Gardens if the country’s 1943 foodproduction drive—which has been planned to surpass that of 1942— is to be successful. I hope some of those 3,000,000 families are represented by some of you here in this audience. And I hope that after this talk you will carry back home a number of good reasons for planting a Victory Garden.
For example, by growing a Victory Garden you can make it easier for your boy, your neighbor’s boy, or your brother somewhere in our armed forces, or soldiers in the Russian Army, the
will be available. A continuous production of a few health-giving vegetables should be the goal of all Victory Gardeners, and they should seek out every scrap of information about local growing conditions, so that they can achieve that goal most effectively.
Victory Gardens, properly tended and harvested, will supply millions of dollars’ worth of food, release thousands of railroad cars for shipment of vital war materials, improve the health of millions of people, and reduce civilian demands for packaged foods urgently needed for our armed forces and for our allies.
British Army, or any of the United Nations’ armies to get the food they need to fight.
By growing a Victory Garden you can make it easier for some civilian like you in one of the occupied countries to get enough food, when the time comes, so that he will be strong enough to join our forces and fight the Nazis.
By growing a Victory Garden you will grow vegetables to can for winter use at home. Home canned vegetables will not be deducted from your ration allowance, so you can use them to supplement your rations.
By growing a Victory Garden you will be helping to conserve valuable shipping space in the Nation’s freight cars and trucks which are now loaded to the limit to keep war supplies moving. Every shipment of food saved by your industry as a Victory Gardener means an extra shipment of tanks or guns or planes on its way to the war front.
At this point the Victory Speaker might give audiences local infor-mation on Victory Gardens gath-
Eggs and Meat From Backyard Farms
The Department of Agriculture is asking people who are in a position to do so to help make up the extra quantities of eggs and meat needed for war purposes by raising chickens and rabbits. Victory Speakers should not discuss this topic, however, until they have complete information from the nearest County Agricultural Agent* and from reliable local sources about breeds of chickens and rabbits to raise, about feed and equipment needed, and about local ordinances concerning the raising of livestock in town limits.
The following Government bulletins on the subject are available: Poultry Keeping in Backyards, No. 1508 F, and Livestock For Small Farms, No. 1753 F, both published by the United States Department of Agriculture, and Rabbit Raising, Conservation Bulletin No. 25, Fish and Wild Life Services, published by the United States Department of the Interior. The latter can be ordered from the Superintendent of Documents, Washington, D. C. The price is 10 cents.
* The County Agricultural Agent is a cooperative County-State-Federal official. In a few States he is listed in telephone directories under “Farm Bureau” and in some, under “Farm Adviser.”
ered from his County Agricultural Agent and other reliable sources— information about canning fruits and vegetables, about soil irrigation, drainage, fertilizer, location of available land, etc.
The help of every gardener is needed. If you are not a skilled gardener, get the advice of some neighbor who is. And whatever you do, remember this : When you plant a Victory Garden you plant it with the understanding that you will see it through.
Throughout America this year farm people, city dwellers, smalltown residents and children will be building up a marginal supply of food to help our fighting men and their allies win the war. I hope your family will be among them.
16—33353-1	U. S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
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