SPECIAL BULLETIN

Addressed to Victory Speakers

Prepared Especially for Them by the Office of War 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—forseasonal 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.

Ifyou 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

Gardensif 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 information on Victory Gardens gathEggs 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