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Victory Garden

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Victory gardens were vegetable, fruit and herb gardens planted at private homes and public parks during the First and Second World Wars to supplement food rations and boost civilian morale. In the United States, Charles Lathrop Pack's National War Garden Commission, organized in March 1917, produced more than five million gardens and over 1.2 billion dollars in foodstuffs by war's end; by May 1943, eighteen million American victory gardens, urban and rural, were supplying about one third of the vegetables the country consumed. Canada ran a parallel campaign from 1917, and the practice was applied to Britain's own wartime allotment movement. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

Facts
Origin Year
1917 1
Origin
Britain ran its own wartime home food-growing campaign, under which the number of allotments roughly doubled by 1943. 2
Origin
By the Second World War, victory gardens supplied around one third of the vegetables produced in the United States. 1
FAQs

How much food did victory gardens actually produce?

In the United States, about a third of the vegetables the country consumed by 1943.

In the United States, Charles Lathrop Pack's National War Garden Commission, organized in March 1917, produced more than five million gardens and over 1.2 billion dollars in foodstuffs by the end of the First World War. By May 1943, eighteen million American victory gardens, urban and rural, were supplying about one third of the vegetables the country consumed. Canada ran a parallel campaign from 1917, and Britain's own wartime allotment movement roughly doubled its number of allotments by 1943.
Connections

Associated With

Victory gardens applied ordinary home gardening skill to wartime food production

Source Victory Garden (Wikipedia)
Sources
1. Victory Garden (Wikipedia)
Wikimedia Foundation
  • United States, WWII section
    Around one third of the vegetables produced by the United States came from victory gardens.
  • World War I section
    In March 1917, Charles Lathrop Pack organized the US National War Garden Commission and launched the war garden campaign.
  • Associated With: Gardening, Introduction section
View the Source
2. Dig for Victory (Wikipedia)
Wikimedia FoundationImpact section
Quote, Impact section
By 1943, the number of allotments had roughly doubled to 1,400,000, including rural, urban and suburban plots.
View the Source

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