18,000,000 Gardens

For millions of city gardeners, this was the best time of year. They sent the children to bed early, switched off the radio, plugged the telephone bell and settled down for an evening with their dreams. They opened the new seed catalogues with trembling fingers, drank in the intoxicating colors of beet and carrot, rolled the poetry over on their tongues. While winter winds whistled outside, they luxuriated in a gentle world where all tomatoes grow to unblemished perfection, where eight-inch cucumbers are midgets, where every brussels sprout is a sonnet and bugs are never seen.

The catalogue writers did not let them down. W. Atlee Burpee Co. had an Improved Super Snowball Cauliflower, a Tender Pod Bush Bean that would make a mummy drool: ". . . surpasses all others in quality, tenderness, succulence and flavor. . . . The pods are 4 1/2 to 5 inches long, thick, round in cross section, smooth, deep dark green in color, curving slightly, with long and distinctively curved tips. . . ." Peter Henderson & Co. had a Coreless Carrot whose "beautiful appearance alone wins favor for it wherever grown. ... Its coreless, rich red-orange flesh possesses a sweet, melting tenderness that appeals even to those who otherwise are not fond of carrots. . . ."

A New York Times book reviewer, sobersided John Chamberlain, used a full column one morning to review the catalogues--in rollicking verse. In Boston's ultra-respectable College Club, women flocked to a series of morning lectures on vegetable gardening. In Minneapolis, with temperatures ranging to 31 below zero, the Star-Journal's gardening editor was booked solid for lectures. In Dallas, the Robin Road Cooperative Association (ten determined couples who gave each other garden tools for Christmas) got off to an early start digging in its borrowed acre--the women wearing the most beautiful slacks ever seen in a vegetable patch.

Wickard's Blessing. This year Victory gardens have the Agriculture Department's blessing: Secretary Claude Wick-ard wants 12,000,000 in cities, 6,000,000 more on farms. The Department has arranged for production of a special Victory Garden Fertilizer (three parts nitrogen, eight parts phosphorus, seven parts pot-ash*) and is ready with all kinds of free advice and pamphlets. Seed companies have keyed their advertising to Agriculture's campaign. From almost any catalogue, neophyte gardeners can choose a victory garden combination ($1 and up) with full instructions how, when and where to plant it. With a little luck and work, they will have fresh vegetables on their tables all summer. With a normal dose of inexperience, they will also waste a lot of seed and fertilizer.

If Claude Wickard gets his 18,000,000 Victory gardens, food rationing will have much less sting this summer. The Agriculture Department estimates that every city garden will produce at least $10 worth of vegetables, every farm garden at least $50. At these figures, Victory gardens should yield a $420,000,000 crop.

One thing the Agriculture Department wants to avoid is the gardener whose January enthusiasm melts under a July sun. Thus the Department emphasizes that gardening is work as well as fun, requires sound planning as well as patriotism. Chief points for amateur gardeners to remember: 1) be sure the ground is good (if weeds grew there in profusion last year, vegetables probably will this year); 2) avoid starting the garden too early (wait until the soil is crumbly after the spring thaws); 3) use seeds sparingly; 4) keep after weeds and bugs; 5) be sure that the garden is not out of reach of a hose for dry spells; 6) keep the ground busy by planting late crops after the early ones have ripened; 7) concentrate on easily grown plants: leaf lettuce, greens, endive, cabbage, rutabagas, yellow squash, carrots, tomatoes, beans, beets.

For all Claude Wickard's precautions, 1943's Victory gardens will produce many a laugh for professional farmers. One Dallas newsman bought a pound of turnip seed (enough for an acre) for his modest back yard. Seed companies have received dozens of inquiries for coffee seed, got one request for succotash seed.

* This skimps the usual nitrogen proportion, adds a bit to the potash as compared to the commercial fertilizers of peacetime. Nitrogen goes into explosives.

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