Grow a Victory Garden

During the first half of the twentieth century there were times when food and money were scarce. Mainly due to war or an economic downturn. During World War One and World War Two, people were encouraged to grow Victory Gardens to supplement their diets. Mainly due to the huge quantities of crops needed to feed troops overseas. This happened not only in America but in countries all over the world. During the Depression of the 1930’s, people grew gardens whenever and wherever they could to keep food on their families’ tables. Times were tough and people learned to take care of themselves by gardening in the rural areas and in the cities.

A pandemic equals a food shortage

In 2020 the world was hit with a pandemic. Regardless of anyone’s thoughts on it, there was one clear fact to learned from the experience. That is that the current “just-in-time” delivery system for food and goods is fragile. And could not support the delivery of goods to the shelves in the needed time window.

Now I’m not a farmer or gardener by any stretch of the imagination. I grew up in New York in the suburbs during the 1960’s where my Mom went to the supermarket to get our food. And the closest thing to “home grown” was the occasional trip to the local farmers’ market for some veggies. After seeing what happened in 2020 and the past few years, my wife and I decided to plant a garden to supplement some of our food stuff. She grew up in the Midwest and had some experience and exposure to farming, so she was the boss on this project.

What we used to get started

We grew our first Victory Garden in 2022 using a large metal water trough. The kind used to water livestock. We chose this because the soil where we live in Southern New Jersey is very sandy and not good for growing much of anything. A friend helped me drill holes in the bottom of the trough for drainage. I put a layer of stone and pieces of wood at the bottom to facilitate drainage and filled the rest of it up with gardening soil.

Our garden grew tomatoes, peppers, cabbage, and onions. We had minor success and learned a few things about gardening. Such as you can’t plant certain crops right next to each other. And when your property backs up to the woods and your yard is shared with all the woodland critters, you need to put some kind of fencing around your garden if you don’t want everything eaten.

This year we used the trough again but also planted in commercial planters as well as some storage bins we had. With the storage bins I set them up the same as trough. We bought tomato, pepper, and cabbage plants from a local farm stand. And planted onion bulbs and seed potatoes. The potatoes we planted in plastic laundry baskets. I cut drainage holes in the bottom of the baskets and put a layer of stone in to assist in drainage. Then we layered the soil, with mulch, placing the potatoes in between. To keep the critters out I got some mental fence posts and zip tied plastic snow fence to it. It worked perfectly. All this was done in May. During the growing period we watered the plants regularly and I wife added bone meal, some light fertilizer, and insect repellent.

Our thoughts on Victory Gardens

Recently, we started harvesting tomatoes, peppers, cabbage, and potatoes. I took some of the cabbage and am trying to can it for sauerkraut. We’ll see how that works out. After a lifetime of pretty much always eating store-bought vegetables I will say there are none that taste better than those coming fresh from your garden to your table. No, it’s not enough to last throughout the year, but we’re still learning and maybe in a couple years we’ll be able to can enough to have some through the winter months. We’re also working on growing vegetables through the winter in a small greenhouse we have. I would encourage everyone to give growing your own vegetables a shot. You don’t need a huge yard, lots of tools, and there are tons of free information available online about how to do it.