Top Photo: USDA propaganda poster, c. 1943. Courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration. NAID: 515408

In early 1944, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) urged Americans—women left to tend the Home Front, school-aged children, and even Japanese Americans who lived behind barbed wire in one of the 10 incarceration camps in the United States—to till soil for their victory gardens, plant seeds, and prepare to harvest an even greater bounty than the 10 billion pounds of produce they grew the previous year. 

Vice President Henry Wallace planted a victory garden. Mickey Mouse called upon young gardeners to enter the Green Thumb Contest and promote the three Vs: vegetables, vitamins, and vitality. Superheroes Batman and Superman took a break from fighting fascists to grow tomatoes, and Bob Hope’s daughter, Linda, did her part to help the war effort by carefully placing bean sprouts in her own garden while her father entertained the troops.

Vice President Henry Wallace in his victory garden, 1942. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

To President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s dismay, First Lady Eleanor also caught the gardening bug in 1943, planning for a 2 x 2 plot on the White House lawn to set an example for the nation and encourage self-sufficiency and patriotism. “Tell Eleanor the yard is full of rocks or something,” Roosevelt asked of federal scientists whom Eleanor had contacted to assess the White House soil composition. “The people own this place and don’t want to see it busted up so that she can plant beans.” [1] But Eleanor got her way (in fact, the White House had some of the most fertile land in Washington, D.C.) and 11-year-old Diana Hopkins, daughter of presidential adviser Harry Hopkins, grabbed her own shovel and rake and dutifully grew a variety of vegetables in the little executive garden. 

Soon, however, even the president could not deny the impact of the USDA’s propaganda campaign that called on Americans to turn their property into miniature farms and food processing plants. Drawing on data from the USDA that declared that 42 percent of all produce grown in 1943 came from victory gardens, Roosevelt proclaimed in a fireside chat that “victory gardens are of direct benefit in helping relieve manpower, transportation, and living costs as well as the food problem.” [2]

Victory gardens became (and remain) an iconic image of life on the Home Front during the war. Americans tended more than 20 million gardens of all sizes, in all settings (urban, rural, and even in Alaska), and harvested produce by the tons between 1942 and 1945. More than a movement of individual families pouring their patriotic fervor into plowing, planting, and picking, victory gardens were part of a carefully orchestrated and complex campaign developed by the federal government, coordinated by private industry, and executed by Americans looking to feed their families within the bounds of wartime rationing. 

A victory garden propaganda poster from World War I, c. 1918. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Victory gardens had their roots in World War I, when Americans joined the British in growing food to supply Allied troops and civilians in Europe. During World War II, however, the USDA designed the Victory Garden campaign to address food and labor shortages on the Home Front. Within a week after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Secretary of Agriculture Claude Wickard called a conference with representatives from other federal agencies and state-level farming groups to “discuss and formulate a broad coordinated program for enlisting interest in and guiding a national campaign to encourage home and community gardens as a defense measure.” [3] The goals of the Food for Freedom program were to establish 5,760,000 gardens in 1942, “improve health through encouraging better health habits,” and “aid in maintaining morale.” [4] Gardens would not only supply the war effort with food but also support happy and healthy Americans ready to defend when needed.

In early 1942, the USDA supplemented the Food for Freedom program with the Victory Garden campaign thanks to the assistance of growers clubs and associations across the country. Wickard feared that without proper guidance, novice gardeners would waste supplies that professional farmers needed to meet government contracts. To counter good intentions that could quickly turn bad, the USDA developed a comprehensive program to educate those without a green thumb. Working with the Office of Civilian Defense, the USDA printed and distributed planning guides for the Victory Garden campaign. These pamphlets clearly articulated the goals of the program which included producing more food but also educating Americans on proper canning and preservation techniques and encouraging urban residents to beautify portions of their neighborhood by turning unused plots of land into crops as well as flower beds to boost morale. [5] 

A victory garden guide from the Office of Civilian Defense and US Department of Agriculture, 1942. Courtesy of the USDA.

These guides introduced Americans to the broad reach of the Victory Garden campaign. This undertaking required not only individual and family gardeners but also landscapers who could design gardens, truck drivers to transport the products to markets, and home economics teachers who could teach first-time farmers how to safely store the fruits of their labor. Federal employees including artists and advertising specialists also found work in designing and publicizing the propaganda used to spark inspiration to grab trowels and take to the soil. Puppeteers worked with the Inter-American Affairs Committee to create a propaganda film distributed to Southern and Central American nations teaching them to grow “U.S. type vegetables to broaden and improve their diet” as part of the Good Neighbor Policy. [6] 

Dr. Harry Nelson, a scientist from San Francisco Junior College who collaborated with state-level organizations to instruct gardeners on growing the best crops, helps his daughter and their fellow girl scouts with their own victory garden, 1943. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Local civilian defense councils appointed a chairman of their community’s victory garden efforts. Under the guidance of the chairman (typically a well-respected and experienced horticulturalist), victory garden committees assessed land, distributed tools and seeds, and collaborated with schools to enlist children in planting gardens. The committees encouraged those who lacked the land or means to create their own garden to spend their vacation time helping others with their undertakings or serving as free laborers on larger farms. [7]

Victory garden committees were also responsible for connecting amateurs to courses that introduced them to the ins and outs of horticulture. Recognizing that many Americans had little knowledge of gardening, the USDA enlisted scientists, chemists, and nutritionists to author informative pamphlets and offer courses on topics ranging from soil constitution to insecticide preparation.[8] The Mississippi state-level farm extension called on gardeners to learn the appropriate fertilizer-to-soil ratio, properly prepare insecticides, and purchase a planting calendar. [9] In Washington, D.C., scientists from the University of Maryland contributed to newspaper articles that explained the ideal 5-10-5 ratio of nitrogen-phosphate-potash fertilizer developed for the best use of smaller plots of land in urban areas. [10] 

Informative pamphlet on pesticides, c. 1943. Courtesy of the USDA.

During the winter of 1942, Americans were eager to join in the campaign, plan for their gardens, and contribute to the war effort. Along with other wartime activities like bond and scrap metal drives, planting victory gardens became part of everyday life for many Americans. Lorraine Mesken, who was a teenager during the war, remembered her whole community in San Bruno, California, joining together to plant gardens. “Our whole social life was built around the war,” she later explained in an interview.

Victory gardens also highlighted important changes in family dynamics during the war. Look magazine praised the Victory Garden campaign for its ability to reconnect families through “the necessities of war.” Gardening created an “emphasis upon the family working as a unit,” with “Dad peeling peaches until 1:30 in the morning” for canning and “Sis” toiling to sterilize every last jar to store the produce the family lovingly cultivated. [11]

But women often assumed the role of head of household and tending a victory garden became yet one more responsibility. “The 1943 Victory Garden is a family affair but with sons gone into the fighting forces and other members of the family in defense work, a much greater responsibility for farm victory…rests on the shoulders of the women,” an article in the West Jefferson, North Carolina, Skyland Post explained. And though the Selective Service System granted furloughs to men who were agricultural employees, women were left to tend larger farms on their own in more rural areas: “In the front lines of War Service, the farm women are cheerfully doing their fair share of the work, remembering that the more toil and sweat, the less blood and tears.” [12]

A woman shopping for gardening supplies in Washington, D.C., 1943. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Like other propaganda undertakings, the Victory Garden campaign roused patriotism and morale. But the implementation of rationing in May 1942 and climbing food prices prompted gardeners to look at their lawns as a means of saving money as much as helping the Allies win the war. By 1944, more than half of Americans who planted gardens informed the USDA that they did so out of economic need, giving the Victory Garden campaign a more urgent purpose.

By late 1942, food and labor shortages made victory gardens a necessity rather than simply a patriotic morale booster. In early 1943, the USDA highlighted in publications the litany of challenges that faced the nation: “Labor and machinery shortages,” “overloaded railroads and restricted motor transport [that] interfere with distribution, and “inadequate supplies of labor, steel, and tin” all required Americans to pull together. [13]

This included the 120,000 Japanese Americans who farmed behind barbed wire at incarceration camps operated by the War Relocation Authority (WRA). After the US Army forcibly removed them from their homes along the West Coast following Executive Order 9066, the USDA also expected Japanese Americans to grow victory gardens on small plots of land in desolate landscapes including deserts, swampland, and rocky soil. Not only would this boost morale but the WRA expected the camps to be entirely self-sufficient. Japanese Americans grew their own large-scale crops of vegetables and fruit to supplement their diets and provide food for the war effort. Rather than encouraging through propaganda, the federal government forced incarcerated Japanese Americans to tend to victory gardens. [14]

A Japanese American man tends to his garden at the temporary detention facility in Fresno, California, 1942. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Americans who lived in urban areas and cities were also expected to contribute to the Victory Garden campaign. During peacetime some cities, including the nation’s capital, often relied on produce grown and harvested in more rural areas in Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, but during the war, when gas and rubber were rationed, transportation costs often made it challenging for farmers to ship their goods. This made victory gardens a necessity in Washington, D.C., and the USDA established Victory Garden Schools that aimed to encourage seed sprouting in homes and community gardening. [15] The D.C. Victory Garden Committee hired local farmers to plow plots of land in parks and lots; other cities, including Minneapolis-St. Paul and Detroit, offered up tax-delinquent lots to residents to turn into gardens. [16]

A woman and her victory garden in southwest Washington, D.C., June 1943. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

With local, state, and federal governments urging (or requiring) Americans to take up gardening, businesses saw an opportunity to turn a profit selling the tools needed to fuel the campaign. W. Attlee Burpee & Co. developed and marketed seeds selected specifically for victory gardens (tomatoes were among the company’s best sellers, followed by wax beans) and local stores partnered with the USDA to sell special Victory Garden Seed Packages. [17] Wise & Co. Publishers in New York City sold millions of copies of its New Garden Encyclopedia to novice gardeners, and the Skol Suntan Lotion company marketed “Skat,” a bug repellant they sold to the military for men to use in the tropics, to American gardeners. [18] Flipping through the pages of their favorite magazines or local newspapers, readers were bombarded with pages of advertisements for everything they needed for their gardens from fertilizers to gloves and trowels. As families looked to make their homegrown produce stretch, Kraft Cheese Company taught them how to use Parkay margarine as a butter substitute to slather on even their most unpalatable turnips, and Royal Gelatin shared its recipe for “Victory Garden Salad” that called for carrots, beets, celery and, of course, Royal Gelatin Dessert. [19]

With all the support and supplies at their hands, Americans got into the spirit of gardening and participated in friendly competitions to show off their finest cabbages and plumpest tomatoes. Nearly 20,000 communities across the United States hosted victory garden harvest shows (sponsored by local victory garden committees and businesses) where residents—young and old alike—showcased their produce and competed for ribbons and accolades. In Southern communities, categories were segregated, with Black and white gardeners entering separate contests. Tickets to these events also raised money for the Army Emergency and Navy Relief Fund, and Army Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall praised the attendees and participants for contributions to the war effort that were “deeply appreciated.” [20]

But for all of their good, victory gardens also came with their own set of problems. Many Americans embraced gardening but were sorely unprepared for the work and patience required to cultivate even the smallest crop yields. Well-intentioned city lots quickly turned to unattended weed gardens, and pitiful beans were left to rot. Gene Ahern’s comic Room and Board (about a wacky cast of characters living in the same boarding house) poked fun at the overeager victory gardener. In one strip, a boarder quickly grows bored with various plants until finally settling on growing green onions—failing even in this modest endeavor and producing instead a windowsill filled with cans of dirt. While humorous, these amateurs wasted seeds and other supplies in their overzealousness. [21] 

And those eager gardeners who entered victory garden shows created a new crop of headaches for the victory garden committees. Newspapers reported that many leached the soil of nutrients by focusing only on one crop to show or letting their plants continue to grow long past the harvesting season to enter the largest cabbages, radishes, or tomatoes in the contests to win a monetary prize or ribbon. In June 1943, J. M. Franklin, victory garden supervisor for Washington, D.C., urged gardeners to pick produce when it was ready rather than to wait. “There is no point in holding early or late crops for the inspection of the judges,” he explained. “You may be proud of the size and number of pods your pea vines are bearing. But if they are ready, pick them and eat them.” Such behavior wasted perfectly good crops and went against the spirit of growing food to be eaten. [22]

Regardless of the challenges and shortcomings, the Victory Garden and Food for Freedom campaigns were two of the most successful undertakings of the federal government and American society during the war. Though many Americans returned to viewing gardening as a hobby after the war when the commercial food industry boomed thanks to freezing and other advancements, victory gardens were memorable parts of the home front landscape. From New York City to the deserts of the southwest, Americans produced—voluntarily or not—tons of food to keep the war effort humming and families fed.