The US encouraged individual gardens with the food being produced on those gardens going to the people tending them. In order to be successful it had to meet wartime criteria for maximizing the war effort. It was not meant to take a person full time to care for it. It could not use resources needed for the war, fertilizer, insecticides, power equipment, productive land, etc. It required that an untrained individual, using unprepared land, and with limited non critical inputs could raise enough food to matter. I think it kind of resembles some of the criteria we face as preppers before TSTF and also gives us an insight into what we would both need for our own use and what would be excellent barter goods after the event. It was a success, during the war 20 million families grew 40 % of the veggies consumed and without any major chemical input. Soon after the war a need was seen to create a need for the production of all the excess chemicals production facilities. This in turn lead to mono cropping and the massive use of chemicals. Here is a clip that lists some of the hacks encouraged in that effort and a statement about how effective they actually were. If you find any of the hacks interesting, it is very easy using the internet to research them further. This is a WW1 document and gets into the storage of what you grow as well. War gardening and home storage of vegetables. : Victory ed. 1919. : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive Here is a copy of one of the WW2 documents. It reflects the beliefs of the time and I do not encourage the uses of either the commercial fertilizers or the insecticides that are no longer used. Modern methods replace these with much safer and ecological friendly resources. That is one of the reasons that I believe you must study the material now and learn and hopefully have your own victory garden. FREE Printable Vintage Victory Garden Guide for Gardening Success While this information is dated and must be cross checked with modern sources, it is a good discussion of what can be done to preserve food. Much of what we have today was not available in 1918. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015026288392&seq=9 https://dn790003.ca.archive.org/0/items/CAT10890766/CAT10890766.pdf A more up to date source are the Bell Blue Book and one source by the U of Minn. While the Ball book is the issue that was printed 25 years ago, it does not seem to be out dated and is some what more aimed at the home gardener who wishes to store his own produce. Ball_Blue_Book_Guide_To_Home_Canning,_Freezing,_&_Dehydration_-_1999.pdf How to preserve your own food While this one still uses chemicals and fertilizers, it does show some of the common diseases and pests that can destroy your crop. It is also on a larger scale and would help[ you plan to be self sufficient. They do not however go into the benefits of eating the thinning of the plants. I plant beets, onions, etc thick and eat the excess ones that I thin. Beet greens, small beets and greens, then large beets for processing and storage. And here is a modern take with it being a community effort. Has the bias of being aimed at the city and suburbs, good information and if you skip over the urban bias, a lot of information presented in a more modern manner. It also tells you of a few common weeds that are edible and warns you on some that aren't. https://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/soil-.../CommunityGardenGuide-English-2024-entire.pdf
I used to help my grandparents in the garden back in the late 60s and 70s,, grandpa always had a healthy garden ,, it was a 1/4---1/2 acre. I'd stay with them a lot back in them days ,, I actually learned a lot from my grandparents,, and I'm 100 percent sure it kept me out of a lot of trouble I could have gotten hung up in with folks back in the big city. They lived just off of a little hiway,, and around Oct,, Nov,, folks would stop and ask him if he would sell some of them Collards he had growing out there. He would bitch about folks stopping trying to get some of his hard work. But the folks would offer to pay for them ,, and he'd just go pick them some and give'em away. He'd end up talking to them a little bit ,, then say , they probably needed them more than he did.
My grand parents on my mother's side had a Victory Garden and continued long after the war. Guess that is where I got my love of gardening have had a vegetable garden all my life
the major problem with something like a Victory Garden or a prepper that has seed & garden tooling in stock to kick in a SHTF garden >>>> it takes YEARS to get virgin ground into a producing garden ..... plow under or strip sod - it'll take plenty of patience - best chance would be to "pot" grow something like vine crops while you continue to improve the remainder of the field - plenty of amendments to get the soil context & PH correct ...... another consideration that doesn't hit the conversation track >>> today's herbicides are soooooooooo precisely tuned that they won't allow the germination & growth of any other seed but what's targeted to be planted >>> the herbicide persists - if there's an idea to convert production farmland to a large veggie production garden - might not work for several years - might be limited a kizzing cousin vegge to get by the genetic blocking .....
