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“...the tomato crop alone made our gardening experience
well worth every backache and blister!”
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All over the United States, wartime families were
helping to relieve food shortages by a program of victory gardens.
If a man possessed but a tiny clear square of earth in his back
or front yard he was urged to make use of it for this purpose.
Even in our apartment village we were encouraged to be supporters
of this “back to the soil” movement.
As luck would have it, directly behind our apartments
was an undeveloped area of land about one hundred by three hundred
yards in size. Initially, it was difficult to look at this area
of gullies, rocks and underbrush and see it as any sort of a garden.
And it was nearly impossible to think of it as producing bushels
and bushels of food for our consumption. But determination can
produce miracles…
And so in March, when the glorious promise of spring
was upon us, we first saw a few men out back
— walking around, poking into the ground, pulling
weeds, pitching away a few rocks and, in general, assessing our
garden-to-be in a totally new light.
A day or so later, more neighbors appeared, moving
about with purpose in their steps. They came equipped with measuring
tapes to mark off distances, drove in stakes, cleaned the edges
of their plots, and made tiny trenches around their borders.
At first, I'm afraid
I thought they were foolish pioneers, establishing squatter's
rights to a field of rocks. No matter… the rush to claim
territory in our own victory garden was soon underway and every
tenant joined in.
Although the early birds got their pick of locations,
the remaining area was immediately claimed by the rest of us and
subdivided into plots of varying shapes and sizes. Claims were
staked with little respect to adjoining “farms,” and
anywhere from five to twenty feet might separate two neighboring
plots. Later arrivals had to be content with any left over space
and it was not unusual to see artistic T-shaped or L-shaped gardens
sandwiched in between the earlier square ones. It would have brought
joy to the heart of a professional efficiency expert to note that
not one inch of topsoil was wasted!
How Do You Use a Hoe?
As the novelty of victory gardening spread through our apartment
community, it soon became the most popular off-duty topic of conversation.
This was both entertaining and essential because the amateur standing
of virtually every gardener of the bunch was completely untarnished.
The awful truth was that most of us could not tell a spade from
a hoe. If anyone had ever successfully grown geraniums in a window
box he was regarded as a professional farmer.
Despite our ignorance, the summer was filled with
animated discussions on soil preparation, fertilizers, sowing,
transplanting, thinning, spacing, cultivating and the differences
between watermelon and cantaloupe vines. Whatever we might have
lacked in knowledge was more than made up in enthusiasm.
The earliest results from the gardens came much
sooner than originally anticipated. We had a bumper crop of blisters,
calluses, aching backs, pulled muscles, cut fingers, stubbed toes,
broken fingernails, sunburn, muddy clothes, curse words and grouchy
dispositions. Most of these Washington chair-borne commandos righteously
insisted that they should at least have earned the Purple Heart.
The rest of us never learned whether or not the cost of iodine
and liniment were ever included in the seasonal profit and loss
statement.
Our victory garden jokes became as corny as the
produce:
“Say, did you know I got a dozen steaks today?”
“You did! Where?”
“Tell me! How much did they cost?"”
“How many ration points?”
Only then would the prankster reveal that he had just bought “stakes”
for his tomato plants!
Harvesting the Crops…
The first edible plants to mature were our radishes and I must
say this was indeed a victory crop. Each gardener produced such
an astonishing number of them that every dish served in the apartment
village for weeks could have been decorated with a ring of radishes
and still there would have been enough left over to supply nearby
Fort Myer. Everyone conceded that this particular item had been
overplanted. After all, the uses for radishes are not especially
varied and a few of them are enough for most people!
We were blessed with an even larger crop of carrots,
but thinning and harvesting them displayed our gardening ignorance
all over again. There was a certain prolific weed which had a
special fondness for our rows of carrots. The distressing thing
about this darn weed is that it looked so much like a carrot top
that to this day I can't tell them
apart. It was most annoying to pull a weed and find you had a
tiny carrot. We consoled ourselves with the idea that we were
thinning out the rows.
Evidently we did not thin the rows of carrots nearly
enough, for once they were mature and edible we discovered they
were so close together that little short of dynamite could blast
them from their resting places. The usual method involved an interesting
array of tools ranging from trowels to shoe horns, and was not
unlike the procedure for tooth extraction.
Somehow it always seemed a bit mean to take the
poor carrots away from their bed since they had formed such a
clinging attachment for the spot. But maybe I only thought that
when I was worn out from a long morning spent in gathering four
or five carrots.
Allowing the carrots to grow too close together
did produce the most unusual-looking vegetables I have ever seen.
They looked like some strange coral growth, adorned with assorted
warts, tumors and moles. Cleaning these peculiar carrots was such
a challenge that we often longed for the vegetable counter at
the nearby Safeway store.
Our first thought was that next year we would carefully
weed and thin the carrots. Our second thought was that next year
we wouldn't plant any carrots at
all.
Most of our other vegetables never developed the
table appeal that the garden books had promised. Our beets never
grew beyond the size of marbles. The onions supplied a genuine
onion flavor but somehow looked more like blades of grass.
Weather and garden pests contributed to our beginners'
problems, not to mention a few two-legged critters
— one of whom helped himself to our one prize cantaloupe
the night before we planned to pick it. Sigh…
Despite our misfortunes and disappointments in some
of the crops we were generously rewarded in others. The green
peas were abundant and delicious, the beans tender and fresh,
and lettuce a constant joy and convenience all summer. In fact,
the tomato crop alone made our gardening experience well worth
every backache and blister!
Conquering My Fear of Canning…
We harvested so many bushels of tomatoes that no argument I offered
would over-ride the indisputable fact that most would have to
be canned. I knew it was sinful to waste the surplus food and
economical to can it. The patriotic duty of canning was announced
daily on the radio and in the newspapers. No matter
— I had grown adept at avoiding the entire subject.
The truth is that I was terrified
— my childhood was peppered with stories of canning
experiments gone somehow horribly wrong, resulting in incredible
vegetable explosions. But this time my patriotic duty allowed
no escape from what I was certain would result in disaster.
I spent hours scalding the tomatoes and myself,
peeling them and my fingers, salting them and the floor and decorating
remote corners of the kitchen with crimson blotches. Once the
drippy, sad-looking jars were placed in their hot water bath I
retired to the most remote corner of the apartment, stuffed my
fingers in my ears and waited for the explosion. It never came!
Success! Once the job was finished, I am afraid no one ever bragged
louder and longer than I about the ease of canning and necessity
for preserving our nation's dwindling
food supplies.
Some of the better-organized housewives here took
their produce to a community canning center where they were able
to work under excellent supervision, using modern equipment to
preserve their food in real tin cans. The only cost was to leave
ten percent of their finished product for distribution to area
charities. I'm still mad that someone
didn't tell me about the center sooner!
In truth, our own garden was not one of the more
successful ones. Many others that sprung from the same humble
beginning were a wonderful sight to behold. The rows were symmetrically
placed, the plants methodically distributed and carefully tended
and the soil painstakingly and lovingly cultivated. Their owners
could smile with the satisfaction that comes only from a job well
done — not to mention possessing
bushels of safely stored vegetables and hundreds of perfectly
processed jars of food as a tangible result of their labors.
Many of our gardeners saved a considerable amount
on their grocery store bills from this first gardening venture.
Perhaps some ended the summer a bit “in the red.” We
just about broke even. But all of us were happy and wouldn't
have missed the experience for anything. In fact I hope we will
always have a garden, no matter where we live. Canning, on the
other hand…
