A Garden for Every Six Americans

The Dinner Garden is a program based in Texas that aims to have one garden for every six Americans.  To reach this goal they provide free seeds, garden supplies and loads of great advice.  Here is how they got started:

The concept of home and community gardening is not new. However, this kind of gardening has fallen out of practice. The inspiration for this project grew out of two things. First, the economy is in bad shape. We know many people who have lost their jobs and are struggling to make it. They are cutting costs wherever they can. When they’ve stripped their budgets as far as they can go, they are left with deciding between food and rent or food and medicine.

History was our second inspiration. In World War I and World War II, families in the United States and Britain planted Victory Gardens due to shortages in food and labor. Food at the market was rationed, so families went without many essentials. In both wars, the United States provided food for soldiers and civilians in Europe where farmers had joined the war and their land had been turned into battlegrounds.

To provide that food, backyards, school playgrounds, churches, empty lots, and even roof tops became gardens. In 1918, the United States had 5,285,000 gardens. The 1919 harvest produced 528,500,000 pounds of food. During WWII, Americans planted 20,000,000 gardens, or one garden for every seven Americans. Those gardens grew 20 billion pounds of produce.  More…

Related posts:

1. We Patch – Urban Garden Share
2. Garden Defense: IPMopedia Gives Tips on How to Grow Your Veggies Well
3. Growings On at the Danny Woo Garden

Comments RSS You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.