Lost Victory Garden Seed List of 1943 – Part 2
Partying before the seed swap... 1943 style.
“Growing vegetables does not preclude growing of flowers and the continued maintenance of ornamental plantings about your home.
Flowers have their spiritual value and will help the morale of your family, your neighbors and yourself. Add a border of planting of flowers to your Victory Garden and plant several rows of them.
They will appreciably enhance the beauty of the garden…”
This follow-up post is a bit delayed due to (whisper) a hard-drive crash! The problems of modern life… Victory Gardeners of 1943 had a different issue to grapple with… to grow flowers or not to grow flowers? As you can see in the quote above, the gardening gurus of the time suggested that flowers were just as vital as vegetables in the Victory Garden. Why? Because fostering morale was as important as growing vegetables and the “spiritual value” of flowers was drafted into the war effort…
As you know, I’ve been fully engrossed in researching the WW2 Chicago Victory Garden movement for a series of lectures/talks I’m giving this spring called “Chicago Victory Gardens: Yesterday and Tomorrow.” To learn more about the speaking gigs, check the ABOUT page. The “big” presentation will be March 28… click HERE to buy tickets and learn more.
As an added incentive (to me at least), we’re giving all our proceeds from the March 28 lecture to Hyperlocavore.com because when you leave the talk all inspired to grow your own food, you need a place to grow it!
Hyperlocavore.com matches up gardeners and would-be gardeners with space, education and tools. That, to me, is a worthy cause.
So, back to the seeds… as I said in Part 1, being the curious type, I’ve been rooting around to see which of the suggested seeds from 1943 are still available. This second half proved a bit easier than the first… all of the seeds were found, unlike some in Part 1 which have faded into mass-market memory. [Those lost to the mainstream may be in the Seed Savers Exchange Yearbook but I wanted to see if they were available to the general public and not just SSE members - if you're not a member, it is a worthy organization... think about it...]
A few of the seeds were located via companies I had never heard of, so that was kind of a cool find – I thought I knew them all!
Decisions, decisions...
So, without further ado, here are the seeds Victory Gardeners were dreaming of 67 years ago… welcome to a look back to 1943… Part 2
Radishes
- Scarlet Globe: www.seedsavers.org
Swiss Chard
- Lacullus: www.victoryseeds.com
Spinach
- King of Denmark: www.holesonline.com
- New Zealand: www.victoryseeds.com
Squash
- Acorn: www.localharvest.org
- Hubbard: www.yankeegardener.com
Turnips
- Early White Milan: www.italianseedandtool.com
Tomatoes
- Marglobe: www.reimerseeds.com
- Rutgers: www.henryfields.com
- Pritchard: www.tomatofest.com
- Baltimore: www.victoryseeds.com
- John Baer: www.totallytomato.com
Also suggested on the lost list (varieties not specified) were raspberries, blackberries and currants.
If you have any information regarding the varieties I’ve outlined above, I’d love to hear them so please comment!
And here’s a final bit of fun… I think these are Blue Hubbard Squash… the ladies are my mother (right) and a neighbor (forgot to ask mother who). The squash are from my great grandfather’s garden in 1946. He was a chicken farmer and used the manure for the garden… the image speaks to the power of chicken manure as a fertilizer… perhaps the topic for another blog…
They grow them big in Oregon!
Dan Courtois said:
I have often wondered how many breeds of plants we have lost since WW2. Up until then the practice of saving your own seed was quite common and this allowed for many different open pollinated species to survive. But seed saving takes a little time and it is a little bit of a hassle to do year in, year out and so it just became easier to just go to the local hardware store and buy seeds off of the rack. Unfortunately this led to an extreme reduction in available breeds which in turn would be more susceptible to diseases which many former breeds were not. Hunting for, storing, and growing for seed should be the goal of the new victory gardener. Our foods survival depends on it!
LaManda Joy said:
Thanks for the thoughtful comments, Dan. It’s true, buying from a store is easier than saving yourself (but not by much!) We have paid the price for convenience with a loss of diversity. Thank heavens for organizations like Seed Saver’s Exchange that were smart enough to see it early on. Thank again for your great tweets and you comment here.
MrBrownThumb said:
I’m listening to you guys right now. Really interesting segment.
karen said:
I am gardening for the first time since I was a child – we nearly always had a huge (1 acre+) garden growing up. Those are the most cherished memories now and I admire more than ever my father’s seemingly endless knowledge of gardening. It taught us hard work was well rewarded with delicious meals
I purchased all of my seeds from seedsavers.org and have several seedlings going now. Learning as I go. Plan to save my own seeds too. Great post! Thanks!
LaManda Joy said:
Karen – thanks for the great comment! I hope your efforts provide new cherished memories as well. Congrats for getting your seeds at seedsaver.org – what a great organization! Let us know if you have any questions/need advice as you go along. We’re happy to help. It is so great that you’re gardening again! Kudos to you!
Monica the Garden Faerie said:
This is so interesting! yet another reason I wish I lived in Chicago! I did similar research when trying to figure out what would have been grown in southeastern Michigan in the 1860s… visited lots of archives to check out really old seed catalogs. A difficult era to pinpoint to a region. I just checked out some books from the library written in the 1940s encouraging people to grow victory gardens: Gardens for Victory by Jean-Marie Putnam and Lloyd C. Cooper and a Canadian take, Food Gardens for Defense by M. G. Kains (I’m sure you’ve seen them). Garden history is so fun. And I love the design on a lot of Victory Garden posters!
Pam's English Garden said:
Wonderfully interesting post! You have motivated me to do more research.
LaManda Joy said:
That’s great to hear, Pam! It’s a wonderful subject and I believe a great role model for a new generation of food gardeners who are looking for inspiration. Let me know what you find out!
vegetable rack said:
important imformation and brilliant post.I did copy this page.
» A Centrist Chooses Chard said:
[...] is an heirloom variety that was recommended during the 1940’s as a staple for Chicago Victory Gardens… we grew it out last year at The Peterson Garden Project and donated it, along with over 200 [...]
Teresa @ Seasonal Wisdom said:
What an interesting blog post! I love the old historic photos, especially the one with your mom in it. And the old plant lists were very interesting. I’ll keep my eyes out for those varieties, in case I uncover anything in my own research. Meanwhile, I think Hyperlocavore.com is a wonderful initiative, and it’s kind of you to support them. Good luck in all your endeavors, and thanks for keeping this Victory Garden history alive for us all. Cheers! Teresa