30 THE WAR GARDEN VICTORIOUS 



Such were the possibilities of garden production that 

 stimulated the National War Garden Commission to 

 maximum effort. 



Of course, garden food does not possess, pound for 

 pound, anything like the food value of the concentrated 

 foods sent to our allies and to our armies, but garden 

 food is provender, and it is wholesome food. Peas and 

 beans are great meat-conservers ; potatoes, both sweet 

 and white, important cereal-savers; and a little larger 

 bulk of many garden products, such as potatoes, will 

 take the place of a smaller quantity of meat or other 

 concentrated foods. To figure out the exact food val- 

 ues of the total products that might be raised in our 

 gardens is of course both impossible and unnecessary. 

 The point is that millions of pounds of food could be 

 produced right in our own yards and in neighboring 

 vacant lots and that by eating these foods we should so 

 lessen the demand on our commercial supplies that 

 these would be sufficient to meet the heavy demands 

 upon them. 



To reach the entire population of the United States, 

 to convince one hundred million people of the necessity 

 of gardening, and to convince them to the point of 

 action, was such a colossal task that the Commission 

 hardly dared to hope for the creation of more than one 

 million war gardens during the first year of its activ- 

 ities. Yet the estimated total was in excess of 3,000,000; 

 and in 1918 a very careful canvass set the number of 

 such gardens at 5,285,000. 



What these war gardens actually accomplished to- 



