8o THE WAR GARDEN VICTORIOUS 



secured before a lot could be farmed; and the average 

 man was either too diffident or too lacking in initiative 

 to secure such permission. On the other hand, the 

 average lot-owner did not care to be repeatedly annoyed 

 by requests from various individuals for the use of his 

 idle lands. Both of these difficulties were obviated 

 through real community gardening. The lot-owner 

 dealt with known, responsible representatives of the 

 gardening organization and had to give his consent 

 but once; while the would-be gardener, far from having 

 to seek a plot, was assisted to find one. 



Community gardening is also important in that it 

 effects a saving of labor. In preparing the land, for 

 instance, a team of horses or a tractor can plow a large 

 number of gardens in one day. Where the ground is 

 in large plots, a team can readily prepare one acre in a 

 day. One acre will contain slightly more than twenty- 

 one gardens each forty by fifty feet a good size for a 

 family plot. By plowing the tract with a team, the 

 cost to each of the twenty-one gardeners is small. To 

 dig by hand a plot forty by fifty feet, particularly if 

 manure is to be turned under, requires many hours of 

 hard labor. If the gardener has at his command for 

 gardening no time other than the after-work hours of 

 the evening, it will take him several days merely to 

 get his seed-bed prepared. 



Again, when a group of people are together cultiva- 

 ting a large plot of land, they can often purchase their 

 supplies, including fertilizer, implements, and seed, at 

 wholesale rates, and thus effect a considerable financial 



