GROW YOUR OWN 

 VEGETABLES 



CHAPTER I 



PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS 



DURING the year 1916 the knowledge became common 

 that, if food were not to be the deciding factor of the War, 

 it was the clear duty of all to take a hand at growing 

 produce. Thousands of us readily responded to the new 

 demands ; those who possessed gardens pushed the 

 pretty flowers and the attractive shrubs to one side and 

 planted more useful crops in the vacant spaces ; we dug 

 up lawns and sowed them with potatoes and filled our 

 window boxes with onions and carrots. But valuable 

 as this new movement was, it did not go far enough, for 

 a family of four or five cannot exist on the vegetables 

 grown in the average town or suburban garden. Accor- 

 dingly, the cult of the allotment sprang into being, and 

 now it is the exception rather than the rule to find an 

 able-bodied householder who has not an interest in a 

 plot which he tends with loving care on Saturdays, 

 Sundays, and whenever else he has a moment to spare. 

 That the country is much indebted to the allotment- 

 holder no one can gainsay, for during the first season of 

 the movement 180,000 war-time plots were worked 



