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- 
