* 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 
