# What was the point of victory gardens? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [June 11, 2026, 2:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-point-of-victory-gardens/1030813 "2026-06-11T02:35:22Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2026, 12:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-point-of-victory-gardens/1030813/81 "2026-06-13T00:06:39Z")
> [@hogarth](#): > > We have a cherry tree in our backyard. I’m always impressed by the cherries’ ability to go from unripe and inedible to overripe and moldy in the span of a single day! I’m impressed that the birds in your neighborhood don’t grab them all the day before I’d think they were ready! ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2026, 12:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-point-of-victory-gardens/1030813/82 "2026-06-13T00:58:38Z")
That summarizes my limited experience growing produce of any kind: peppers and herbs, plus cherry tomatoes. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2026, 1:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-point-of-victory-gardens/1030813/83 "2026-06-13T01:18:37Z")
Interesting. I usually only have bird problems in fruits. Deer, woodchuck, and rabbit, on the other hand — ---
**Author:** ![Melbourne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5e925/32.png) [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2026, 8:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-point-of-victory-gardens/1030813/84 "2026-06-13T08:12:05Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > here are actually still a number of government-run programs to try to encourage people to garden, and to make it easier to do so. They’re not as publicized now as they used to be [Community Garden Grants in Texas | Funding Opportunities (giboo.com)](https://www.giboo.com/grants/community/community-garden/texas) I think that there was also some state funding going into “market” gardens, but that may have been cut. ---
**Author:** ![Melbourne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5e925/32.png) [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2026, 8:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-point-of-victory-gardens/1030813/85 "2026-06-13T08:17:55Z")
> [@Dewey\_Finn](#): > > My _guess_ is that during the war, when most everyone was growing a victory garden, there was a lot of information sharing and cooperative effort going on “The War” came after “The Great Depression” – a period when people who had the space were growing food to eat. There was already a lot of experience and information around. ---
**Author:** ![Melbourne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5e925/32.png) [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2026, 8:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-point-of-victory-gardens/1030813/86 "2026-06-13T08:25:14Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > It’s all the tenant-farmers could afford to grow for themselves, on their tiny personal plots. It’s also all the tenant-farmers wanted to grow for themselves. There were two obvious reasons, cultural: famously/notoriously the Irish peasantry then and now did not define and value themselves primarily on income, and economic: increased productivity went preferentially to increased rents rather than increased income. ---
**Author:** ![Melbourne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5e925/32.png) [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2026, 8:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-point-of-victory-gardens/1030813/87 "2026-06-13T08:39:47Z")
> [@Banksiaman](#): > > In war, the number of mouths to feed remains the same, the number of agricultural workers drops with the mass recruitment of farm boys for the forces, and the production tonnage will also drop unless something is actively done to replace them on farms. Given naval blockades and other distractions your food imports (excluding mainly wheat or other key staple) will drop dramatically, and only make things worse. Churchill wrote that, if the naval blockade of the UK succeeded, studies showed that the UK could survive – but eating only beans. Hitler’s plan (which I think mostly succeeded) was that he would kill and starve enough people so that the remaining Germans could continue to eat well. I’ve long wondered what exactly the Allies thought was happening / would happen in occupied Europe. Germany ran out of food in WWI, were Allies expecting the same thing to happen in WWII? Hitler planned for it, a major aim of his war was to achieve food independence, why doesn’t Churchill talk about it in his war history? ---
**Author:** ![md-2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9d8465/32.png) [@md-2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md-2000)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2026, 3:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-point-of-victory-gardens/1030813/88 "2026-06-13T15:55:05Z")
> [@TruCelt](#): > > Dude, it was so much worse. They had rules about the people who could live in your house. One of my Grandmothers had to put a clothesline in her basement because she couldn’t hang her undies in her own back yard. Snobs were not invented in the year 2000. They still do. I recall articles only 10 or 15 years ago, about gay couples being told they could not live together in some houses, because municipal bylaws forbade unrelated people living together. (Families only) Allegedly, this was to prevent informal student housing arrangements and the risk of loud parties, or to prevent rooming houses in some neighbourhoods, but someone was exploiting it to go after gay couples. > [@Dewey\_Finn](#): > > What year was this and was this a municipal rule or an actual HOA? And given the wartime housing shortages, that rule _might_ have been about whether they could house someone unrelated in your house. HOA’s were created to lock home owners into not being able to sell to black people. Fortunately, that particular aspect of the HOA agreement was declared unenforceable decades ago, but that was the original purpose. Now they enforce aesthetics, like how you keep your lawn and what you can park on your driveway, whether you can hang laundry (associated with lower income housing, so impacts home values), while escaping the obligations governments (municipalities) have to respect your rights. I don’t doubt the rules exclude large vegetable gardens, and certainly things like chickens. HOA politics is like university faculty politics - “Why is the politics so vicious? Because the stakes are so petty.” ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2026, 4:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-point-of-victory-gardens/1030813/89 "2026-06-13T16:09:06Z")
I doubt that HOA rules were an issue with regard to victory gardens during either the first or second world war and I really doubt they would be an issue if a future national emergency meant that people were once again encouraged to grow them. ---
**Author:** ![TruCelt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/trucelt/32/523_2.png) [@TruCelt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TruCelt)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2026, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-point-of-victory-gardens/1030813/90 "2026-06-13T17:51:42Z")
> [@Dewey\_Finn](#): > > I really doubt they would be an issue if a future national emergency meant that people were once again encouraged to grow them. No. Because there would be a Federal Government information campaign to drive public acceptance of the need for them. This was my point in the first place. ---
**Author:** ![hibernicus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hibernicus/32/2802_2.png) [@hibernicus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hibernicus)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2026, 12:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-point-of-victory-gardens/1030813/91 "2026-06-14T00:20:08Z")
People talk about growing food as a thing people can do to save money. I grow various food plants in my tiny back garden, mainly in containers. In my experience, growing food plants on a small scale is very expensive, and is mostly not competitive with buying food in the supermarket even if you don’t value the time and effort involved. Compare the cost of buying a kilo of carrots with the cost of a packet of carrot seeds. It’s a hobby for me, and I enjoy it, but as an economic proposition, it’s a spectacular failure. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2026, 12:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-point-of-victory-gardens/1030813/92 "2026-06-14T00:36:28Z")
That’s probably true today, but I suspect things were different during either world war. Similarly, clothing is cheap enough today that people don’t repair it but back then, people made things last. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2026, 12:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-point-of-victory-gardens/1030813/93 "2026-06-14T00:46:21Z")
> [@hibernicus](#): > > People talk about growing food as a thing people can do to save money. I grow various food plants in my tiny back garden, mainly in containers. In my experience, growing food plants on a small scale is very expensive, and is mostly not competitive with buying food in the supermarket even if you don’t value the time and effort involved. Tomatoes are an exception. ---
**Author:** ![hibernicus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hibernicus/32/2802_2.png) [@hibernicus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hibernicus)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2026, 12:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-point-of-victory-gardens/1030813/94 "2026-06-14T00:54:04Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > Tomatoes are an exception. I agree, and I thought of that while I was posting. I have 12 tomato plants right now which I grew from seeds I saved from last year’s home-grown plants. They will produce a lot of tomatoes over the coming months, maybe €100 worth at supermarket prices. Basil is another one. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2026, 1:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-point-of-victory-gardens/1030813/95 "2026-06-14T01:10:10Z")
A major point of home vegetable growing should be raising things difficult or impossible to find at supermarkets. Unusual crops, variants of common ones with different and better taste - gooseberries, jujubes, black raspberries, New Zealand spinach, fresh figs, Rosa Bianca eggplant, ultra-fresh sweet corn…there’s lots of stuff we can’t readily get unless we grow it ourselves. On the other hand, there are people who grow things you find all over the place. Why bother raising Delicious apples? Yet some do. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2026, 1:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-point-of-victory-gardens/1030813/96 "2026-06-14T01:34:28Z")
> [@Jackmannii](#): > > Unusual crops, variants of common ones with different and better taste - gooseberries, jujubes, black raspberries, New Zealand spinach, fresh figs, Rosa Bianca eggplant, ultra-fresh sweet corn…there’s lots of stuff we can’t readily get unless we grow it ourselves. Like tomatoes. Grocery stores don’t sell tomatoes; they sell tomato-shaped objects. But even if you just want tomato-shaped objects, you can get one TSO for about the same price as one tomato plant. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2026, 1:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-point-of-victory-gardens/1030813/97 "2026-06-14T01:40:34Z")
Again, what is true _today_ about fruit and vegetable prices or availability in the market was almost certainly not true in the first half of the twentieth century. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2026, 2:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-point-of-victory-gardens/1030813/98 "2026-06-14T02:22:20Z")
Ah, a good reminder. For all that people complain about inflation, food is much cheaper, in relative terms, than it used to be. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2026, 2:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-point-of-victory-gardens/1030813/99 "2026-06-14T02:27:26Z")
A typical American supermarket produce department today is an amazing place, with a really wide variety of _fresh_ fruits and vegetables from multiple countries, most for not really excessive amounts of money. That wasn’t true during either world war. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2026, 3:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-point-of-victory-gardens/1030813/100 "2026-06-14T03:24:38Z")
That wasnt even true in the late 1950s, at least us Californios had oranges all year around. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-point-of-victory-gardens/1030813.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-point-of-victory-gardens/1030813.md?page=6)