The high cost of living first stimulated interest. Then after war was declared, the slogan, “Food as important as men or munitions,” stirred young and old. Garden clubs sprang up everywhere, and in free lectures people were instructed how to prepare, plant and cultivate whatever ground they could get, from small backyards to vacant lots.

In our neighborhood last year a man with a plot of ground less than half the size of a tennis court, 82
grew $50.00 worth of vegetables,—enough to supply his whole family! He got his planting down to a science, however,—what he called “intensive gardening,” so that every foot of the soil was kept busy the whole summer. He fertilized but once, too, at the beginning of the season, when he had a quantity of manure thoroughly worked in. Then between slow growing crops, planted in rows as closely as possible, he,planted the quick-growing things, which would be out of the way before their space was needed.