Liberty Gardens, 1917–1919

On April 12, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson called upon Americans on the home front to help fight what would become known as World War I. In response, many Minnesotans turned to backyard gardening to increase their food supply. Homegrown vegetables filled pantries and stomachs and allowed “citizen soldiers” to conserve wheat, meat, sugar, and fats that were essential for U.S. troops and their European allies.

On May 1, 1917, nearly a month after the U.S. Congress declared war against Germany, patriotic parades filled the streets of large and small communities across Minnesota. During this “Wake Up America” event, marchers portrayed patriotic characters like Uncle Sam. They showed off Red Cross committees and suggested ways to get involved in the war effort. In Crookston, Northwest School of Agriculture students marched with garden tools in hand to show their desire and willingness to feed the Allied armies.

Liberty gardens, as homegrown plots became known in 1918, were a crucial part of food conservation efforts, since vegetables could take the place of meat- and wheat-based dishes. The group that coordinated the state’s war efforts, the Minnesota Commission of Public Safety (MCPS), wrote in their newsletter that flying a flag at the front of the house would mean little for the war effort unless there was a garden in the back yard.

Communities around the state found garden land for those who didn’t have a yard. The Iron Range city of Eveleth’s Commercial Club helped organize the use of state land. It created four acres of garden plots at St. Mary’s Lake and hired a watchman. In the southwestern town of Pipestone, the Current Events Club organized local gardening efforts by acting as a clearinghouse. Its members matched people with arable land with those who wanted to raise vegetables.

Minnesota businesses helped as well. Housing developers around the state turned empty lots into garden space. The Soo Line Railroad permitted gardening on fifty thousand acres of its land. Other lines promoted the use of rights of way for crops. Gardeners along the Northern Pacific right of way produced enough food to fill two hundred rail cars.

Finding a garden space was just the beginning. Over time, many Minnesotans who had never grown a single vegetable caught the patriotic gardening fever. They needed encouragement and information, and help was all around. The Minneapolis Garden Club, with a membership of more than eighteen hundred gardeners, supported a demonstration agent. It also distributed literature from the federal gardening commission and provided free seeds and berry bushes.

Around the state, youngsters cultivated garden plots in schoolyards during the summer under the watchful eyes of teacher-coordinators. Students filled out garden cards that tallied the hours they spent tending their crops and described how their gardens progressed.

Adult novice gardeners also found the support they needed to plan, sow, and grow their plots. In these days before radio and television, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the National War Garden Commission, the University of Minnesota Extension Service, seed dealers, local garden clubs, librarians, and merchants all provided information. They published booklets, issued bulletins, and created displays in libraries and store windows using posters designed by the nation’s leading illustrators. These displays illustrated the importance of gardening, offered patriotic views of homegrown harvests, and praised the value of home-canned produce.

The gardening boom kindled public interest in pest control. Minnesota state entomologist A.G. Ruggles invited gardeners to send live insects to his office for identification. They packed the specimens in sealed wooden boxes and shipped them through the mail. Ruggles responded with advice that, as a reporter for the Minneapolis Journal wrote, “seal[ed] the doom of millions of pests.”

University of Minnesota professors wrote bulletins cheerfully extolling the health value of vegetables in the diet. They recommended sixteen foods that could be grown for everyday use and then canned, dried, or preserved as pickles or jams. They suggested putting up a two-year supply of food. Among the ideal crops were beans, beets, cabbage, carrots, cucumbers, pumpkins, parsnips, squash, spinach, tomatoes, and potatoes.

Potatoes played a key role in menus as a substitute for both meat and wheat. When the United States entered the war in April 1917, potatoes were in short supply; many new gardeners saw them as a good place to start. The editor of the Mankato Ledger newspaper reported his dismay when his scarce and valuable seed potatoes were stolen before he could plant them.

Other growers were more successful. By fall 1917, bushels of potatoes were ready to take the place of bread and meat during the most restrictive days of voluntary food conservation. This period began in February 1918, when nineteen of the twenty-one weekly meals were meatless, wheatless, or both. During the spring of 1918, gardeners in St. Cloud predicted they had planted enough potatoes to fulfill the needs of the entire city by autumn.

Once the vegetables were grown, preserving them was an important part of the food conservation goal. One popular innovation was the cold-pack method, which took less time than the traditional technique. Homemakers could even use multi-gallon metal wash boilers to process many jars at one time.

Cold packing was considered so simple it was said that even a child could do it. At the Minnesota State Fair, members of the Boys and Girls Club, a precursor to the 4-H, competed with live demonstrations of the method. The 1917 winner was Elsie McNail of Sleepy Eye. She won for the speed, skill, and cleanliness of her work and the flavor, texture, and appearance of her jarred produce.

Minnesota’s accomplishments led the nation. The secretary of the Minneapolis Garden Club noted that the city’s residents grew ten thousand war gardens—almost 30 percent more than the next most productive city surveyed. By July 1918, those gardens (twenty-one hundred acres in total) had produced nearly half a million dollars of garden goods, or an average of $238 per acre. This was no small sum. At the time, ten pounds of barley flour cost sixty-five cents. Homemakers could buy seven pounds of coffee for a dollar; a new Ford motor touring car was $360.

National statistics reveal the broad impact of home gardening on the war effort. The produce from more than eight million new gardens across the country provided the nutritional equivalent of meat for a million soldiers for 302 days and bread for 248 days, or an entire ration for 142 days.

Data describing home food production after the war ended in 1919 are scarce. Anecdotal information suggests that the passion for gardening did not continue into the 1920s. However, the privations of the Great Depression prompted some households to grow their own food in the 1930s. During World War II, nearly a generation after the first modern wartime gardening efforts, liberty gardens reappeared as victory gardens and became much-promoted home-front resources.