For Valentine’s Day/my birthday, I received some potted Tulips and a couple of small lemon trees which I am excited to find a place for. The kids have also been excited as they know this means that we will make a new garden space where there is nothing at present… we all love a good makeover! I’m sure you may have already seen some glimpses of this space before this post comes out as I’ve been writing a little ahead but that’s ok 🙂

I know that my kiddos have been excited to learn more about Victory Gardens so we are constantly reading more and more articles about them as we work on planning out our garden. We seriously need to get out this weekend to get some plants started as the chickens got into the garden beds a decimated everything that was growing… I do need to check and see if there might have been some root crops that were spared.

I wasn’t always as fond of gardening as I am now. There was a time in my childhood that I dreaded the ‘G’ word and it meant a lot of hard work. We depended on the garden for our sustenance and we all needed to do our share of the planting, weeding, and storing so that we would have plenty of food to get us through the winter.

Fast forward to when I had my own kids and decided to have a small garden. It was more of a small raised bed … that was way before raised beds even became a thing… and it was so easy to take care of. I loved watching my kids explore the vegetables that we grew and the insects that came to visit our vegetable patch. Our little backyard space was the hang-out for all the neighborhood kids and I knew that this was something I wanted to keep doing with my kids.

It wasn’t until many years later that we actually had the space to have a ‘real’ garden. I had to dig that first garden out with the back of a clawhammer… I was serious about wanting a garden! Needless to say, our first garden wasn’t very big or as successful as it could’ve been but we sure did enjoy everything that came from our little patch.

The next year was much better as a neighbor offered to plow the ground for me and I did some more research about the area. I also spoke with some of the ‘old-timers’ about what things I needed to do to help the soil and I got to work with ALL of their suggestions… and there were a lot of suggestions. This was also when I had the idea to ‘design’ our garden rather than have the traditional rows.

I started with what I think would now be referred to as the ‘double-dig method’ although I didn’t know it was a thing back then. I would take my stakes and strings to mark out beds and then dig out the pathways and put the dirt into the beds… kind of hard to explain but I can tell you that it was a lot of work! Some people thought I was a bit crazy at first but when the garden started greening up they could see the designs taking place and our garden was a thing of beauty. I wish I had some pictures of that time but I didn’t even know about picture phones back then… makes me feel really old!

Strangers would often stop to comment on our garden and say how they couldn’t wait to see what the next year would look like or ask questions about how big we were planning on making it as it seemed to grow a little more every year. They also loved to comment on our landscaping and yard work that the kids and I worked so hard on. We had been doing some ‘edible landscaping’ as it is referred to now but then it was kind of a ‘strange’ concept to many people.

Our current home is nothing like that was, yet, but it is a work in progress. I have been a bit hesitant to start projects partly because we’ve had so many challenges in the past few years but this year we have really been trying to get more done and I see some new garden spaces in our future! The plans for the bigger garden have changed a bit but we still plan to put in some more raised beds and stagger the planting so we can have a continuous supply of fresh veggies because we’ve already seen some major price increases in the groceries here over the past couple of months.

We really enjoyed the container gardens that we had at first with the plastic totes from Walmart but the raised beds last year were so much better! We are so looking forward to having even more beds this year and even though we are working on more of the functional part of the garden design right now we may be able to add some fun, decorative touches as we go. I am dreaming of some arches and trellises with vines covering them and fruits hanging down… but it may just be a dream for now.

We recently wrote an article about Victory Gardens and how we’ve been using this as a teaching resource. You can find that here:

Victory Gardening for the Homeschooling Win

Or another article about garden planning here:

Victory Garden Planning – January 2024

This article talks about the author’s memories of their grandparents’ Victory Garden and what it meant to them. It goes into some details about the garden and the plants that were in it as well as the feelings it invoked… it’s a good little read.

Grandpa’s Victory Garden

This site sells seeds for your Victory Garden and has a nice little explanation of what a Victory Garden is. They also have some links for some more modern resources to get you started with your gardening journey.

Victory Gardening for the 21^st Century

Here is an article that is more related to Victory Gardens today and it tells more about some of the newer methods of gardening that weren’t popular during the age of the original Victory Gardens.

Greening the Future: The Role of Victory Gardens in Addressing Modern Challenges

Over at Mid Century Modern Momma she talks about the why’s and how’s of having a vintage lifestyle and how to start your own Victory Garden. She gives a lot of helpful tips on how to incorporate this into our already busy days plus it makes it a little more interesting by incorporating some vintage inspiration into it.

WHY EVERY VINTAGE HOUSEWIFE NEEDS TO GROW A VICTORY GARDEN

This article was a little different as it talks about Victory Gardening in Canada and the discussion that some places were actually discouraging Victory Gardens for amateurs or beginners… WHAT???

The Garden Warriors of 1942

This article isn’t actually about Victory Gardens but it is a good place to start if you are thinking about having your first garden. It is full of lots of helpful tips and suggestions.

Vegetable Gardening For Beginners: Planning Your First Garden

I hope that you might find some of these resources helpful. I know my kiddos have had a blast trying to plan out their beds and what they want to grow this year. They’ve also been looking up recipes for the foods they plan to grow. So much energy and creativity is flowing and it is nice to see them so interested in something other than a screen!

God Bless!