Vegetables and fruits represent a different and happier phase of
the food situation than our short supplies of wheat and meat. The
vegetables especially are a great potential reserve of food, for they
can be produced in quantity in three or four months on unused land by
labor that otherwise might not be used.

Abroad every resource for vegetable-raising is being utilized to the
utmost. France and Belgium have long made the most of all their land.
Now England has made it compulsory to leave no ground uncultivated.
Golf-courses are now potato-patches. Parks and every bit of back yard
all grow their quota of vegetables. The boys in the old English public
schools work with the hoe where before they played football.

We in America have no more than touched our capacity for raising
gardens. What we have done is merely a beginning. As the war goes
on we shall realize more and more the necessity for seizing every
opportunity for active service. The accomplishments of the summer of
1917 showed the possibilities of the work, and placed it beyond the
purely experimental stage. They have given experience and emphasized
the value of expert advice and the economy of community efforts.

Not only is the "plant a garden" a civilian movement, but it has
taken hold in the armies as well. The American Army Garden service
is planning truck-gardens in France to supply our troops. The Woman's
Auxiliary Army Corps of England plants gardens back of the British
lines. Last summer the French fed 20,000 of their men from similar
gardens.