Category — war gardens

Ever wondered how to make a compost heap? If so, you’d do well to ignore the advice of this comedy duo

Director Andrew Buchanan
Featuring C.H. Middleton and Claude Dampier
1940 16 minutes

Actor and comedian Claude Dampier and gardening expert and broadcaster Cecil H Middleton are deployed by the Ministry of Agriculture to promote the ‘Dig for Victory’ campaign. Hopefully contemporary viewers ignored Dampier’s misleading advice to chuck broken crockery and saucepans on the compost and just appreciated this public information film for what it is – a rollicking wartime comedy sketch.

Today we are threatened with an equally dangerous situation with our ally to the south, and it behooves us to anticipate tariffs placed on agricultural products from the suppliers in the United States we have hitherto relied on

By Mary Lowther
Cowichan Valley Citizen
Feb 22, 2025

Excerpt:

“Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

When the Second World War broke out the British were subjected to submarine warfare in a nearly successful attempt to starve them into submission by denying them access to imported food. They survived to eventually triumph by growing “Victory Gardens” to provide their own fruits and vegetables.

Untilled land was dug up and crops planted to make up the shortage as people learned once more to feed themselves. Since this provided fresher and therefore more nutritious produce the health of the general population actually improved!

The wartime potato shortage is addressed in this marvellous film from 1942 – exhorting workers and school children to lend a hand on local farms by joining Land Clubs. City workers work the land while a girl drives a tractor.

By Andrew Buchanan, Director

A Ministry of Information film which exhorted audiences to start Land Clubs in their local area, using the Surrey Land Club as an example, in order to address food shortages. We see school children, in their uniforms, tilling and harvesting, while young women plant potatoes. City workers work the land while a girl drives a tractor. We also see a committee organising teams of weekend workers to help a potato farmer get his valuable crop sown in time.

Poetic tribute to Mrs Turner’s vegetable growing prowess, plus the delights of “wartime steaks”.

A poetic tribute to Mrs Turner’s vegetable growing prowess opens this public information filler. Much of Mrs T’s surplus produce is put to good use in the kitchen of the local community restaurant – which makes use of the latest electrical labour-saving appliances. The wartime menu is less than ringingly endorsed by Mrs T – “If you’re hungry enough it makes your mouth water.” Still, the fresh vegetables are nutritious and used in some ingenious recipes, such as “wartime steaks” comprising minced beef, carrot, herbs, onions and breadcrumbs.

Daily life and rationing in Britain during WWII, this is a great, 8 part series from the BBC

With Harry Dodson and Ruth Mott
Written and narrated by Peter Thoday
BBC
TV Series 1993, 30m

This 8-part series takes readers back to the days when Hitler’s U-boats patrolled the Atlantic, and imported foods were scarce. For the men, woman and children left behind during World War II, life changed dramatically. People who had never gardened before had to start growing their own fruit and vegetables, housewives had to cope with rationing, and their families had to get used to unfamiliar foods such as spam and nettle soup. Includes the personal memories of Ruth Mott and Harry Dodson (television’s “Victorian” cook and gardener, respectively), as well as tales and anecdotes from many people who remember wartime cookery and “digging for victory”.

Animation: “No time to veg out – there’s a war on. Get your vegetables out!”

By John Halas, Joy Batchelor
Animation & Artists Moving Image
1942 5 mins

[Must see! Mike]

Anthropomorphised vegetables march to fill the gap in home front gardens and stomachs in this propaganda cartoon. It’s a canny mix of jaunty, positive messages and informative animated diagrams, with a stark final message to bring it home: “Next winter may be a matter of life and death”.

Hungarian John Halas and Watford-born Joy Batchelor formed their animation studio in 1940 to make cinema ads, but by 1942 they had been called up to produce public information films. They quickly proved their worth and worked on a number of propaganda shorts and training films for a variety of government departments. This relationship continued in the post-war period, when the company produced the Charley series (1948-9). Halas & Batchelor will always be best known for their feature length cartoon version of George Orwell’s Animal Farm (1954).

See a young Dick York in this instructional video. He was later famous in the TV show “Bewitched”.

United States Department of Agriculture Motion Picture Service
Office of Information
Victory garden, World War II, storage, agriculture
1944

In the quest to satisfy father’s longing for pumpkin pie, among other veggies, the family in this film construct a victory garden to grow their own produce. After growing the food, the family races to construct proper winter indoor and outside storage to protect their precious harvest.

Shows methods of winter storage for produce grown in wartime Victory gardens. Provides demonstrations of how to achieve necessary temperature and moisture conditions for storing various vegetables by using attic space, construction of a storage room in the cellar, sunken barrels and insulated earthen mounds. “In the opening scene we find Mother and Father, Judy and Jimmy deep in the study of seed catalogs, preparatory to planting their victory garden. The picture passes quickly to the happy harvest time when Mother wonders what they will do with all the surplus vegetables. Father decides to store them.