start a backyard garden, you slacker.

For a score or more years past there has been a steady drift of population from the rural sections to the cities. Farmers die or retire from business and in many cases no one takes their place. In other words the number of consumers has increased and the number of producers has decreased so far as farm products are concerned. The eaters are catching up with the feeders.

. . . But there is another aspect to this matter. The towns and cities consume a great part of the food raised on the farms roundabout, and every lot in a town or small city can be used to raise food. Every one who owns a back yard or an unused field should put it under cultivation this spring. If he is unable to use the land himself he should turn it over to someone who can and will. . . .

A backyard garden may seem like a small thing, but it is the aggregate of small things which spells success. . . . Under intensive methods of gardening an astonishingly large amount of kitchen truck can be raised on a small plot. There is nothing mysterious about this kind of gardening. It simply means getting the largest possible yield from a small piece of land. What can be done in this regard is shown by the Romeo boys on their small farm on South Pearl Street. They even begrudge the land used for the narrow paths across their fields and they get from the land all that it can possibly produce. During the summer they sell vegetables to hundreds of persons at Red Bank.

All persons are not as expert gardeners as the Romeo boys, but a good garden is not an impossible thing, no matter how barren the soil or how inexperienced the farmers. Everyone can get enough out of a small piece of land to make the work profitable. To let land go unused when it could be utilized for crops was waste in peace times. In war times a piece of unused ground is the sign of a slacker. . .

– from the February 27th, 1918 Red Bank Register. Yeah, we’ve been treading water for almost a hundred years now on this whole backyard garden thing.