How to Grow a Victory Garden

Advice for growing your own food, no matter your space or circumstances. This piece covers how to grow a victory garden but also takes you through container gardening and quick-growing veg you can harvest in 30, 60, or 90 days. Food resilience begins with what you can grow yourself!

Do you remember when you first started hearing about COVID restrictions? For me, it was one morning just after five am, and I was lying in bed when I opened my phone to read the news. Then I headed to social media, and the world was in a panic. Seemingly overnight, our way of life changed, and many of us felt anxious about ourselves, our loved ones, and the future.

One real concern at the time was food shortages, and we did see an impact in our local supermarkets. Shelves would periodically empty of certain products, and prices got a lot more expensive. I don’t think prices have ever really come down since then. Though supermarkets never ran out of food, it became tougher to access and afford everything we wanted.

The world didn’t just stop and run out of food; it was seriously disrupted in how food was produced, processed, transported, and distributed. Those days taught many of us to become more self-reliant and learn to grow our own food. Not just for sustenance, but for morale and a way to control one aspect of our lives. Many new gardeners found their feet then, and Victory Gardens made a huge comeback. If you’re worried about the future, too, it may be time for you to start one of your own.

Grow Your Own Food

Those of us who have been growing vegetable gardens for years are in a good position should difficult times make a comeback. I feel a sense of relief that, if the worst happens, I have the skills to grow some or all of the fruit, vegetables, and starches we need.

While other people pay extortionate prices for tomatoes and potatoes, we have a garden full of them. While we’re giving away zucchinis, non-gardeners can face shortages and inflated prices. Right now my trees are laden with more apples than we can eat, and I’m looking at ways to preserve them. That’s a good position to be in!

If you, too, grow your own food, I think you should take next year’s garden very seriously. Think about what you can grow, and what you can store. If you’re not a gardener, it may be time to start. Even if you only have a small yard or balcony, you can grow crops there. Climbing crops like beans and achocha, miniature fruit trees, pots of herbs, and trays of leafy greens.

With larger gardens, you can grow so much of certain things that you can become self-sufficient in certain crops. Potatoes, for example. Then, when you get a glut of one thing or another, you can preserve it, share it, or trade it against something else. Whatever way you look at it, growing your own food can build confidence and resilience and help you stay healthy in troubling times.

What is a Victory Garden

Back during the World War Era, citizens across the USA, UK, and elsewhere were encouraged to grow food where they could. In backyards, allotments, and even public parks! People came together to farm the land and feed the masses in times of crisis. These rapid-response Victory Gardens helped support wartime food supplies and morale by keeping people back home fed. These were intense times of shipping disruptions and food shortages.

Victory Gardens are traditionally in-ground vegetable gardens with a wide array of seasonal produce. They were managed by a single gardener, family, or a few members of a community with the intention of producing food. Imagine your backyard filled with rows of cabbages, potatoes, carrots, and the like.

Though we may live to see official Victory Gardens again, we generally now use the term for a self-reliant vegetable garden. One that helps you feel assured of your future and able to provide for your family’s food. Modern takes on the style can include whimsical or floral plantings, but they come second to being crop-producing gardens.

We’ll get to some of the crops you can plant in yours, but one key overlooked area is avoiding inputs. Anything that you have to buy every year to keep your land fertile, productive, and pest-free makes you less self-sufficient. This includes fertilizer, compost, seeds, and pesticides. That makes creating an organic garden an attractive option to those who value self-sufficiency. Using netting instead of agri-chemicals and making your own compost not only saves money and avoids shortages but also helps you grow healthier crops.

Difficult Times Mean Seed Shortages

If there’s one thing gardeners should remember from COVID-times, it’s the panic buying of seeds. Honestly, I think most of the seeds purchased during that time never saw soil, let alone grew into actual crops. When people start worrying about the future, they can start hoarding the most illogical things—usually toilet paper. Many gardeners and non-gardeners alike will also buy and hoard seeds.

So, should we start to see food price shocks, shortages, and more conflict again, make sure you’ve stocked up well in advance. The pandemic seed hoarding began in February and March of 2020, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it happened again. To be prepared, order what you need well in advance and/or make learning to save seeds a priority. If you need some guidance on what to order, I take you through how I plan my vegetable garden in this video. More recommendations are below.

Where to Get Vegetable Seeds

I almost always order seeds online, but that was the first place they sold out of during the pandemic. However, I did find plenty of the seeds I needed at local shops. They included garden centers, hardware stores, and even my local supermarket. If you’re having a tough time finding seeds, you can also ask friends if they have spare seeds or plants or organize a seed swap. Some charities and organizations also offer seed libraries to the public.

Some foods in your cupboard are seeds too. You can sow the beans in soup mixes to grow various types of beans. The same goes for dried garbanzo beans (chickpeas), dried peas, and many grains. Even brown rice can germinate, grow, and produce a crop in suitable regions.

A few spices are seeds, too, and can germinate. Coriander seeds will grow coriander plants, known as cilantro in the Americas. Chili seeds grow chilies, dill seeds grow dill, and fennel seeds grow fennel. Not all spices are seeds, though, and not all will be viable.

To see if a certain spice will grow, sprinkle a quarter teaspoon of seeds between two damp paper towels. Put it in a plastic Ziploc bag and keep the paper moist and warm. Check on the seeds daily for up to two weeks, and if you see little sprouts, then you’re in luck. Use the rest of the spice to grow coriander, dill, mustard, cumin, and fennel.

Locate Gardening Space

Where and how you grow a garden will almost certainly differ from anyone else’s. You may have a large yard or field to work with, or you may live in a small urban apartment with no private outdoor space. Space matters, though, and it’s the first thing to organize. It could be land/space you own, land you borrow or rent, or communal space that you can garden yourself or with a group.

Any place with bare land can be used for in-ground or raised vegetable beds. If you have access to a sunny place with a hard surface, you could use Vegepods and other containers to grow in. You can even grow food indoors! Here are some ideas for places you can grow food:

• Backyard or front yard
• Allotment or community garden (renting)
• Renting private land
• Land owned by family or friends (with permission)
• Communal or public land (with permission)
• Connecting with elderly homeowners and growing on their land. Perhaps with a harvest sharing scheme.
• Patios and decks
• Balconies
• Rooftops
• Window boxes
• Indoor gardening and hydroponics

Vegetable Gardening Books

If you are a beginner or looking for more Victory Garden inspiration, I recommend getting some good books. Yes, I share many gardening guides and videos here on Lovely Greens, as well as on my YouTube channel. You can also learn from other experienced gardeners online. However, having books to refer to will be invaluable as you learn and plan out your garden. I’ve just had a look through my own gardening book library and can recommend the following books:

• A Woman’s Garden (my book) compiles lists of different types of useful plants and growing tips for herbal medicine, natural dyeing, interesting food, and natural soapmaking
• Veg in one Bed an excellent and detailed starter book for beginners
• Allotment Month-by-Month a fantastic monthly guide for British and PNW gardeners
• Grow Food for Free lots of ideas for budget and self-reliant gardening
• No Dig Organic Home & Garden a classic no-till organic gardening book
• The New Self Sufficient Gardener a great book for planning a self-sufficient garden
• Food Forest in Your Garden for permaculture and perennial vegetable growing
• The Vegetable Gardeners Bible with specific advice for North American gardeners
• Field Guide to Urban Gardening lots of information on growing food in limited space
• Back Yard Seed Saving the best seed saving book out there

Traditional Vegetable Growing

Many people dream of having large, traditional vegetable gardens. Rows and rows of ripening crops, fruit trees, fruit bushes, and the like. If you have access to that kind of space, that’s amazing, and you can grow so much. Growing directly in the ground with compost or aged manure as your only added input can be inexpensive and very productive.

People created Victory Gardens in the past by removing the turf and tilling the soil—usually by manually digging it over with whatever organic matter was available. Compost, manure, mushroom compost, wood ashes, food scraps, and anything else. If you use this method, you can stack turf upside down in a pile and let it break down into topsoil. Covering it with black plastic will help speed up the process. Then you can add it back into your beds later on.

The typical size of a traditional vegetable garden accounts for how many people you hope to feed. For a large, productive garden, aim for 150-200 square feet per person. The space you need can vary dramatically depending on your climate and what you grow, though.

If you don’t have that kind of space, a simple set-up with four 4×6′ beds can be incredibly productive. You’ll need to manage it well and grow the right crops, though. The more land you have, the more relaxed you can be about maximizing yield. With small spaces, you have to be on the ball with choosing the right crops, harvesting, and succession sowing.

Small Garden Options

The quintessential garden is an ideal that few of us have access to, though. Homes had more land in the past, and even with a large backyard, the soil is often poor. New developments often have little, if any, topsoil under the rolls of turf they lay out over outdoor spaces. Often, a single 4×6 raised bed is about all we can manage, but that is plenty to get started!

Raised beds are good options for poor soil and areas that are boggy or compacted. I have five of them on an area behind my house over highly compacted soil that used to be hard-standing for vehicles. They create a fertile growing space in sunny places where no plants would be happy growing directly in the ground. You could also mix things up by adding containers to your growing space.

Grow Food in Container Gardens

Even if you don’t have a traditional garden space, you can still use pots and containers. That means that balconies, rooftops, porches, and any other hardstanding can be productive spaces if they have enough light and access to water. Many, if not most, crops will grow in large planters and containers, too. You can also find minature versions or varieties or those that don’t need as much root space.

When growing crops in containers, I recommend choosing the largest possible. They hold more nutrients and moisture than smaller ones, and their volume helps plants grow to their full potential. What you fill them with matters, too. I also avoid using soil or topsoil, since it’s very heavy and lower in nutrients than a bag of potting mix. If you want to start a container garden, read my Quickstart Guide to Vegetable Container Gardening.

Crops to Harvest in 30 Days

Few crops are ready to eat within one month of sowing. Exceptions include radishes, baby salad greens, and sprouted seeds. For radishes, sow 1/8 teaspoon of seeds weekly for a steady supply. They grow best in spring and autumn and may bolt (become stressed and flower) in the summer heat.

Most greens need around 45 days to mature, but you can eat their small baby leaves after a month. Greens include lettuce, spinach, rocket (arugula), beet leaves, chard, and a few others. If you can eat a vegetable’s leaves when fully grown, you can eat them when they’re baby leaves too. Here’s how to grow baby salad greens.

Sprouting seeds means taking seeds that you would plant and growing them in a Mason jar or seed sprouter with a little moisture. When they’ve grown sprouts with small leaves, you eat them. I usually grow them in mid-to-late winter, and they provide vitamins and nutrients when other fresh greens are unavailable.

Crops to Harvest in 60 Days

You have more vegetable options to harvest in 45 to 60 days. Most of these include greens, but you’ll also have smaller root vegetables and peas. The trick with some of these crops is to look for varieties advertised as quick-growing or quick-maturing. In the world of vegetables, some carrots take 45 days to mature, while others take all summer to grow. The same is true for many other vegetables.

• Baby carrots (ordinary carrots harvested young)
• Some varieties of broccoli
• Some varieties of cabbage
• Lettuces
• Kale
• Kohlrabi (60-70 days)
• Leafy herbs
• Mustard
• Mizuna
• Peas (60-70 days)
• Radishes
• Spinach
• Spring onions
• Swiss chard
• Turnips
• Quick-growing vegetable varieties

Crops to Harvest in 90 Days

Three months is plenty of time for many of our favorite vegetables, and the following usually mature in that time. Any crop that grows large roots or produces fruit needs extra time, including tomatoes, summer squash, and early potatoes. Many will need an extra month, so sixteen weeks, if your climate is cool or if the variety grows slowly.

• Beans (60-90 days)
• Beets
• Broccoli
• Cabbage
• Carrots
• Cauliflower
• Early Potatoes
• Second Early Potatoes
• Eggplant (Aubergines)
• Kohlrabi
• Onions (grown from sets)
• Summer squash, including zucchini (courgettes)
• Tomatoes

Vegetables That Need Long Growing Periods

If a vegetable isn’t listed, it may take a long time to develop. These include main crop potatoes, pumpkins, garlic, purple sprouting broccoli, chilis, sweet potatoes, sunchokes, parsnips, and leeks. Planning is key to growing a year-round vegetable garden. Give these plants space and time, and they’ll reward you with homegrown harvests through autumn and winter.

I’d also recommend investing in fruit trees, berry bushes, and perennial vegetables. The latter regrow every year and are often some of the first edibles I harvest in the garden in spring. Some of my favorites are Welsh onions, asparagus, and perennial leeks.

Gardening Skills to Learn

There’s a wealth of information on growing vegetables in the books I’ve recommended above and online. However, beware of any tips or information that seems too good to be true—it probably is. Viral gardening videos, seeds for blue strawberries, and the like. Recently, I’ve seen more fake gardening advice than real.

So, watch for bogus advice, find trusted sources, and follow them instead, especially if they garden in a similar climate to you. I also highly recommend learning the basic skills that you’ll need to grow crops well: creating good soil, seed starting, compost making, and ways to protect crops from pests.

You should also familiarize yourself with your gardening zone and which crops grow best in it. For getting started early in the year, it helps to know the earliest crops to plant and when to sow seeds throughout the growing season. Succession sowing can keep your garden full of produce for most of the spring, summer, and autumn.

Lastly, if you’re a beginner or need a refresher, I have more information on starting a garden and common gardening mistakes to avoid. I also share how I created my allotment vegetable garden and raised bed garden on YouTube. Good luck, and let me know if you have any questions by leaving a comment below.

More Grow Your Own Victory Garden Inspiration

• Planting Crops that you can Harvest in Winter
• Thrifty Ways to Get Plants for Free
• 10 Easy to Grow Vegetables for Beginners
• Six Ways to Use Sustainable Garden Design in Your Backyard