84-Lancaster Farming, Saturday, April 8, 1995 All Gardens Great & Small by York Co, Horticultural Agent Tom Becker Editor’s Note: This week marks the first installment of a gardening column written by Thomas Becker, York horticul tural agent for Penn State Cooperative Extension. Becker has extensive know lege on all types of gardening (ornamental, fruit, vegetables, and children’s). He assists com mercial producers and individu al consumers with horticultural needs. The first five columns will be a series on World War II Vic tory Gardens and how that era of gardening applies to today. We are all “soldiers of the soil,” who “plant for freedom” and “hoe for liberty” because we love to “plant vegetables for victory.” These catchy phrases contri buted to the war effort by encour aging more planting of gardens and harvesting your own produce. Locally grown farm market veget able freed precious resources for the war machine. It may be hard to believe that our own private peace ful gardens can be used in warfare; but such is the case. A World War 1 poster filled with patriotic rhetor ic declared that “beans and beets’ are no less important than “bullets and battleships.’ During World War 11 war, kapok, used to fill life vests, was in short supply. As a replacement, common milkweed (Asclepias syr iaca), a common and persistent perennial weed contained seed pods with a greyish, silky, seed fib er. This seed ‘floss’ was suffi ciently waterproof and buoyant and was readily available through out Pennsylvania’s roadsides, open fields and pastures. But, large quantities of pods were needed. The floss in two bags of milk- A - weed pods filled a life jacket Young, rural school children were avid collectors of milkweed pods. Students competed with each other to find the best fields containing the most milkweed. School-wide collections gathered truckloads of milkweed pods for the war effort. Bags of dried milkweed pods were stored in factory warehouses or hung up to dry in burlap bags. Planting Tips 1943 Choose “Color” Vegetables: Victory gardeners were strongly encouraged to choose vegetables based on (1) those with the greatest nutritional value of vitamins and minerals and (2) how easy they were to grow. “Stick to easy to grow vegetables” was a common theme in every gardening bulletin of the time. Vegetables everyone grew were; *bush beans, ♦pole beans, *wax beans, ♦early beans, ♦late beets, "■broccoli, brussel sprouts, * early cabbage, "'mid-season cabbage, "late cabbage, red cabbage, savoy ♦cabbage, carrots, cauliflower, Chineses cabbage, cucumber, egg plant, endive, ♦kale, ♦kohrabi, ♦lettuce, new Zealand spinach, ♦onions, parsley, parsnips, pump kin, early peas, late peas, ♦peppers, radish, rhubarb (pie plant), ♦sum mer squash, winter squash, ♦spi nach, ♦swiss chard, ♦tomatoes and ♦turnips. ♦recommended for small vic tory gardens. In addition, bulletins in the early 1940’s suggested' ‘gardeners should choose vegetables that (1) satisfy your own taste. (2) that do well in your locality and (3) that fit in the size of the garden you design.” 9 License Plates Help Fund Penn State's Research Id ‘Wi UNIVERSITY PARK (Center Co.) —When a Pennsylvania driv er motors by and the distinctive image of a saw-whet owl and the phrase “Conserve Wild Resour ces” decorates the car’s license plate, motorists can also get a glimpse of how to support research in Penn State’s College of Agricultural Sciences. To date, some 180,000 wildlife plates have been sold, providing more than $2.2 million to the Wildlife Resources Conservation Fund, which finances research and education related to Pennsylva nia’s native plants and non-game animals. The conservation fund is supported directly through sale of the license plates, a voluntary Nutritional Value Leafy vegetables, swiss chard, kale and turnip greens were con sidered very important for their contribution of vitamin A, vitamin C, riboflavin, calcium and iron. Gardeners were told to plant a “color” garden with lots of green and leafy vegetables, yellow car rots and onions and topped off with tomato red trimmings. While green beans and tomatoes were recommended because they produced abundantly and were easily grown and canned, others like onions and beets were recom mended to make meals interesting because of their flavor and color. Victory Farm Market Gardens Victory gardens came in all shapes and sizes. In the early 1940’s the consumption of vegetables was rising steadily. In addition, the number of truck “vegetable” patches rose in our area, a term still in use today in York County. Farm gardens were the norm in the coun ty at the time. Representing the largest of the victory gardens, these gardens were a necessity to supplement farm income. Most of the produce was marketed directly off the farm or at farmers markets. For acurrer.t listof farm markets in your county, contact your county extension office. checkoff on Pennsylvania income tax forms and donations. Over the past two years, Penn State scientists have received money from the conservation fund ■for such projects as the reintroduc tion of the fisher into Pennsylva nia forests, a study of the distribu tion of mayflies as an indicator of water quality, research on the con servation of the state’s butterflies and skippers, and many others. According to Robert Brooks, associate professor of wildlife ecology in Penn State’s School of Forest Resources, funding from the program allows scientists to see how insects, plants and less well-known animal species flour ish in the state’s varied environ ments. Brooks, who has received funds to reintroduce the river otter and the fisher, a relative of the weasel, into Pennsylvania habitats, says the program is very popular because the public knows how the donations are used. “I have a ‘Conserve Wild Resources’ tag on my car and I always pass out an application for the plate when people ask me how to get one,” he says. Gregory Hoover, senior exten sion associate in entomology, is using conservation fund donations to study the distribution of may flies across Pennsylvania. May flies, insects that live in rivers, creeks and lakes, can be useful indicators of water quality. “We need to know what species exist in our aquatic environments so that we know how to conserve them for the future,” Hoover explains. “Insects comprise three quarters of all animals on Earth, but there hasn’t been sufficient funding to study them as a part of the wildlife system. The Wildlife Resources Conservation Fund gives us a chance to see a bigger picture of our environment and helps us assess the quality of all our lives.” Another insect-based study focuses on developing methods to count populations of butterflies and skippers across the state. Richard Yahner, professor of wildlife conservation, sees the project as a critical link in under standing how insects—and butter flies and skippers in particular fit into the food chain. “Many people in the wildlife profession are becoming more concerned with studying how insects affect habitats,” Yahner says, “The agencies that look at insects concentrate on them as pests. Less than 5 percent of our insects are pests, so clearly it’s important to understand how the most abundant group of wildlife interacts.” Other wildlife fund supported projects conducted by Yahner and his students over the past three years have included stu dies on the rare northern goshawk and the threatened Allegheny woodrat. Robert Carline, adjunct profes sor in the School of Forest Resour ces and William Sharpe, professor of the forest hydrology, have received grants from the conserva tion fund to study whether non game fish species have declined in streams that are vulnerable to acidification. “Similar projects on the loss of species have been done for game fish species,” Ciirline says. “This kind of work with nongame spe cies has not been done elsewhere because most of the funding agen cies concentrate on game spe cies.” “The Conservation Fund has opened up a wider range of oppor tunities to study small pieces of a much larger puzzle,” sgys Charles Schaadt, assistant professor of wildlife technology at Penn State Dußois Campus. Schaadt and Christopher Haney, assistant pro fessor of wildlife technology, have just finished a population study of bird species in Pennsyl vania’s old-growth forest. Schaadt is currently working on a similar project centering on small mam mal species in old-growth areas. Both studies are funded by the conservation agency. ’urn to P- B. r
Significant historical Pennsylvania newspapers