1943 Victory Garden – Saving the Garden

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.

The film then demonstrates the best method of storing onions, beans, peas, apples, beets, carrots, salsify, squash, pumpkins, potatoes, sweet potatoes, turnips, parsnips, and cabbage” (Motion Pictures of the United States Department of Agriculture, 1945, 47). As this family exemplifies the industrious spirit of Victory gardening, narration states “in pantry and store room, in pit and mound, they have tangible proof of their husbandry.”

Richard Allen York (September 4, 1928 – February 20, 1992) was an American actor. He was the first actor to play Darrin Stephens on the ABC fantasy sitcom Bewitched. He played teacher Bertram Cates in the film Inherit the Wind (1960).

He began his career at the age of 15 as the star of the CBS radio program That Brewster Boy. He also appeared in hundreds of other radio shows and instructional films before heading to New York City, where he acted on Broadway in Tea and Sympathy and Bus Stop.

See the rare Victory Garden film here.

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