'Kansas Wartime Extension Activities'

Eleanor Roosevelt had a victory garden planted on the front lawn of the White House as a show of patriotic duty. The First Lady's garden was only one of more than 20 million victory gardens planted in the United States according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. In 1943, Kansas planted a total of 268,968 gardens. Food canned in homes topped 17.2 million quarts with an additional 34,108 quarts processed in community centers. Kansans not only filled their shelves with homegrown produce, they also planted and harvested the fields that fed the nation and starving American allies overseas.