Why Help with a Victory Garden?

By Peggy Sue Skipper

     The term Victory Garden was used primarily in WW I and WW II when rationing made food supplies short. Individuals were encouraged to plant their own food at home and in common areas around cities. It was a patriotic effort in many countries around the world. Of course this concept was also important during the Great Depression.

     Eleanor Roosevelt created quite a press stir when she created a Victory Garden at the White House during her husband’s tenure in office. Now, Michelle Obama is following in Eleanor’s garden boot steps and creating her own White House Victory Garden. It is an idea whose time has come…again. 

     Post WWII as commerce flourished and food supplies became plentiful people got away from raising their own food. I am a prime example of that evolution—a city girl born and bred with not a clue about raising anything to eat. But about a year ago I began feeling a need to learn about the process. I started a Garden Club at the Edgar Cayce A.R.E. where I office and it has been pretty much a monthly gathering for about a year now—since the spring of 2010. We have never planted anything…we have just pruned and cleaned up the landscaping. All the while I have been waiting for the right people to come in to move this effort forward. Where was someone who knew a thing or two about making gardens grow?

     Then, in March 2011, the shift happened. I met Vikki Cummings-Rosenkranz through the Houston Holistic Chamber of Commerce. She mentioned the idea of the chamber doing a Victory Garden to help people learn about growing their own food. What a great idea! Next thing I knew my concept and hers had merged and we were on our way to making our garden dreams a reality.

     Vikki and her husband, Robert “Rosie” Rosenkranz, live about an hour outside of Houston and when they invited me out to see their place I went. In fact, I have been twice because the first time I was so busy visiting and exploring that I didn’t get everything I really needed to write this article.

     No doubt about it, these are the right people for a Victory Garden project! On about 17 acres, Vikki and Rosie grow an amazing variety of fruits, vegetables, herbs, and food bearing trees and also raise a menagerie of animals. They use traditional planting methods alongside some unusual approaches: such as growing potatoes in a 55 gallon container and harvesting 100 pounds of spuds out of that one container.

     Rosie has been growing and raising various plants all his life and clearly has a passion for the process. Interestingly his career was in law enforcement and included 29 years as a deputy sheriff for Harris County before he retired in July 2010. He purchased the 17 acres spread in 1999, and began creating his own self sufficient world. Not only does he love growing things he is very vocal about his concerns regarding the future of our food supply and feels everyone should be growing their own food to some degree. As a deputy sheriff during one of our major hurricane situations in Houston he says he saw grocery stores and convenience markets literally stripped bare of supplies. It brought home for him how very dependent most of us are on the food other people grow.

     It seems to me this idea of becoming more independent about our food is a concept that has been “downloaded” too many people recently. There is a lot of interest from the people I speak to regularly who want to learn more about how to plant and maintain gardens that do more than just look pretty. They want gardens that produce nourishing food. I see it in the faces of people I would never dream could be interested in the idea—a pause followed by, “I may be interested in that…”

     Now, let me just say that Vikki is a real go-getter and I am truly delighted she is a driving force with this new Houston Holistic Chamber of Commerce. I just mentioned the Garden Club at the A.R.E. and the next thing I knew we had a joint effort on the move. Ginger McCord, founder and editor of The Indigo Sun Magazine, is spearheading the Victory Garden with us. Not long ago in a meeting we had, Ginger shared that her father always had a garden and did it the holistic, all natural way, which is our goal as well. Who knew? Our goal is to educate people about gardening while creating a community food resource right here in the city.

     Our first gathering will be on Saturday, April 16, 2011 at 11:00am at the Edgar Cayce A.R.E. located at 7800 Amelia Road in Spring Branch (zip 77055). And guess what? You are invited! If you feel the pull to learn about gardening or have experience you would like to share with the neophytes such as me, please join us! To make this effort work we will need people tending the garden pretty much every day so the more the merrier! By the end of the summer we should have a nice stockpile of food to share among the participants.

     For more information about:
The Houston Holistic Chamber of Commerce
The Edgar Cayce A.R.E. — Houston
The Indigo Sun Magazine

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