Vegetable Surplus
It is a very deplorable thing to read that huge quantities of surplus green vegetables are being taken back from Covent Garden to the farms, and there fed to cattle: yet here, it seems to me, is the logical. result of the Dig for Victory campaign, which was run more by slogans than imagination. It is estimated that a shortage of green vegetables occurs in England only one year in ten, a fact of which the public was never reminded. Dig for Victory in consequence became roughly synonymous with cabbages and potatoes, which were precisely the vegetables the small grower ought to have been encouraged to avoid. Gardeners were earnestly entreated to grow greater quantities of vegetables, rather than greater quantities of as many different varieties as possible. Looking back over the year, I find to my surprise that I have cultivated forty different varieties of vegetables, which did not include parsnips, endive, cucumber, seakale, artichokes, shallots or broccoli. I do not know what slogans are being planned for 5941, but I hope at least one of them will call for more enterprise and less nonsense about " every available inch." The day of lettuces in the window-ledge, cabbages in tubs, beans in petrol-cans, spinach in the rose-bed and radishes on the roof has, I hope, gone for ever.
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