Dig On For Victory

For the sixth year, the Victory Garden Initiative’s Victory Garden Blitz is moving grass and growing food, this year installing 548 more raised bed gardens in yards across Greater Milwaukee – bringing VGI’s total number of installments to nearly 2,000.

In true Victory Garden fashion, the Initiative harks back to a time when growing food was considered patriotic duty, and works to remove barriers to residential food production. Companies and private donors subsidize the cost of the raised beds. Volunteers take over the heavy lifting, hauling soil and material. Raised bed gardeners then have the freedom to grow whatever they want.

“We joke that we’re like a gateway drug to people growing their own food,” says Gretchen Mead, VGI’s executive director. “Almost all who participated in our Blitzes within the past three years still grow food at least four months of the year. 90% of surveyed Blitz gardeners share food with family and neighbors.”

VGI not only installs residential raised bed gardens, but also community and school gardens – and this is great for the Home Front.