One thing that the Ministry of Agriculture was very aware of was that many of those digging for victory had no knowledge about growing their own and didn’t know what to do when. So they issued a series of official monthly guides telling people what to do each month. When they reissued the series in 1945 they changed the title.
By 1945 victory was not seriously in doubt. Victory in Europe was felt to be just a matter of time. There was a feeling that the title ‘Dig for Victory’ was no longer appropriate, because of that. At the same time, we desperately needed to keep growing our own food.
Shipping was required for the masses of troops and munitions pouring through Britain to keep the allied forces supplied rather than feeding the civilian population. As well as shipping, imports cost money and the country’s financial reserves were spent. We simply couldn’t afford to import food that we could grow at home.
The 1945 series of monthly guides were titled Allotment and Garden Guide but still had the distinctive Dig for Victory spade logo and style as the other wartime official growing guides issued by the Ministry of Agriculture.
Notes about the Monthly Growing Guides
Much has changed since the war but a lot of the information is as useful today as then. Where I feel it helpful, I’ve annotated the information. To make annotations obvious, they are coloured green.
Rather than trying to replicate the original leaflets etc. I’ve formatted the information in them in such a way as to be easily readable on mobile phones and other devices as well as desktop computers.
The original leaflets consisted of 8 pages which I have followed. Where an article runs onto two pages these have been combined onto one for readability.
