“I Love Gardening”

Designed by the popular cartoonist Mike Jupp

“It all seems to be happening down in the allotments.” 1000 pieces.

See the puzzle here.

“Crazy Cats Alloment”

Crazy Cats in the Allotment by Lisa Jane Smith.
Ravensburger. 500 pieces.

See the puzzle here.

“Great British Allotment”

“Fantastic image filled with fun, humour and busy scenes,” by William Rudling
Ravensburger. 1000 pieces.

See the puzzle here.

Three definitions of “urban farmer” at Urban Dictionary

From Wikipedia: Urban Dictionary is a Web-based dictionary of slang words and phrases. As of April 2010, the site contains over 4.85 million definitions. Submissions are regulated by volunteer editors and rated by site visitors.

1. Urban Farmer

April 28, 2010 Urban Word of the Day

A person who constantly plays Farmville and acts like they know everything about a real farm — but all they do is live in the city, sit at a computer, and at a certain time, need to stop what they are doing to farm their imaginary crops.

Example: “Carly won’t shut up about her stupid farm and throwing sheep. What an urban farmer.”

2. Urban Farmer

The trend for young jam tart types to dress in country regalia.

Example: “Who’s that Will Young, urban farmer type working that stall at Spitalfield’s?”

3. Urban Farmer

A person who reads random words on urbandictionary.com, by clicking on the random button. May spend up to hours finding new words/definitions.

Example: “Dude, that guy is an Urban farmer. He has been looking for random words all this day.”

More about Urban Dictionary

The site was founded in 1999 by Aaron Peckham while he was a freshman computer science major at California Polytechnic State University. One of the first definitions on the site was “the man”, referring to “the head of the establishment put in place to ‘bring us down.

The definitions on Urban Dictionary are meant to be those of slang or subculture words, phrases, and phenomena not found in standard dictionaries. Most words have multiple definitions, usage examples, and tags.

See ‘Urban Farmer’ at Urban Dictionary here.

British artist, Richard Adams’s Kitchen Gardens

Richard Adams (b. 1960) received a BA Hons in Graphic Design at Leicester Polytechnic. He spent his childhood amidst the British countryside in the south Cotswolds. Its outstanding landscape has had a strong and lasting influence on his art work.

Richard Adams creates a dream world often adding ‘odd’ people that seem to float above the ground and seldom stand upright. Full of humour Richard Adams paintings are beautifully drawn and highly imaginative.

The Vegetable Garden. See larger image here.

All Richard’s paintings are produced using chalk pastel. They are then fixed and soaked in a special varnish that leaves an impervious surface.
The artist has exhibited regularly in British art galleries and internationally in Sydney, Washington, Bremen and Madrid.

The Kitchen Garden.

The Vegetable Tent.

Link to some of Richard Adam’s work here.

From Toons At War.
1940′s image.

Disney licensee W.L. Stensgaard produced a Victory Garden sign that featured Donald Duck chasing pests from his garden. The sign was available in two sizes and was sold in five and dimes, hardware and grocery stores.

One version of the sign featured the illustration printed on a masonite board attached to a 24-inch long stake. This sign was produced in six oil colors and had a wholesale price of $10.80 per dozen. The suggested retail was $1.69 each.

The second version was printed on 100-point fiberboard, was produced in four oil colors and was mounted on an 18-inch stake. The fiberboard signs wholesaled at $7.80 per dozen with a suggested retail of $1.00 each.

A promotional flyer sent to retailers stated: “Everybody will want to identify their victory garden with this colorful, durable, outdoor marker. Creates a new spirit for gardens. Thousands will buy for own use, also gifts and prizes.”

See more at Toons At War here.

Buckaroo Bugs – 1944 cartoon

There’s trouble in the San Fernando Alley! The Masked Marauder has stolen an entire supply of carrots from the townspeople’s victory garden! Who is the Masked Marauder, you ask? Why, it’s “Buckaroo Bugs”! And who will stop this pesky wabbit?! Red Hot Ryder, that’s who! (Uh, yeah. Right.)

“He got away with everything.”

“What did he get, all the money from the bank?”

“No, all the carrots from our Victory Garden.”

“The sidewinding bushwacker.”

Buckaroo Bugs is a Warner Bros. Looney Tunes theatrical cartoon short released in August 1944, starring Bugs Bunny and directed by Robert Clampett. It runs for about nine minutes, and is in color with a mono sound mix. This is the only short in which Bugs Bunny served as a bona fide villain; while his shorts often portray him as mischievous and violent, he is never actually malicious and is, for the most part, acting as such in self-defense against an aggressor.

See wikipedia entry here.

Although there is no story to accompany this graphic in the 1941 edition of the comic, it is a wonderful promotional image, which would have reached millions of kids during the war. Superb!

100 beautiful illustrations! Highly recommended! (Mike)

By Elizabeth Gordon
Illustrations M.T Ross
P.F. Volland and Co. Chicago
1914

A seed, little friends, is really a plant or a tree all wrapped up in a little brown bundle. If you plant it in the ground it will grow, and when it is old enough it will bear fruit, because God has made it so.

Among all the children of Mother Nature, the fruits and vegetables are probably the most useful to us. Wherever we may go some of these little people are there before us, ready to help us by giving us food and to make life easy and joyous for us.

In your Mother’s garden you will always find many familiar friends; in the fields the graceful Grain children will nod and beckon to you; in the orchard the Fruit children will peep out at you from their leafy homes; along the roadside the gay little Berries will give you a friendly greeting, and in the forest you will find the little wild Grapes climbing trees and playing hide and seek with the Bird children.

The Carrot ladies love to go
To church on Sundays in a row;
And, tall or short, each lady fair
Wears a green feather in her hair.

The Button Mushrooms went to play
With the small Puff Balls one bright day;
They had such glorious heaps of glorious fun,
But all ran home at set of sun.

Little Miss Radish, pretty thing,
Has her birthday in the spring;
She and the little Onions play
Out in the garden all the day.

See this wonderful book of illustrations and verse here.

By Mrs. Elizabeth Turner
from The Daisy; or, Cautionary Stories in Verse
1807

Poisonous Fruit

As Tommy and his sister Jane
Were walking down a shady lane,
They saw some berries, bright and red,
That hung around and over head;

And soon the bough they bended down,
To make the scarlet fruit their own;
And part they ate, and part, in play,
They threw about, and flung away.

But long they had not been at home
Before poor Jane and little Tom
Were taken sick and ill, to bed,
And since, I’ve heard, they both are dead.

Alas! had Tom understood
That fruit in lanes is seldom good,
He might have walk’d with little Jane
Again along the shady lane.

Cowslip or More Cautionary Stories in Verse
By Mrs. Elizabeth Turner
1811

The Worm

As Sally sat upon the ground,
A little crawling worm she found,
Among the garden dirt;

And when she saw the worm, she scream’d,
And ran away and cried,
As if she had been hurt.

Mamma afraid some serious harm
Made Sally scream, was in alarm,
And left the parlour then;
But when the cause she came to learn,
She bade her daughter back return,
To see the worm again.

The worm they found kept writhing round,
Until it sunk beneath the ground,
And Sally learn’d that day,
That worms are very harmless things,
With neither teeth, nor claws, nor stings,
To frighten her away.

See the story unfold on the next page. (Read more)

The ground is hard and the roots are long, so his wife Masha (Mary) comes out to help him.

Seeing their distress their little daughter Varka (Barbara) comes to the rescue, and

Thinking it is a new game that is being played, their little dog Moska joins in,

While the cat Briska looks on all unconscious of a very tender and tempting mouse just behind her.

Then with a long pull and a strong pull all together – up the turnip comes!

But all’s well that end well, and around old Ivan they crowd and rejoice in the prospect of a savory dinner well earned.

See larger image here.

And as he hopes to have it this year. Potatoes, Parsnips, Turnips.

By W.K. Haselden
Daily Mirror, Great Britain
19 Jan. 1917

1944 Cartoon – Ministry of Agriculture & Fisheries “Dig For Victory Leaflet No 7

Commentary – “Thanks Mr Middleton. Mr Middleton – Good Afternoon, we all expect vegetables to feed us but we’ve got to see that we feed them properly too. Suppose we get down to the root of the matter. Plants need food just as much as we do, and it must be in a form they can assimilated. This is where humas comes in. Humas is composed mainly of decayed vegetable matter.

By putting humas in the soil plus a few handfuls of chemical fertiliser you make sure that the plant has enough to eat. One of the best sources of humas is the compost heap. It really acts as a sort of canteen for the plants. Simple and cheap its mainly garden waste, its easy to make a compost heap and if you want it in time for next seasons crop now is a good time to start. PLANT – That’s right, now is a good time to start.”

Shot List: CARTOON – Vegetable growing and then thanking Mr Middleton. Shots of Mr Middleton talking to the screen. Shots of a plant and its roots. Shot of a Compost Heap. Plants underground taking Nitrogen potash phosphates to other plants. Feeding the plant. Compost Heap. Mr Middleton talking. Plant talking.

Making Compost in 1919

From the Victory Edition 1919 ‘War Gardening and Home Storage of Vegetables’

Compost is especially desirable when quick growth is wanted. Compost is thoroughly rotted manure or organic material. It is prepared from six to twelve months before being used, by putting the manure and other material in piles having perpendicular sides and flat tops. These piles are usually from 2 to 4 feet high and 6 to 8 feet long.

Besides the usual waste of garden rubbish, there is a large waste of leaves, weeds and the skins and other unused portions of fruits and vegetables. These should all be thrown on the compost pile to decay for use on the garden next spring.

Destroy all plants which are diseased. The compost pile should be built up in alternate layers of vegetable refuse a foot thick and earth an inch or more thick. The earth helps to rot the vegetable matter when mixed with it. The top of the pile should be left flat that the rain may enter and help in the process of decay.

If the pile can be forked over once a month when not frozen and the contents well mixed together, they will decay quite rapidly and be in good usable condition in the spring. The compost may be either spread over hte garden and plowed under or it may be scattered in the rows before the seed are sown. This is, of course, not as rich as stable manure, but it is a good substitute.

Compost is also used as a top dressing during the growing season for hastening growth.
  
In the cities and towns tons of leaves are burned every fall. This is a loss which ought to be prevented. These leaves properly composted with other vegetable waste and earth would be worth hundreds of dollars to the gardens next spring.

In planning a permanent garden, a space should be reserved near the hotbed or seed bed, and in this space should be piled, as soon as pulled, all plants which are free from diseases and insects. This applies to all vegetables and especially to peas and beans, as these belong to a group of plants which take nitrogen from the air, during growth, and and store it in their roots.

When these plants are decayed they will return to the soil not only much of the plant food taken from it during their growth but additional nitrogen as well. Nitrogen in the soil is necessary for satisfactory leaf growth. The material so composted should be allowed to decay throughout the winter, and when needed should be used according to the instructions given for using compost.

See complete 1919 War Gardening and Home Storage of Vegetables publication here.

Today (2008) on the Compost Hotline, we don’t advise adding soil to the compost pile unless we are trying to stop a fruit fly outbreak in which case we suggest capping the pile with an inch of soil. We layer our piles with leaves rather than soil. (Mike)

Burma-Shave was an American brand of brushless shaving cream, famous for its advertising gimmick of posting humorous rhyming poems on small, consecutive highway billboard signs.

From Wikipedia

Burma-Shave was introduced in 1925 by the Burma-Vita company, owned by Clinton Odell. The company’s original product was a liniment made of ingredients described as coming “from the Malay Peninsula and Burma.”

Demand was sparse for the liniment, and the company sought to expand the product’s sales by introducing a product with wider appeal.

To increase sales, the owners developed the famous Burma-Shave advertising sign program, and sales took off. At its peak, Burma-Shave was the second-highest selling brushless shaving cream in the United States. However, sales declined in the 1950s, and in 1963 the company was sold to Phillip Morris. The signs were removed at that time. The brand decreased in visibility and eventually became the property of the American Safety Razor Company.

In 1997, the American Safety Razor Company reintroduced the Burma-Shave brand, including a nostalgic shaving soap and brush kit. In fact, the original Burma-Shave was a brushless shaving cream, and Burma-Shave’s own roadside signs frequently ridiculed “Grandpa’s old-fashioned shaving brush.”

See wikipedia here.

Caption: What are we coming to now.

Cartoon by W.K. Haselden
Daily Mirror, 22 Mar 1917

Second panel reads:
The garden (war time) and it’s fairy — “Marian, Marian, Utilitarian”. Signs in garden read Beetroot, Cabbages, Potatoes.

Cartoons by W.K. Haselden
Daily Mirror 1916
Note same message today. Landscapes move from ornamentals to food.