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It's 30 degrees this morning, and even the grass is frosted over and looking dead. Hopefully you are clasping up a Nordic sweater and boiling water for tea. Though there are a few little tasks to be done outdoors before the snow falls, we're pretty much all shut-ins for the next few months. So here is something you can do indoors: watch goofy vintage gardening films. I think these are a lot more fun to look at than the DIY videos you can dial up on home and garden websites, and in many cases, even with the cartoons, they are actually easier to undertand and more instructive.
During World War II, America had "Victory Gardens," and the U.K had its "Dig for Victory" campaign. When the Germans began disrupting food imports to England, food was rationed, and the government encouraged people to grow their own. At its peak, this system included 1,400,000 gardeners. Though nowhere near that many people grow their own food now, many of the garden allotments have been passed down through families. Here's a short film meant to teach novices the basics of growing vegetables.
In America, Private SNAFU kept troops' morale up with an animated field report (pun intended) from the Victory Garden movement. I love the helpful seed-sowing cat, as well as the horse that jumps out of the barn to help spread, um, fertilizer. This series was actually written by a young Ted Geisel—later known as Dr. Seuss—and voiced by Mel Blanc, the talent behind Porky Pig and Bugs Bunny. Walt Disney made a bid for the contract, but didn't get it. The interesting thing about these little cartoons: they were a military secret!
Aside from the whimsical touches (like using a drill to put a hole in the soil, and sewing it up with a needle and thread) Barney Bear is not a half-bad gardening instructor. He covers the crucial basics, from soil amendments to dealing with pests. Hopefully your moles and mice are not this clever, though.
Before being posted at archive.org, this film had not been seen for half a century, even though it was the inspiration for the PBS series The Victory Garden. These old films are a pleasure to watch because they are so beautifully made. They're also a window into a world when everything was more beautifully made, because people couldn't take lazy shortcuts like we do now. (Like using plastic disposable everything.) This is the U.S., so the wardrobes are a bit more relaxed than in Dig for Victory—there are overalls galore—but again, it's nothing like today. It's kind of amazing to see a guy in a tie and vest spreading lime into the soil...
Any gardener worth their trowel will tell you that ALL successful gardens come down to the health of your soil. This was a lesson America learned the hard way back in the 1930s, when bad agriculture techniques pretty much destroyed the topsoil in the Midwestern states. Like most government propaganda films, Rain for the Earth's writing is a bit overblown, but the imagery is amazing. And if you haven't mulched enough this year, this will definitely inspired you to do so.
Speaking of which, here's a more recent take (2009) on soil health, a documentary simply titled Dirt. Note this is a feature-length film, but well worth a watch when you have time to put your feet up for the whole thing.
Another little gem from Archive.com: an excerpt from The Farm, a documentary on a "remarkable rural oasis under the freeways in San Francisco from 1974-1986, an autonomous zone that housed farm animals, rehearsal and performance space, theater and punk rock."
And finally, here are the Moomin trolls, who are Finnish, and just sort of charming. This episode is called "Lady of the Cold." I think that Lady is here to stay for the next several months. So might as well find a way to think of her presence as sparkly and magical, right?
