GROWING FOOD

Wairarapa Times-Age, 19 February 1942, Page 4

GROWING FOOD

GREENS IN BETHNAL GREEN. In spite of the Luftwaffe, the people of Bethnal Green are growing vegetables and keeping rabbits and chickens in a determined effort to help the food supply. “This is how it started,” said Mr Roy Hay in a recent broadcast. “One man lived close by St. Jude’s Church. It’s just a shell now, burned out, and it stands among a set of ruined houses. Behind the church at one time stood a school, surrounded, 1 like most of our London schools, by an acre w so of asphalt. The school’s gone too, now—it’s just a heap of rubble. Well, this man gathered a few more gardening friends, and they cleared away the asphalt with pick-axes. Underneath the asphalt they found three feet of broken bricks. So they cleared the bricks, and now there’s an allotment field. All round the’ margins of it there are mounds of bricks and rubble. They sieved the soil beneath, and worked in what manure they could find. Surely this must be the most extraordinary allotment field in England. The crops they’ve hoed and watered arc pretty good, considering all the odds against them. From that acre or so of ground they’ll probably gather six tons of vegetables. There are, of course, Bethnal Greens all over England, and many of them have done astounding things in the way of food production under difficulties. I daresay they’ll do a great deal more. But this, is what struck me when I saw this effort in Bethnal Green: What an example to a great many of us who have a good deal more spare time and, money and land than they have.” |