With jobs scarce and the cost of food steadily increasing, millions of homeowners and renters are literally digging in to weather the recession.

The number of Americans growing their own fruits and vegetables as a way to cut grocery cuts has surged to levels not seen since the days of the “victory gardens” during World War II. The National Gardening Association, a South Burlington, Vt.-based nonprofit, says an estimated 43 million U.S. household will grow their own produce this year, representing a 19-percent increase over 2008.

Home gardening, once just a popular pastime for most, is rapidly becoming a national obsession.

“They’re growing everything they can grow,” says Al Luloff, professor of rural sociology at Pennsylvania State University. “There are people going back to doing very traditional gardening for home canning and for fresh vegetables and fruit. They’re putting in orchards all around us.”

Luloff gives high marks to America’s First Family for promoting the trend toward home-grown crops. In a nationally televised event March 20, First Lady Michelle Obama broke ground on a 1,100-square-foot fruit and vegetable garden in the South Lawn of the White House. The event represented the first time since President Franklin Roosevelt’s administration that the White House planted a garden for personal consumption.

According to data from the National Gardening Association, a driving force behind the sudden rush to homegrown crops is basic home economics: A properly maintained vegetable garden can generate crops year round, yielding an annual average of $500 in produce.

But Luloff sees all this planting and hoeing as being about something more than just cost savings.

“They’re tired of eating foods and finding out after the fact that maybe what they consumed wasn’t good for them,” he says. “They’re tired of paying premium prices for organic and specialty items that they can grow themselves on their own land or in their own little boxes – and feel much more comfortable about it.”

Whatever the reason, the boom has proven a financial boon, and not just for gardeners. Garden-supply stores say the surge has helped reverse a decades-long decline in sales, as do-it-yourselfers rush to buy tools, planters and, especially, seed. Burpee Seeds, the nation’s largest mail-order seed company, reported a 30-percent jump in sales by the end of March over last year.

“Not only are we seeing more new customers, but current customers are buying more and growing bigger gardens,” says Burpee spokeswoman Kristin Grilli.

Grilli says the Pennsylvania-based company’s best-selling seed is currently for sweet seedless tomatoes. But she notes the other top-selling varieties are the old dinner-table standbys: green beans, cucumbers, tomatoes, squash, lettuces, peas, hot and sweet peppers, carrots and sweet corn.

Indeed, Luloff says the increased popularity of locally grown produce isn’t so much the advent of something new as a return to a practice Americans generally prefer over the decentralized food system.

“Home gardening never went completely away – there has always been a very strong segment of people who garden and take great pleasure in it,” he says. “They see it as something that is viable and relatively easy. Nothing tastes as good as what you grow, nothing so fresh when you look at it. Good, old-fashioned products without all the pesticides and herbicides – it’s going to make things better for everybody.”

Municipal rules governing the size and height of vegetable and fruit gardens vary from region to region. In Riverside, Calif., for example, growing modest crops for personal consumption is allowed for all areas zoned residential. But larger operations, such as orchards, are restricted in certain areas.

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