[2024-05-20] The love of gardening

"The love of gardening is a seed once sown that never dies."
— Gertrude Jekyll

When I worked near Ottawa's Little Italy neighbourhood, I used to love walking by one particular house that had a side garden. Fence to fence, it was filled with plants: mostly tomatoes, but also basil, peppers and onions. I marveled at the amount of produce the owner of this tiny plot of land was able to generate from their garden. I imagine that not only the love of gardening but also the knowledge of it had been passed down for generations.

Gardening is in my genes too. My mom has always had a garden, as do many of her children and grandchildren. Their vegetable-growing endeavours range in size from field crops (such as sweet corn) to large in-ground gardens to small community-based plots to containers.

My mom's mom also had a garden. I recently asked my mom, Olivette, what her mom, Malvina, had grown in her garden and how she had preserved it. Olivette told me that Malvina grew:
  • lettuce, which she would serve in the spring in a salad with green onions and acidified milk (which reminds me of the Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean fermented milk called cailles),
  • cucumbers, which she placed in a crock with salt and, later, would use to make pickles and relish,
  • tomatoes and sweet corn, which she canned, as well as beets, which she pickled—these jars were stored in the laiterie (a little milk house beside the family home) during the summer and in a cupboard under the stairs in the house during the fall and winter,
  • cabbage, potatoes, carrots and onions, which—come fall—were stored in a crawl space under the kitchen, which was accessed through a four-foot by four-foot door in the floor of the kitchen,
  • turnips, which were stored in the barn in the winter because they were primarily fed to the cows but were also eaten by the family from time to time.
In addition—though not strictly part of her garden—my grandmother's family gathered wild strawberries, raspberries, blueberries and apples. Malvina would use the fruit to make preserves, which she kept in the laiterie until fall, when they were moved to the cupboard under the stairs. One year, they gathered so many apples that they stored them in the barn, and Malvina used them in desserts throughout the winter.

I also discovered yesterday that my great-great-great-grandfather was a gardener. Born in England in 1805, James Hollington was identified as a gardener in the 1871 Census when living in the Quebec City area and the 1881 Census when living in the Ottawa area.

So perhaps Gertrude Jekyll was on to something when she said: "The love of gardening is a seed once sown that never dies."

My most recent foray into gardening began in 2020 when—inspired by my sister—I decided to grow some vegetables in containers. My sister says that gardening is an experiment: you try different things each year. Some are successes; some are failures. You learn every season.

My own experiment this year is sewing scallion bulbs with my cucumber and zucchini plants in the hopes of deterring the neighbourhood squirrels from playing in my pots. Win or lose my battle with the squirrels, I'm happy to carry on the family tradition of gardening.