My True Story About Gardening With My Parents, Grandparents of Children: A Northern Ontario Garden

“Children, come quickly!” Mom hollered. “The cow is in the garden!”

Growing up in the country, as the third-oldest child in a family of fourteen children, gardening with my parents was more than just gardening for the fun of it. It was exciting to learn how to grow vegetables and fruit, but growing a garden was an absolute necessity for survival in northern Ontario during the late forties, fifties and early sixties.   

Thus, all of the family members had to drop whatever they were doing, chase the cow, or suffer the loss of the garden. (Mind you, the cow always gave us good milk after hastily consuming garden produce.)

For us, gardening was a family project. Everyone learned how to garden and participated in the backbreaking work.

Dad built our two-story home, when I was approximately four years old, on four acres of land about thirty miles out of the city, beside the country school next to our grandparent’s farm.

I recall lying on the landing with my older siblings watching the cement floor poured through a basement window. This was before we moved into the house and prior to the time of the family garden project.

“I remember seeing you children,” the cement contractor told me, about twenty years later. His daughter and I both trained in nursing.    

Our original vegetable garden was located on the far side of the driveway, right across from our house and it was visible from the kitchen window. The garden was about a eighth of an acre in size and situated on a slope that faced east and extended all the way down the hill.

The vegetable garden was really Mom’s domain, as she loved gardening. Having been born in the prairies, she was a natural farmer-at-heart. Dad had grown up on his parent’s farm, but he was never as keen about farming, as she was.  

“I’ll be out in the garden,” Mom would say to me, very early in the morning. “Make sure that all of the children have breakfast, when they get up.” I could hear her singing, as she worked. She loved music and was a very gifted pianist, too.

Dad was up by then, had breakfast and headed off to work as a finishing carpenter.

As a youngster, I always stayed fairly close to Mom. She was my best friend! I enjoyed helping her with whatever needed doing. She had an optimistic attitude, as well as a wonderful sense of humor. There was always a new story she could relate about her early childhood.      

As I got a bit older, I took care of and played with the younger children in the house, on the grass beside the garden or on the doorstep, while she was taking care of the animals, or working in the garden. The doorstep was a eight-by-ten ten foot, gray concrete slab with one step, right in front of the side door on the east side of our house, a perfect place for children to play in the sun, as Mom could keep an eye on everyone and work in the garden, at the same time. I learned a lot about childcare and gardening, while I was still quite young.

Mom always began planning her garden early in the year. During the winter months, she ordered numerous packages of vegetable and flower seeds, from various seed catalogues and garden suppliers. Because northern Ontario is invariably cold, even late in the spring, Mom had to start many of her seeds indoors. Dad built wooden boxes for her to use as planters. They were about a foot and a half in width, two feet in length and approximately three to four inches in depth.

In the spring, she took a lot of pride in nurturing rows of new seedlings that soon sprouted under sheets of glass, placed over the wooden boxes. At times, she hung a light bulb overhead to encourage the plants to grow. This was her way of growing plants in a makeshift greenhouse. Soil rich in nutrients, filled the wooden boxes. Many different kinds of seeds started this way, as the growing season was not long enough for many plants, otherwise.

“Don’t let the children play in the planters!”

“Plant a bean seed in this Mason jar and watch it grow!”

Mom placed the wooden boxes on a large, wooden worktable, covered with large sheets of heavy plastic, in a room where the corner windows faced south and west. When it warmed up and the seedlings would not freeze, they could go outside. Other containers became planters of different sizes and shapes on the windowsill. Once taken outside, the wooden boxes were set several inches down into the soil in a row across the top of the garden, until the seedlings were large enough to transplant in the garden. The glass protected them from frost, at night.

Most of Mom’s plants needed watering, every day. As small children, we helped her with that, even though we often over-watered them, but we learned the importance of proper watering and drainage.  

“Not so much water!” Mom would say. “Use the gentle spray on the garden hose. When you plant seeds, make sure that the water is able to drain out the bottom too, or the roots will turn soft and decay.”

Mom was a natural-born teacher, who taught us about whatever she was doing. She took pride in her children and her garden, which was a haven for her.  

“Children, come and help. The neighbor’s cows are out! We have to get them back to their barn before they run loose in our yard.”

In the country, there were always possible predators, including some wild animals, like bears, moose and deer. Because we had animals, cows, chickens and pigs on our own little farm, there was always straw for natural composting and fertilizer to spread over the garden area.

Each spring, Dad plowed the garden with our grandfather’s tractor and used the harrow to break the soil up further. After our grandparents moved into town when I was about ten, one of the neighbors would come and work it for him. It was a number of years before Dad was able to purchase a rototiller to use in between the long rows of vegetables. Most of our early gardening had to be with a shovel, rake and hoe.

As a young child, I vividly recall seeing rows and rows of freshly plowed earth extending down the full length of the slope. When it rained, the water would run downhill in little rivers, thus providing natural drainage. The soil was usually quite wet at the bottom of the hill.

“Stay out of the mud!” Mom would say, but the lower part of the garden needed planting and weeding, too. The thistles were huge down there. Gum rubber boots worked well, in the garden and especially in the wet areas.

Birds would fly overhead, gently swooping down to pick up earthworms and other insects, as Dad got the garden ready for planting.

“Keep the chickens out of the garden!” Mom would holler. “And the little kids.” Even a new calf could damage seedlings.

“We are going fishing on the weekend,” Dad would say, as he and my younger brothers gathered earthworms in milk pails or tin cans, the bait for fishing when he did not have to work elsewhere.

“Can I go fishing too, Dad?” I would ask. Many times, he took me fishing along with my brothers. Once back at home and with the fish cleaned, everything not edible became compost for the garden.     

Both Mom and Dad enjoyed gardening and experimented with many different kinds of vegetable and flower seeds. Most of the neighbors did the same thing and the members of the community often shared their gardening experiences. The produce was shown at fall fairs and at times, we won prizes!

In time, Mom and Dad planted rows of different kinds of bushes and shrubs, in and around the garden and we thoroughly enjoyed eating the red currants, gooseberries and raspberries. Rhubarb plants thrived and multiplied, as did other garden vegetables like pumpkins, squash and different kinds of marrows. There were beets, several kinds of cabbage, turnips, parsnips, Swiss chard, radishes, dill and seed onions. New potatoes fresh out of the ground, were the best!

There was also lettuce, cucumber, radishes, green onions, etc., for salads. Tomatoes thrived too. Beans, peas and carrots grew well, in long rows and produced enough for Mom to can or to freeze, for the long winter months. Beets were pickled. Dill pickles went into jars or wooden barrels, for the winter. Making sweet and sour or bean pickles was part of the agenda, as well.

The strawberry patch usually required a lot of work, but with straw around the plants, the plants grew well. It was back breaking work picking the strawberries, but fun making jam with Mom. She loved reading gardening and cooking magazines, as well as trying new recipes. She communicated with the women in the neighborhood and knew how to do virtually anything, as far as I was concerned.

Over the years, the size of the garden continued to grow in leaps and bounds, as did our family. My workload continually increased, as there were so many children to feed and take care of.

The family garden grew to include a huge, potato patch, just north of the original garden beside the road, about the time my older sister, brother and I joined the 4H potato club as teenagers. That first year, there were so many weeds there that weeding the potato patch became a summer project on its own. We did get a good crop of potatoes that year, because it was virgin soil. 

Over the years, Dad gradually began working the soil on the lower land beside what we called the swamp. Carrots, beans and numerous weeds grew huge down there. There were millions of mosquitoes too, so weeding was not a lot of fun. He also dug up land on the south side of the barn and on the west side of the house, over the years.

I graduated from training, married and moved to southern Ontario, with my husband. By then, I was almost a stranger to some of the younger family members, as there were many years between the older and younger children. One by one, they took over my role as Mom’s helper in the house and garden.

Mom and Dad experimented with different kinds of greenhouses over the years, some more successful than others. One was on the south side of the house. The tomatoes that I saw growing there when I came to visit, were huge.

Another building that became a greenhouse was the old store that Mom and Dad started, when I was young. They moved the building to the end of the driveway beside the house. Huge windows faced southward. It had a small, cast-iron stove to keep the plants warm.     

Thankfully, gardening in our area was always relatively successful. We invariably had an excess of vegetables and fruit to share with our family, friends and neighbors. As time went on, there was always extra produce for the children and grandchildren that came along.  

Such were good, old days, filled with wonderful memories of gardening, with my parents.