Introduction
Planting the Seeds
Native Agriculture and Plant Use
Canadian Flora
Pioneer Gardening
19th Century Seed Catalogues
Cultivating the Garden
The Cultivators
Reaping the Harvest
Bibliography
Photos by Beth Powning
Other Gardening Sites
Acknowledgements |
Planting the Seeds
Pioneer Gardening
| Years later, Traill wrote a guide for settlers dedicated to "the Wives and Daughters of the Canadian Emigrant". Its popularity is attested to by the number of printings (at least eleven) it went through over the next eight years. In it she covered everything from curing the ague (an attack of fever) to making carpets and soap. Under a few hints on gardening she recommended planting potatoes, Indian corn and turnips the first year, and encouraged the wives to save seeds: "If you have more than a sufficiency for yourself do not begrudge a friend a share of your superfluous garden seeds. In a new country like Canada a kind and liberal spirit should be encouraged." |
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Traill, Catharine Parr.
The Canadian Settler's Guide.
Toronto: Times, 1857, p. 61. |
 | "The cut at the top ... shows the Log House of the pioneer settler in 1879, as it actually appeared, and ... at the bottom, the comfortable three story Concrete House occupied by him after five years in the country." |
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McNeil, Robert.
Practical Tests on Gardening for Manitoba & North-West Territories.
Winnipeg: Wilson, 1884, title page. |
| One of the earliest, and probably the smallest (in spite of the length of its title) Canadian book on growing flowers was published in 1868. It is really an adaptation of one from Britain. Small though it is, it has a few words to say about many of the shrubs, annuals and perennials found in today's gardens and even includes a monthly guide to activities. |
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The Cottage Florist for the Province of Ontario: Being a Compendious and Practical Guide to the Cultivation of Flowering Plants, Adapted to the Late Province of Upper Canada.
Toronto: Bain, 1868. |
| The importance of apples and the development of the "McIntosh Red" is a particularly fascinating story, beginning with John McIntosh's discovery of a tree with particularly tasty fruit in 1811. His son Allan learned how to graft branches from the tree onto other root stock and soon it was being reproduced in the thousands, making the McIntosh one of our most popular fruit crops. |
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Waterston, Elizabeth.
Pioneers in Agriculture: Massey, McIntosh, Saunders.
Toronto: Clarke, 1957. |
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