Rooted in History
From Victory Gardens to Today
A local history expert, a leader in heritage preservation, a TBH volunteer, an amateur baker and an avid gardener, St. Catharines native Brian Narhi does it all. In this article, Brian reminisces about his experiences with gardening as a youth, what gardening meant to his family, and the role it currently plays in his life. He also answers pressing questions such as “What is a Victory Garden?” “What is an Heirloom Garden?” and “How do I grow my own?”
What exactly is a “Victory Garden”?
The original concept of a victory garden dates back more than a century to the time of the Great War (1914-18) when Canadians in urban areas were urged to be patriotic citizens, to “mobilize at home,” and do their part for the war effort by planting “Liberty Gardens.” The Government of Ontario published a pamphlet in 1917 called “A Vegetable Garden for Every Home” which was a step-by-step guide to home food production. If people grew part of their own food on their private property, or even on public land, it would help to ease the strain on the food supply chain; ships, railways, and trucks would instead have additional space to transport goods and materials needed for the war. “War gardening” was recommended as a symbolic, patriotic form of leisure.
“Start Your Victory Garden Today!” Health League of Canada, WWII
During the time of the Great Depression, the Canadian government urged people who were unemployed to plant “Relief Gardens” which gave them a sense of purpose, boosted their morale, and helped to alleviate food shortages. The program for planting victory gardens was resurrected again during WWII, reaching its peak of popularity in 1943-44. It was estimated that 209,200 victory gardens were planted which raised an estimated 57,000 tonnes of produce. In rural areas, “kitchen gardens” were renamed and referred to as victory gardens. A simple backyard plot measuring 20 x 30’ (approximately 6 x 9 m) would allow families to raise a variety of vegetables including corn, tomatoes, cabbage, peas, beans, onions, spinach, radishes, lettuce, parsnips, beets, potatoes, and carrots. Gardening would teach urban dwellers a new set of healthy and wholesome domestic skills which would help them to increase their self-sufficiency; moreover, these gardens were highly patriotic, visible signs of home-front participation in the war effort.
A Hereditary Love for Horticulture
I suppose that I have always been a gardener at heart; and even though many of the seeds that I have bought, planted, and saved are heirloom varieties that have been cultivated for eighty years or more, for some reason I’ve never really thought of myself as a “victory gardener.”
I’ve had a life-long appreciation for colourful annuals and perennials, but also for fruits and vegetables of all types. I have oftentimes wondered where my passion for this hobby came from. The answer must quite simply be that it is something that is instinctive and innate, passed down to me from generations of my ancestors who also tilled the soil.
My grandfather Charlie Viitanen (Vita) tending his vegetable garden, Port Weller, ca. 1950
We do not need to look to the far distant past before we find ancestors who were tied to the soil; for most people it’s only a matter of three or four generations. Some of my more recent ancestors lived in Southern Ontario through the Great Depression and WWII, keeping chickens and growing small gardens. They were part of the “victory gardening” or the “relief gardening” movements, as your parents, grand-parents or great-grandparents also likely were, had they lived in Canada at that time.
My paternal grandparents, for example, arrived in Canada from Finland in 1929. They worked in various trades (lumbering, mining, carpentry, cooking) and by the 1940s they had saved enough money that they were able to buy a fifty-acre (20.23 ha) farm in Caistor Township. They raised a variety of crops and livestock on their farm, and in later years when they moved to St. Catharines they always took great pride in their flower and vegetable gardens. My grandfather grew particularly impressive beets, carrots, and potatoes in his backyard plot.
Similarly, my maternal grandparents were avid gardeners. My grandfather Charles kept a few chickens when the family lived on St. Paul Crescent during the 1930s. The hens provided eggs which the family consumed, or they could be bartered for other items such as milk or butter during the early part of the Depression. A minor earthquake shook the downtown at that time which unfortunately jostled open the door to the chicken coop. My grandmother often gleefully told the story of how my grandfather chased after their suddenly liberated hens, along St. Paul Crescent, clad only in his pyjamas! When the family moved to Port Weller in the 1940s, they had sufficient space to cultivate a large vegetable patch. My grandfather grew a variety of vegetables which they ate fresh, and I remember my grandmother canned beets and red currants for use during the winter. Potatoes, carrots, cabbages, and onions stayed well in a cold room in their basement.
St. Paul Crescent as shown in the 1923 St. Catharines Fire Insurance Plans
My first experience as a “farmer” occurred when I was about eight years old. A friend of the family gave me a few cucumber seeds to plant, and I was quite delighted when I picked my very first cucumber. It may have been somewhat under-sized, but nevertheless it was still a cucumber. During my teens and twenties my parents - my father in particular - kept a vegetable garden. It was always a time of great excitement when we’d see the tops of the potatoes and other vegetables emerging from the ground, and the first feed of fresh beans or home-grown raspberries was an anticipated event. Most of the vegetables which we planted turned out well, while some were total disasters---for instance, the raccoons and squirrels thoroughly enjoyed our corn before we ever got to taste it. Despite the uncertainty of the weather and the occasional pest, the garden always provided us with enough produce during the growing season that we could freeze and can some items, while storing others in the cellar for the winter.
It was not possible for me to indulge in gardening during the time that I lived in Toronto. For obvious reasons, there is only so much space available for gardening on an apartment balcony. I did not resume gardening until I returned to St. Catharines in 2003, and almost one of the first things that I did was to turn over the old vegetable garden bed.
These experiences with gardening throughout the early-mid 20th century, relayed to me by my grandparents and enjoyed personally while growing up helped shape me into the gardener that I am today. Victory gardening and relief gardening are a part of many Canadians’ stories of life on the homefront. They boosted morale and were in many ways more useful in their patriotic symbolism than in their actual contributions to local food production. Cultivating gardens during these years allowed an entire generation of urban-dwellers to learn or enhance this particular domestic skill, drawing new demographics of people such as men and children to join in the fun. I encourage you to talk to your parents and grand-parents, and ask them if they had such a garden here during the war.
Heirloom Gardens
Nowadays we in Canada are privileged enough to turn our sights from growing food as a necessity towards growing food as a therapy, as a way of connecting to the land, of satisfying curiosity, and as a form of artistic expression. We all have our own special interests when it comes to horticulture; whether it be collecting colourful orchids on the windowsill or trying to grow the biggest pumpkin. One of my special interests is heirloom gardening. Over the years I have tried to grow various types of heirloom vegetable seeds. When I mentioned this fact to some of my colleagues, one (named Andrei) remarked: “Brian has dug up old things, he researches old things, and now…he’s also eating old things” which raised a laugh---even from me.
I have always had an interest in “heirloom” plant varieties. As indicated in the name, heirloom seeds have been passed down through multiple generations. Perhaps this interest is also grounded in what I’ve gleaned from the fascinating lives of my Scandinavian ancestors. In researching my genealogy, I have discovered that many of my forbears since the Middle Ages were husbandmen. The majority owned their own land and were called “bonde” in Swedish, while others were crofters (“torpare”), and some were hired farm hands (“dräng.”) The surviving records do not provide me with a detailed inventory of cultivars found on my ancestral Finnish farms between the 16th and the late 19th centuries. Rye was extensively grown (rye bread was and still is a staple item the Scandinavia diet), and cool crops were a necessity for the short Scandinavian growing season and included turnips, cabbages, and potatoes. Livestock may have consisted of a few cows, pigs, sheep, and poultry such as chickens which provided eggs. Fruit was not extensively cultivated although strawberries, blueberries, lingonberries, and cloudberries were readily available in the forests.
Seed Barker Archaeological Site in Woodbridge, ON. Photo from the Toronto Public Library
One day a revelation was made to me about heirloom seeds while working on an archaeological site in Vaughan Township north of Toronto. I was then (around 1998 or ‘99) working for the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority on a well-known First Nations site known as “Seed-Barker” (AkGv-1.) This was a 16th century, late Iroquoian, pre-European contact village on the banks of the East Humber River and so it was originally known as the “Little Humber” site. It had been partially excavated as early as 1895, and again at intervals in 1925 and 1951, but due to commercial gravel extraction a large part of the site had been destroyed. The “square” that I was assigned to excavate seemed innocuous enough until I reached the corner where I began to uncover bits of charcoal and…literally hundreds of carbonized corn kernels, bean, and squash seeds. Amazingly enough, this was the over-cooked remains of the last meal that someone had prepared there approximately four hundred years ago and the seeds although extremely fragile were still clearly recognizable as seeds. That memory remained with me, and I wondered exactly what would those types of the “Three Sisters” have tasted like?(1) And were any of those seed varieties still available today?
A few years later I had ordered a catalogue from “Eternal Seed” (then in Quebec, but now located in British Columbia) and I was surprised to see listings for vegetable seeds from as early as the 16th century (Black Aztec corn) right down to the 1960s: Chartenay carrots (1829), Viroflay spinach (1866), Scarlet Runner Beans (pre-1750), Yellow Pear tomato (pre-1805) and many other varieties. Other Canadian seed houses have since started to offer heirloom seeds including McKenzie, Vesseys, Urban Harvest, Heritage Harvest Seed, and several others.
Some of the cultivars in past gardening seasons were grown for the sheer novelty of sampling a vegetable that I had never tasted before. A few, such as the cardoon (a wild cousin of the artichoke), are now included on my “grown it, tasted that” list---never to be repeated. Others have since found a place in my garden from time to time such as salsify (or “oyster plant.”) This plant is a member of the dandelion family and produces a root with a slightly sweet taste that some people have described as having “hints of licorice, umami, or artichoke.” It’s a valuable source of dietary fibre, potassium, vitamin C, some B vitamins, iron, and copper. It contains inulin, and so it is good for diabetics, and it is a natural diuretic. A word to the wise: caution should be exercised with it since its high fibre content promotes regular bowel movements and aids those suffering from constipation!
Start your own Garden! Brian’s Tips and Tricks
So why would anyone want to plant a victory garden in 2022? Or any kind of garden for that matter? There are many benefits from gardening. It can allow you to do the following:
Take a deep breath. Today, as in 1917 or 1943, gardening is therapeutic. It provides you with exercise in the outdoors, and a great sense of satisfaction when you can harvest and eat fruits and vegetables that you have grown from seed or from nursery grown stock. Gardening helps us to slow down and reconnect with the soil in this modern, high-tech world where everyone is constantly connected to their devices and thus never far removed from their work.
Gain some perspective. Gardening gives us a greater appreciation of the effort required to produce our food and perhaps people will be less wasteful after having cultivated their own gardens.
Go natural. There is greater control over how the produce is grown since a home gardener has the option of limiting the use of chemical fertilizers or pesticides. Plus heirloom seeds are not genetically modified!
Conserve your cash. In addition to saving money on groceries, there is the added benefit of consuming “local” produce. What could be more “local” than vegetables grown in your own yard, or eating produce that is shared between neighbours? It still makes sense to cultivate a home garden in the present time when food prices are on the rise due to the cost of fuel, distribution issues, not to mention a different and senseless war continuing in Europe.
Expand your knowledge. Another added benefit is that a home gardener can gain an added awareness of the diversity of cultivars that are available.
Heirloom tomato seedlings, April 2022
There is a great difference in the appearance of heirloom varieties of tomatoes, for instance - what my neighbours condescendingly referred to as “ugly tomatoes” - verses the perfect, red, spherical tomatoes that are available in grocery stores. Tomatoes, for example, come in a wide variety of shapes, sizes, some are ribbed, most are large and very fleshy, and in a range of colours. There is nothing as satisfying as picking a “Black Krim” or a “Brandywine” tomato fresh off the vine and enjoying it in a sandwich or salad. Similarly, there is a difference in the taste and appearance of “Bloomsdale” or “King of Denmark” spinaches in comparison to the spinach imported from the United States. How many people have tried “Speckles” or “Deer Tongue” lettuce? What about “Dragon” or “Scarlet Nantes” carrots? Or “Golden” or “Cylindra” beets? The use of heirloom fruits and vegetables in vintage recipes may provide us with a glimpse of what meals or individual dishes might have tasted like a century ago. This year, for instance, I have nine varieties of heirloom tomatoes, in addition to bunching onions, leeks, and bell peppers started from seed under lights in the basement and all waiting for planting outdoors in mid-May. I have been enjoying heirloom salad greens and spinach all winter that I have grown under that same light set-up.
Heirloom petunia seedlings, April 2022
If your garden is sufficiently large, some plants might be allowed to go to seed which can then be stored and saved for the following season. Seed saving is easy to do; it has helped to preserve the stock of seeds from one generation to the next, guaranteeing plant diversity, and they can be exchanged among gardeners.
For those of us who indulge in flower gardening, there are many heirloom varieties of annuals, perennials, and ornamental trees and shrubs available for purchase. These older varieties come in a wide range of colours and can be more disease resistant and hardy than modern cultivars. What can be more pleasing than the deep “old rose” fragrance of a Moss Rose? Many excellent reference books have been published on the joys of heirloom gardening, and some books are even devoted to single varieties. A few select titles include:
Amy Goldman, The Heirloom Tomato: From Garden to Table (Bloomsbury, 2008)
Benjamin Watson, Taylor’s Guide to Heirloom Vegetables (Houghton Mifflin, 1996)
William Woys Weaver, Heirloom Vegetable Gardening (Henry Holt, 1997)
Sue Stickland, Heirloom Vegetables (Fireside, 1998)
Lynn Coulter, Gardening with Heirloom Seeds (Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 2007)
Seed Savers Exchange, Garden Seed Inventory (Decorah, Iowa, 2004).
Now it’s Your Turn!
Now that you’re equipped with this knowledge, go on and get planting! If you’re still a little hesitant, might I suggest signing up for The Brown Homestead’s Victory Garden Program, beginning April 30th. Whether you’re new to gardening, or you’re a seasoned expert, it’ll be a fun opportunity to get your hands in the soil of a new community garden. As part of this program, the Homestead is offering in-person workshops and presentations every other Saturday morning throughout the summer on topics ranging from WWII gardens to seeds, bees, and canning. I’ll see you there!
(1) A Three Sisters garden is a traditional Indigenous garden that focuses on three main crops: corn, beans and squash.