Habitant garden

 I have a very small garden in my yard. I affectionately call it my “habitant garden” because I’m attempting to grow (not specific varieties) the types of plants a typical habitant would have cultivated. This year my blueberry bushes have gotten stronger but haven’t produced a berry. Although my uncle advised me that I could harvest from my rhubarb the same year that I transplanted it I’ve opted to not harvest it and to let it grow large, only trimming where absolutely necessary. For a second year in a row watermelon has proved an abject failure for this habitant. I’m unsure if it’s the soil or a lack of sun or both. My Three Sisters garden is doing better than last year. I planted more plants than I have in pervious years. This year I attempted two three sisters gardens in one. On the left I planted everything within a matter of weeks and on the right I staggered the planting by months according to these instructions: another difference between them is that with the right side I attempted to change the growth patterns of both the bean and squash and pruned heavily whereas the plants on the right I simply let grow the way that they desired. A surprise to me was that the right side note “cultivated” corn became stressed, possibly due to light or nutrient deficiencies, and created fruit and tasseled early but the untouched “wild” corn is more crowded but taller and more resembles some professionally cultivated corn I’ve seen in my community. 

The cucumbers I trained onto a trellice my wife and I made out of sticks based off of some examples we saw on the Colonial Williamsburg website. I picked an heirloom variety of cucumber (from the 19th century) because it was readily available. The food says page of the virtual museum of New France notes “ settlers had a soft spot for cucumbers, which they prepared with sweet or sour cream or in a fricassee.” So using existent historical recipes I intend to create a conjectural historical recipe for sweet or sour cream cucumbers and cucumber fricassee. I often turn to my sister in law and her family when I have strange questions about French Canadian traditional folk culture as they are Québécois. None of them recalled any traditional cucumber recipe.  

One plant we omitted was the cabbage. Cabbages were easy to store and are high in volume and so we’re seen throughout most of the year on habitant tables. My québécois in laws do however speak fondly about cabbage soup and stuffed cabbages; “soup au chou and “cigares au chou.”