Gardening

The Haida’s had great big garden plots where they planted potatoes, turnips, carrots, rutabagas and cabbages. This planting was done in May.

Harvest was usually done in September, but sometimes some people did not harvest until October. Harvest season is called tatliit in the Haida language. After the crops were harvested, they were stored away in root houses.

It used to be that the root houses were located right by the garden plots, but they were moved closer to the villages when some people began to steal from them and destroy them. Food stored away in these root houses often lasted the families (clans) an entire winter.

Making a garden was something that each family participated in. So there were some very productive gardens, and most often these were large enough that the Haida used their garden produce for trade with other people (like the Tsimshian) for food items they did not have.

Most people took care of their gardens and some used natural fertilizer such as seaweed and herring eggs on them. When they added this fertilizer, the crops were much better quality than those grown without fertilizer.