Six-foot cucumbers grow in Manitoba

Tuesday, 15 December 2009 05:00

December 15, 1878. Manitoba soil is so fertile that cucumbers grow more than six feet in length, and the climate so healthy that a large drugstore couldn't find enough customers to keep the business going, claims a letter writer in the Boston Advertiser, cited in the Chatham, New Brunswick, Gleaner.

The new city of Emerson [Manitoba] is peopled with immigrants from the older Canadian provinces and chiefly from Ontario. I talked with several and found they were highly delighted with their prospects.

The land is superlatively fertile, the soil being a black mould which is never less than two feet in depth, and in many places is as much as 12 feet deep. Grain grows luxuriantly, as much as 50 bushels of wheat to the acre being no uncommon yield. Vegetables flourish and attain gigantic proportions. I saw a cucumber grow not far from here which was six feet and a half long.

Indeed, the most striking proof and illustration of the fertility of the soil is supplied by the land which the half-breeds have cultivated. I saw a crop of wheat yielding 25 bushels to the acre growing on ground whereon wheat had been growing for 60 years in succession. Such land, properly cultivated, would prove a veritable gold mine.

The air is light and exhilarating; in the hottest part of the summer the evenings are cool, and a blanket can always be borne in bed. I can speak of the winter climate from hearsay only, yet all those persons who have wintered here speak of the climate in terms of the highest praise. Mr. Taylor, the United States Consul, who has lived in Winnipeg for six years, confirmed me in all I have heard from the natives in favor of the winter climate. Perhaps the best proof of good health which I saw was the closing of a large druggist's store on account of insufficient custom.