May 15, 2013

From the Garden, May 15

This week we have moved the melons out of the hotbed frame and planted them in the garden under frames covered with oiled paper so that they may not be annoyed by the sun and wind before they have established themselves sufficiently to withstand the rigors of full exposure to the elements. It is of the utmost importance that young transplants are not allowed to wilt for they will never recover to their full vigor if once allowed to wither.

The sweet melon, prized by gardeners and gourmands, appears to have its origin in the area surrounding the Black Sea and was first imported to Italy in the fifteenth century. Philip Miller described its introduction in The Gardeners Dictionary (1754) “This Sort was brought from Armenia, on the Confines near Persia, where the best Melons in the World grow…[it] has been long cultivated at Cantaleupe, a little District about ten Leagues form Rome.” Cantaleupe, or “house of wolf’ now provides us with the common name for this noblest of kitchen garden fruits.

True cantaloupes are seldom seen at market today as they have largely been replaced by the musk, or netted melon, and by the winter melon, such as the honey dew. Also known as rock melons, for their thick rinds and warted skins, they were the orange fleshed melons our ancestors knew. The oldest varieties of musk melons generally had green flesh. About the time the true cantaloupe disappeared, the orange fleshed musk melon appeared, so we have simply borrowed the name.

For a complete examination of the melons and their kinds you are invited to peruse Vegetable Gardening the Colonial Williamsburg way, 18th century methods for today’s organic gardeners (Rodale Press)

May 8, 2013

From the Garden, May 8

The sweet potato was known in Virginia long before the white potato arrived. Robert Beverly listed the sweet potato as one of the plants “our Natives had originally amongst them” in The History and Present State of Virginia (1705). It is likely that the sweet potato was first brought to Virginia by Spanish explorers or possibly through trade between native tribes. In English garden works, the white and sweet potatoes were hopelessly confused. The white potato originally went by the misleading name of Virginia Potato while the sweet potato was known as the Spanish potato. By the 18th century the white potato picked up its modern name of Irish potato, an equally erroneous appellation as it is a native of South America. Beverley was very familiar with the sweet potato but had never seen the white potato in Virginia which is evident in his description of the sweet potato: “Their [the Natives] Potatoes are either red or white, about as long as a Boy’s Leg, and sometimes as long and big as both the Leg and Thigh of a young Child, and very much resembling it in Shape. I take these Kinds to be the same with those, which are represented in the Herbals, to be Spanish Potatoes. I am sure, those call’d English or Irish Potatoes are nothing like these, either in Shape, Colour, or Taste.”

We start sweet potato slips in late March by burying a potato about two inches deep in fine compost on a gentle hotbed. The frame is kept well watered and when the foliage is about six inches tall the slips are harvested by gently pulling them from the potato. These are then planted on ridges in well composted soil and then thoroughly watered in to settle the soil around the roots. Ridges are particularly important if your soil is stiff as the best shaped potatoes are formed in a light, well-drained soil.

For a complete description of the culture of sweet potatoes we invite you to investigate Vegetable Gardening the Colonial Williamsburg way, 18th century methods for today’s organic gardeners (Rodale Press)

May 1, 2013

From the Garden, May 1

This week we have transplanted the cucumber plants from the hotbed frame to the garden. As cucumber plants do not accommodate transplantation particularly well, the gardener must insure that they are not allowed to wilt when first placed in the garden. To prevent this we cover them with a straw bell for the first week or ten days until they strike root. If the weather turns rainy, the bells are removed.

The cucumber is, by nature, a climbing plant and nature has equipped them with tendrils for just this purpose. Providing them with a suitable trellis not only allows them to be grown in a fraction of the space required for plants that are allowed to ramble on the ground but the fruit are more uniformly formed and much easier to find.

It is only recently that cucumbers have been admitted to the English salad. In 1616 The Countrey Farme averred: “The use of Cucumbers is altogether hurtfull.” An entry in Samuel Pepys’ diary on Aug. 22, 1663 reads: “Mr. Newburne is dead of eating cowcumbers, of which, the other day, I heard another, I think Sir Nicholas Crisp’s son.” By the end of the century opinions were changing as attested by John Evelyn in 1699: “The Cucumber it self, now so universally eaten, being accounted little better than Poyson, even within our Memory.” Despite Evelyn’s optimism Landon Carter recorded in Virginia on July 24, 1766 his concern for his teenage daughter Judy; “She does bear ungovernable the whole summer through, eating extravagantly and late at night of cucumbers and all sorts of bilious trash.”

For a further explanation of the nature of cucumbers you are invited to examine Vegetable Gardening the Colonial Williamsburg way, 18th century methods for today’s organic gardeners (Rodale Press)

April 24, 2013

From the Garden, April 24

We have been harvesting the Roman broccoli, known to the modern gardener as purple sprouting broccoli, for several weeks now. This is the most ancient form of broccoli; the modern large headed green broccoli is a new comer and only reached the general market in the 1930’s. Unlike the modern broccoli, purple broccoli is a biennial, meaning it must go through a winter season to form its florets. Planted in the spring it produces only leaves. This was explained by John Laurence in 1727: “The Brocauli is an Italian Plant, brought lately from Rome by the present Earl of Burlington, who has given it a Reputation among those who love Novelties. Although it is of the Cauli Kind; yet it requires a particular Management, and therefore particular Directions. Many ignorant of the Plant, will be sowing it in the Spring; but it should not be sown till about Midsummer, and not much after…that it may attain Strength to get over the Winter.”

The heads are smaller but more prolific, the stems eat as well as the florets and in my opinion is a much sweeter and tenderer broccoli than is the modern variety. It is also preferred by the organic gardener as the caterpillar of the cabbage white butterfly is much easier to clean from the florets should you be bothered by this pernicious pest.

More delicate and rarer than the Roman broccoli is what gardeners call the Naples, Neapolitan or cauliflower broccoli. James Justice, author of British Gardener’s New Director (1771) declared: “I prefer the White Brocoli, or what is called the Neopolitan Brocoli…it is a crop [that] will hold [remain good] for a considerable time, and many persons esteem them more than they do the best Collyflowers.” Although it is remarkably similar in appearance to the cauliflower, the taste is distinctly broccoli-like. Like the Roman broccoli, it too, must be planted in the fall for a spring harvest.

For a complete explanation of broccoli and its kinds you are invited to examine: Vegetable Gardening the Colonial Williamsburg way, 18th century methods for today’s organic gardeners (Rodale Press)

April 17, 2013

From the Garden, April 17

All the young cabbage and cauliflower plants are now well established in the garden and growing rapidly. Unfortunately, it is also the time of year that we see the first butterflies of the Imported Cabbageworm. Often known by gardeners as the Cabbage White, this ubiquitous pest is responsible for the green caterpillars that infest nearly all members of the Brassica genus. As is true with many of the common garden pest that the modern gardener must contend with, gardeners in eighteenth-century Williamsburg would not have been bothered by this pest as it did not arrive in this country until the middle of the nineteenth century.

It was well known in 18th century England however and its potential ravages were calculated by Richard Bradley in 1720: “Those Caterpillars which feed upon the Cabbage, and change into the common White Butter flies, breed twice every year, each of them laying near 400 Eggs at one time; so that from the second Brood of one single Caterpillar we may reasonable expect 160,000.” Anyone who has attempted the culture of Brassicas can well believe these extraordinary numbers.

There have been a number of chemical remedies recommended for this pest over the years but all of the organic recipes require a diligence and constant application that discourage many gardeners from attempting their culture. The easiest, and surest, remedy is to simply prevent the butterfly from landing for if it cannot land, it cannot lay its egg. In Williamsburg we use a lightly woven cheese cloth to cover our plants. When the plants are young, we protect individual rows and as they mature, we cover the entire planting with the cheese cloth laid over a table like structure fashioned from sticks. The modern gardener has the benefit of more durable row covers in a variety of sizes than can be used in a like manner.

For a complete consideration of the Brassica tribe we recommend: Vegetable Gardening the Colonial Williamsburg way, 18th century methods for today’s organic gardeners (Rodale Press)

April 10, 2013

From the Garden, April 10

The cabbage, cauliflower, turnip cabbage (or what the Germans term, kohlrabi), artichokes and lettuce have all been transplanted from the hot bed frame. The last denizens of the frame to be moved to the garden are the leeks. Leeks have long been of special significance to the residents of Wales and, indeed, are now part of their national identity. Legend has it that in the year 640 CE, King Cadwaladr of Gwynedd, last of the Briton kings to rule the British Isles, met the invading Saxon army on a battlefield in ancient Wales. As neither army wore uniforms, chaos reigned. Then Cadwaladr ordered his troops to stick leeks in their bonnets to distinguish themselves from the Saxon foe. Order was restored and the Saxons defeated. It was, alas, a temporary victory and the Saxons eventually over ran the island. The wizard Merlin prophesized that one day Cadwaladr would return to drive the Saxons from the land but before Cadwaladr was able to muster a reincarnation, the Normans arrived in 1066 and performed the service themselves.

To set the leeks into the garden we follow the advice given by John Abercrombie in 1790: “prune the long weak tops of the leaves, and the root fibres, and plant them by dibble, in rows a foot apart, by six inches in the row, inserting them down to the leaves, with the neck part mostly into the ground to be long and white.” As leeks require a rich, moist soil and a long season to perfect their stems it is important that the soil be well dunged where you intend to raise them. We also find that in areas such as Tidewater, Virginia, where summers are long and hot, planting them in a location that receives some shade in the afternoon would not be amiss.

For a fuller explanation of the culture of leeks and other Alliums you are invited to examine Vegetable Gardening the Colonial Williamsburg way, 18th century methods for today’s organic gardeners (Rodale Press)