Politics, Gardening and the Founding Fathers

On vacation in the Pacific Northwest until  after May first. Apologies to devoted readers for only one blog this month, rather than the usual two.

 Reading  Founding Gardeners©  by  Andrea Wulf. She has also written another unusual book about American gardens and gardeners Gardening Neighbors© about the extraordinary Bartram family and how their efforts resulted in an explosion of American trees in the English landscape gardening.

Bartram House

Bartram garden

Actually recommended, is reading the Bartram book first, then the Founding Gardeners—but either way you’ll be engaged  Wulf’s research. (her credentials are outstanding --- see http://www.andreawulf.com/)



 Who knew that their view’s about gardens and farms so deeply influenced the politics of Washington, Adams and Jefferson? Or, that in the thinking of the first three, Alexander Hamilton, with his passion for industry, urbanization and trade, figured as clear and present danger to the infant U.S. ?




Hamilton

 Or who knew  that  George Washington  managed to run his plantation (by weekly letters to his farm manager) and  bring Mount Vernon through the Revolution in exemplary shape, whereas the brilliant but erratic Jefferson let his plantation, Monticello, fall  almost into ruin during the same period, simply by not paying enough attention to it . (See  
American Sphinx).

 An unsung hero of the ecological movement appears in the person of  James Madison. During  his  retired years , Madison became an authority on the relationship of planting practices and sustainable agriculture. The state of Virginia had, this early (1820s) exhausted some of the world's most fertile farmland, growing tobacco. Europeans, with much less land at their disposal, had learned to rotate crops and manure their fields. Apparently everybody forgot what had been painfully learned in Europe. American let their grazing animals wander in the woods, so the manure wasn't available for the fields. Crop rotation was a forgotten art. Infertile fields were the result. Small farmers just moved on West, but plantation owners like Madison didn't fancy uprooting their establishments, so they had to re- learn  sustainable farming.

 Madison's Montpelier had existed since the 18th  century (before 1723) and he wasn't about to abandon it and move west.

Jefferson



Monticello

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Madison of Montpelier reveals himself as not only a passionate gardener, but an enormously effective and dedicated servant of the new country. His wife, the redoubtable and charming Dolly, called him “mighty little Madison.

Montpelier

John Adams reveals an interest in compost and and manuring that would make him the darling of today’s organic gardeners . Adams had a small farm he worked himself, the other three founders were then owners of enormous plantations worked by slaves. Adams emerges as fairly impossible personally, but at the same time, admirable. (the miniseries  John Adams on HBO, not only well-acted but gives a sympathetic view of Adams dedicated, stubborn, prickly and egotistical character, but not his gardening experience.) Actually, his wife  Abagail Adams was the one who ran the farm while Adams was kept away for many years by the demands of the new nation. 

Fascinating sidelights kept turning  up in Founding Gardeners---  try it, you'll like it.












Note: Jefferson, as most of my well-informed readers know, had an unacknowledged  mistress, Sally  Hemings, who was 1) a slave of mixed race 2) his dead wife's 1/2 sister since they had the same father. Sally Hemings bore Jefferson 6 children, two of whom he freed. The rest helped build Monticello. Sally Hemings was left a slave in Jefferson's will.

La Nina, Costa Rican coffee, street water saves, and Victorian Kitchen Gardens II





We've been talking about how cold it is along our Central Coast, but just the opposite effect is occurring in Costa Rica.

 Their coffee production has dropped 25% because of high temperatures for the last 6 years. Coffee farmers are having to give up growing coffee unless they can move up to the higher altitudes (lower temperatures) that the coffee prefers. (See http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-coffee-20110323,0,2770618.story. )



Leigh Adams' gutter diversions

On a more cheerful note, somebody has figured out a way to divert  run-off water and save it to feed the ground water. Not sure the method used is very practical as it involves getting permission from your city to make drainage holes in the curb.This does not strike me as something cities would be enthusiastic about...

  However, it's an entertaining article and it seems, strangely to have  almost vanished from the LA Times archives . (The article ran March 12, but it is archived under March 4, 2011.) For you conspiracy theorists there there.....Maybe the LA Times doesn't want us to try this at home?  Emily Green wrote the article  which it talks about a garden in Altadena full of new fruit trees, all of which are being watered with diverted rain water from the gutters.http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/home_blog/2011/03/leigh-adams-john-lyons.html. The gardener created a swale to absorb the street water.

The latest news along our Central Coast is we are officially out of drought mode. First time in many years. Do you think the water rates will drop?  Noooooo...

Forcing pots

Meanwhile, back at the vegetable garden,our Victorians had brought forcing and blanching to high art. The handsome terra cotta pots in the picture were used for forcing  rhubarb, blanching celery  or asparagus. The gardeners also simply wrapped the plant to be blanched in straw and tied it with a raffia ribbon. Lacking the pots, we could do that. To blanch celery the kitchen gardeners also planted celery in a trench and slowly filled it in as the plants grew. (Can't see why celery shouldn't be green, but chacun son gout.)

A modern methods the Victorians  would have loved are :


row covers


  Row covers--  protect the starts from cold, wind and insects. These let in 75% of the available light. 

For smaller gardens and impatient gardeners the water wall will radiate heat to the plant at night. This kind of booster was not necessary in years past, but  we are ready to try it on  Early Girl tomatoes and  Japanese eggplant eggplant, remembering if the soil hasn't reached 65 degrees----- it might not do much good. It would probably work if it stops raining.

water wall

Last is the mulch to heat the ground around the plants-- lets through water and holds the radiant heat of the sun. Several kinds are on the market:
red or black plastic, or biodegradable. Biodegradable makes the most sense.

Biodegradable mulch

 Note: all these things are available at Territorial Seed Co.

Next: Victorian Kitchen Gardens III ( Grapevines at Blenheim,)  Founding Gardeners and Rethinking California Lawns

La Nina and Victorian Kitchen Gardens (First Installment)

2011   Here’s yet another take on why it is so cold in SoCal this year. It’s basically all from La Nina---global warming is occurring, but not along our California coasts. There's an upwelling of very cold water from the deeps of  the Pacific, which means colder than usual  (by 10 degrees) weather for us.

Well, fine. What can we do about it? 

The people who mastered the art of gardening in a miserable cold climate might give us some ideas. The high Victorians brought kitchen gardening to incredible production. On a typical large estate, 14 people tended the gardens, the household staff numbered 20 or better, house guests up to 30 with their attendant maids and valets were expected on week-ends and the family --and they had big families with various poor relations hanging out in the garrets. 14+20+30+30+10 for the family = 104 people who had to be fed 3 meals a day---and no supermarkets.

The long awaited Victorian Kitchen Garden miniseries (Acorn) having arrived by Royal Mail (6 weeks late),  having acquired its correct DVD player (Phillips), is an education in outwitting cold, grey, rainy weather.

The first weapon was the walled garden. The walls might enclose 6 acres, and be over 12 feet high at some of the great houses like the one at Dunmore in Falkirk, Scotland.



the Dunmore Pineapple



 Falkirk is at the same latitude as Moscow (okay, it is warmed by the Gulf Stream, but still…these gardeners managed to grow peaches, grapes and pineapples.) Lots of them. A fruit house might contain one and 1/2 tons of fruit by the end of the harvest.

The walls were usually brick—sometimes containing fireplaces, so the wall acted as a giant radiator.

Miles of glass houses, warmed by hot water piped through them, produced tropical fruits (pineapples*), melons all year round, peaches, nectarines and grapes--- in enormous quantities for the enormous households.



Glasshouses on North Wall



The Victorian Stable



 Unless you are a hedge fund manager, you probably aren’t going to rush out and set up a heated greenhouse. (If you do, be sure it is solar powered.) Actually the most used solution was very simple—manure.

Well housed

This was still the era of the horse and a large estate produced lots of manure ---and the Victorian gardeners used  tons to great effect to create hot beds which raised the soil temperature . This makes all the difference to plants.   If you live on a, cattle or llama ranch, or ostrich farm, you've got it made.  Pig manure is the cream de la creme but we can't all be lucky.



Cloche from Monticello, Jefferson's garden



A hotbed or forcing bed, heated with a lot of manure can raise the soil temperature by as much as 4 degrees. Or you can use a cloche  or bell.

Modern plastic cloches

  There is nothing wrong with a large (2 gal. or better) plastic bottle with the  top cut off (easy to do with a hot knife) although not as romantic looking, your tomato plants won’t care.

More on Victorian Kitchen Gardens in Installment Two .  Coming soon. 



*My well educated readers already know a pineapple is a bromeliad.