Category — History of gardening

I like to see what gardeners of the past used against pests. Partly it interests me because some of those older pests don’t even seem to be around today; partly I’m curious about  some of those old pesticides that are less toxic (and less expensive) than many of the pesticides we have today. But not always, as this story will reveal.

I recently got several books in the Present-Day Gardening series, which ran from about 1910 to about 1912 (for some reason, they stopped putting dates on the later books in the series). I enjoy these British books for the view they give of gardening a hundred years ago: an intimate look into the varieties and methods British authorities thought made good gardens.

In the Sweet Peas book, I saw my old friend, tobacco spray, recommended for green fly (a British term for aphid). Tobacco was the all-purpose pesticide of the 1800s and early 1900s; many still use it today. Novels from the time before smoking became a public evil talk about asking smokers to sit near the rose bushes, because the smoke helped defend the roses against various bugs and blights.

In Sweet Peas, the first line of defense is supposed to be picking off aphids, because “When this pest becomes comfortably established on the plants it will need all the grower’s patience and perseverance to exterminate it; but it should never be allowed to settle itself so firmly. If a close look-out is kept at all stages of growth, and every fly that is seen is promptly destroyed, the trouble will be lessened materially. It multiplies with extraordinary rapidity, and the descendants of one or two pairs become a crowded city in a week.”

Some things don’t change in a hundred years. Aphids still multiply like crazy, and for organic gardeners, hand-picking (more like squishing, really) is still a good first line of defense.

If this doesn’t work, Horace J. Wright says, then it’s time for snuff (finely powdered tobacco) or a tobacco spray made with paraffin. (Paraffin means kerosene, not the hard wax we call paraffin in the U.S.)

The recipe goes like this: soak two ounces of shag tobacco in one gallon of water. While I don’t use such large quantities, this is the basic recipe for a tobacco spray. Adding the kerosene/paraffin solution sounds a bit more complicated: you boil 4 ounces of soft soap in one pot, and 4 ounces of quassia  in another.

Quassia is a West Indian tree noted for its insecticidal properties, so here I have to wonder if maybe you couldn’t just leave the other items out of this recipe and still have success.  Interestingly, quassia protects beneficials such as bees and ladybugs, while it kills plant-predator bugs. Quassia is also used for human health; readers of Louisa May Alcott may remember that Rose, the heroine of one of her books, was given a quassia cup by her sailor/doctor uncle, returned from foreign climes. If I recall rightly, Rose was pale and thin from loss of appetite. In the West Indies, these cups were filled with water, which was allowed to sit until it leached some of the properties from the wood. Then the water was drunk for fevers and indigestion.

Okay, so now we’ve got the tobacco solution, the quassia solution, the soap solution. (As with many old recipes, you don’t get the exact amounts of water the quassia and soap are supposed to be cooked in.) You put them in a gallon and a half of water: “place on the fire, and when the whole lot is boiling furiously, remove the pot, put in a wineglass full of paraffin, and stir vigorously; the working in of the oil when the water is boiling hard will go far to ensure perfect amalgamation.” They wrote so nicely in those days. Perfect amalgamation. Sounds like an album title. Too bad you’d be inhaling poisonous kerosene fumes while making that perfect amalgamation.

The final solution is sprayed on in a mist, preferably after the sun has gone down.

Without the kerosene/paraffin, this spray would be nontoxic to plants and soil, at least. With the kerosene, it’s not only poisonous, but stinky. We often romanticize former gardens, but it’s not all good stewardship and nontoxicity with these old-time pesticides. It wasn’t in the U.S., either.  I asked my father once about the treatment he and his father gave the apple orchard every year.  “Arsenate of lead,” was his reply.

Reference:

Sweet Peas, Horace J. Wright, J.C. and E.C. Jack,Present-Day Gardening Series, 1910

Here’s a story about a plant that’s conservative in the best sense of the word: it protected the life of a civilization, it grows in the desert, and it’s been able to hold on to its own life force for 2,000 years.

In the 1970s, archaeologists excavated Herod the Great’s palace on Masada, in Israel. One of the things they discovered was an ancient jar which proved to hold Judean date palm seeds, Phoenix dactylifera, still dry and well-preserved. When they were radiocarbon-tested, they were found to be about 2,000 years old. One theory is that they are the pits spit out by soldiers, caught in the compound during a Roman siege. Rather than surrender, they committed mass suicide. But they left their date pits behind.

Those soldiers are long gone, but the seeds are moving on to a new life. Thirty years after their discovery, on the Jewish new year of trees (Tu Bishvat), Dr. Elaine Solowey soaked three Judean date palm seeds in a solution of fertilizers and hormones. Then she planted  them at a desert kibbutz. Six weeks later, one had come up and started forming fronds; by June 2008, depending on whose report you read, it was four feet (1.4 meters) or five feet (1.5 meters) high, with nearly a dozen fronds.

“Methuselah” (the tree is named after the oldest person in the Bible) broke a previous record of old-seed-sprouting: a 1,300-year-old Chinese lotus seed. The Judean date palm may be younger than some ancient grain seeds that have been sprouted, though. Nobody knows yet whether Methuselah will bear fruit;  as with many ancient plants, date trees are dioecious, with male and female flowers on separate trees. You can see it pictured in its smaller stages here.

Judean date palms were an important part of ancient Judean culture – so important that they became a symbol of Judea itself. When the Romans invaded, they found forests of 80-foot date palms, part of a fruit-export business, and a source of shade and shelter as well as food for the residents.

Any sweet-fruit-bearing tree is important, not only for the candy rush but for the things you can make from fermenting and processing their sugars: vinegar (for disinfection and food preservation) and alcohol (no need to describe its uses, I think). The rest of the tree was used to make furniture, rope, fuel, and packing material.

Probably because of their generous gifts to the people who grew them, Judean date palms  are were a symbol of grace and elegance in ancient Jewish culture; the name “Tamar” is derived from the date palm’s ancient Hebrew name. Judean date palms were also used medicinally, for anything from a hot sex life to tumors, heart problems to constipation. But by about 70 CE, when the Romans invaded for the second time, the date palm was on the decline; the fruit-export business had stopped. By 500 CE, the Judean date palm had disappeared.

Until now. Genetic tests show that its DNA is most closely related to an old Egyptian variety, Hayany. It may contribute endurance and disease resistance if it’s crossbred with other dates. (It seems as if it would certainly contribute to longevity.) Modern Israeli date palms are a strain originally from Iraq, which arrived in Israel via California. As far as anyone knows, they don’t have the medicinal qualities of the ancient Judean date palm.

In ancient Egypt, date seeds were placed in pharoahs’ tombs, symbolizing immortal life. Whether this refers to date’s medicinal powers, or just the everyday miracle of a plant’s ability to renew its own life, that practice gives resonance to the Judean date palm’s botanical name, Phoenix dactylifera. The fabulous Phoenix was able to burn itself at the end of its life – and then fly up, resurrected.

 JUNE: A MONTH TO HONOR WATER

In a way, my whole blog is about low-water gardening; that’s the reason I got involved with tulips, and I already loved natives and Mediterranean herbs. During June, my posts will all be about conserving water in the garden. This gives me scope to cover everything from containers to cityscapes, soil to site to sprays, and of course portraits of more of those stellar plants that spread their glories with little or no watering. (Hint: the “Wild Plants” category will give you quite a few more; so will the “Bulbs” category.)

I don’t have a greenhouse, but Peter Henderson had several. So I’m going to him for information on how to save water in a greenhouse.

Those of you who look askance at this old information: think about how much energy modern greenhouse systems often take. Should we turn up our noses at simple solutions if they work, and cost us less in water, time, energy, and money?

Henderson, one of the up-and-coming plantsmen of the 19th century, had an avid interest in solutions that saved all of those things. Managing a thriving nursery business in New Jersey, he felt he was growing in a climate most garden books don’t address, one that was hot and arid. Really, he was comparing his climate to Britain, where English-language gardening books came from. In 1874, U.S.-oriented garden books were still a novelty, though they’d been around since the 1840s (Henderson himself was one of the first in the field). Britain was the standard of reference for the English-speaking gardener.

OK, so compared to Britain, New Jersey is certainly hot, but arid? Anyone who’s sweated softly through the hot steam that is summer air in New Jersey, and seen the basement dehumidier tank fill in half a day, will wonder at that idea. I think he meant that it rains less than it does in Britain. The state of New Jersey’s climate is useful information when considering Henderson’s greenhouse methods, because you know they work in very humid and hot environments.

“A point indispensable in our hot and arid climate is, that all plants in the green-house should stand on close benches, overlaid with sand or ashes, or some such material. This keeps plants moist and prevents the plants from suffering, if any omission occurs in watering. We know that the practice in many places is entirely different from this, the plants being stood on benches of open slat-work. No plant can be kept healthy in such a place, unless with at least double the labor of watering necessary with those standing on sand. This, like many other of our mistakes, is copied from a mode pursued in England, where a colder, moister, and less sunny climate may make it a necessary practice.”

Interestingly, most greenhouses still use the open slatwork benches, or something akin to them. Maybe the U.S. is still in allegiance to England, at least as far as gardening is concerned. Or maybe there are climates where Henderson’s method just doesn’t work. But it sure seems worth a try in places where greenhouse plants suffer from heat and dryness in summer.

For keeping the plants cool, Henderson recommended a then-new ventilation system which opened greenhouse sashes, a single crank-lever serving them all. I’m not sure if Henderson used this method, but old-time greenhouse keepers often painted whitewash on the windows in summer for shade. (Whitewash is a combination of powdered lime and water, and was used as a cheap-and-easy paint on farms for ages.) Whitewash is easily scraped off when cold weather comes again; it’s basically just sprayed-on lime powder, and whatever scrapings are left will actually be good for your plants.

What are your own low-tech greenhouse secrets? When I have a greenhouse, I don’t want it to be a water and energy hog. So I’m collecting information.

When Rev. Wilks noticed a different kind of corn poppy in his garden, he decided to save the seed. Unlike most pure-flaming-red corn poppies, this one had a thin white edge.

Year after year, he planted from these seeds, saving more seed from the ones that showed the most unusual colorings and characteristics.

This old way of selecting seed takes time, but it led to the wonderful Shirley poppies, named after Rev. Wilks’s parish in Surrey. (Rev. Wilks also helped create the Shirley foxglove strain, still one of the finest today.)

Since 1880, when Wilks started out,  Shirley poppies have undergone even more transformations.

Originally, they started out as a flower that capitalized on the disturbed ground that farmers created when they sowed grain; that’s why they’re called corn poppies. (In Europe, corn is any grain; what we call corn in the U.S. is called maize in most of the rest of the world.)

The wild Papaver rhoeas is still a symbol for war veterans; in World War I, they filled the fields in southern France, where so many people died.

The poem In Flanders Field says: “In Flanders fields the poppies blow/Between the crosses, row on row.” Probably in earlier times these flowers had associations with death and resurrection, since they die back every year, then come back so spectacularly from the tiny hard seeds in late spring.

After Wilks created the strain of Shirley poppies, artist Sir Cedric Morris selected his own strain, ‘Mother of Pearl’, from his Shirley poppy seed.

I grew ‘Mother of Pearl’ which has mostly pastel tints, but also reverts to the original red form.

I could use the rainy season to water and grow them, without doing any watering of my own. Papaver rhoeas is a Mediterranean plant, like most spring bulbs and herbs that are popular in the western world.

‘Mother of Pearl’ grew almost chest-high, and lasted a few weeks.

Unfortunately, I can no longer find ‘Mother of Pearl’.

But that’s all right. ‘Falling in Love’, a new introduction to poppy culture, is also quite beautiful, and shares some of ‘Mother of Pearl’s’  pastel traits – as well as their tendency to revert to pure red. All of the pictures in this post are of different versions of ‘Falling in Love’.

All Papaver rhoeas cultivars are excellent low-water plants. They germinate well in cool, rainy weather; I plant them in fall or early winter, and they oblige in late spring and early summer, a few weeks of luminescent bloom. Sometimes, if it’s hot and dry, I give them a little water to encourage them to last longer.

Mixing the tiny seed with dry organic flower fertilizer distributes seed better; I put about a teaspoon of seeds in a handful of fertilizer. Otherwise, I tend to get clumps of short, stunted flowers, and lots of space in between.

Shirley poppies have come so far that the original color combination Rev. Wilks noticed has been reversed.

When my ‘Falling in Love’ poppies finish, I’ll be sure to collect the seed.

I’ll be curious to see what comes of my own seed selection.

One of the reasons I coveted this plant was the memory of some friends here, years ago, who had a beautiful garden. Papaver orientale was one of their volunteer plants; it came up and gave a fine bright display every late spring without any care or watering whatever.

Since I’m easily infatuated by plants that give joy with little or no work from me, I took note. Papaver orientale was a plant to covet; reading catalogues, I found the lovely salmon-pink Victoria Louise, and knew she was it.

I’ve recently found that this casual use of oriental poppy wasn’t original with my friends. In 1874, The Journal of Horticulture, Cottage gardener, and Country Gentlemen said, ‘The double varieties of Papaver orientale, of which there are many colors, are very ornamental, and are useful for sowing in rough corners, where they often make a display without trouble.’

It’s interesting to know there were double versions of this poppy back then; I haven’t seen any modern ones.

But perhaps they are in the phenomenal list of Papaver orientale provided at Plantaholic. Until I read the Plantaholic site, I hadn’t realized there were quite so very many oriental poppy varieties; they have 150 types, and breeders are working all the time, making sturdier stems, longer flowering, and a list of other desirable traits.

To me, the most desirable traits of Papaver orientale are their toughness (a zone range from 3 to 9 helps testify to that), their beauty, and their willingness to bloom freely without extra water from me.  An extra bonus is some of their medicinal qualities; studies   show that Papaver orientale can act as a central nervous system depressant and stimulant; that it’s a sudorific (that means it makes you sweat) and good for heart tumors. (Just a reminder: Papaver orientale is not the poppy that opium comes from. That’s another species, Papaver somniferum.)

Papaver orientale is easy to grow with little or no water because it’s another Mediterranean plant; the Mediterranean has the same rainy winters and dry summers my area does. In its wild form, Papaver orientale is native to northwestern Iran, northeastern Turkey, and the Caucasus: Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia.

According to Digging Dog nursery, the variety ‘Victoria Louise’ goes back to 17th century Armenia. I wasn’t quite sure, though, if they were referring to this cultivar or Papaver orientale in general. It seems to me that there would be much earlier records on Papaver orientale than that, since the Emirates and the Ottoman Empire (which once encompassed all these countries) were plant-mad cultures. Our own garden records are often so eurocentric that they disregard the work of other cultures altogether, so it’s hard to know.

In any case, this western Asian plant has made itself so at home in North America that, in some places, it has naturalized. (I’ve never seen this, but it was on the government botany site, so it must be right, right? Has our government ever lied to us?)

If you get seeds, I would follow nature’s advice and plant them in fall. I was lucky enough to get my plant from a local grower (that means I’m more likely to get a plant that does well in my area); I have such a small garden, I often get only specimens of each plant. It seems silly to buy seeds if I want only one.

Papaver orientale is a tough plant; its zone range testifies to that: zones 3 to 9. It does need some winter chill to do well, so it might have a hard time in climates that get any warmer.

Each flower gave a little extra show; after the petals drop, the puffy almost-furry flower center looks like a flower in itself (a scabiosa on steroids, maybe).

One of the things that helps Papaver orientale be so water-thrifty is its fleshy taproot, which acts both as storage for moisture and a deep-level moisture extractor. I have been known to water poppies if we have a warm spring spell, just so they last longer, but it’s not necessary for plant survival.

The One Stop Poppy Shoppe (more on this below) says that Victoria Louise goes well with rose-red, violet-blue, and soft blue. I also found that it went very nicely in a container with silver-green wormwood (Artemesia absinthium), another plant that needs very little water to thrive (and can survive with none). Both plants also need good drainage, a very common requirement for plants who sail through dry summers without water.

Easy, flashily beautiful, and water-saving: Victoria Louise is a good candidate for a water-saving garden, in containers and out of them.

Poppy bonuses:

One Stop Poppy Shoppe  This link will get you to their multitudinous oriental poppy seed selection, but they have  many species and varieties. Fun to browse.

Sylvia’s black-and-white oriental poppy