“Few relishes are more appreciated than the Cucumber and those who like it generally contrive to have a long supply of tender fruits by sowing successionally in winter and spring.” — Wright Encyclopedia of Gardening

Cucumbers come in an amazing variety of shapes and sizes, from the diminutive Gherkin (great for pickling) to the smooth-skinned Long English variety, best for greenhouse plantings but most varieties will produce prickly-skinned fruit for several weeks through to the end of the summer and into the fall, if your region is free of frosts. The common cucumber, Cucumis safivus is, according to Thomas Bridgeman’s Kitchen Gardener’s Instructor (1847), native to the East Indies, introduced to England in 1573.  Bridgeman also states, ”In March they are sold in the London Markets for a guinea a dozen; and in August and September for a penny a dozen”  showing the higher cost for forced, out-of-season produce.

In addition to being tasty, cucumbers have long been celebrated for personal beauty. Think cucumber masks are new? Culpeper’s Complete Herbal, published in 1814 suggests that “The face being washed with their juice, cleanses the skin, and is excellent good for hot rheums in the eyes.” The manual also offers, “Take the Cucumbers and bruise them well, and distill the water from them … The face being washed with the same water, cures the reddest face that is; it is also excellently good for sun-burning, freckles and morphew.”

Aside: morphew is an archaic term for blisters that result from scurvy. Ew.

illustration from the 1814 edition of Culpeper's complete herbal.

Feverfew (Tanacetum partheneum or Chrysanthymum partheneum) a.k.a. Fetherfew, Featherfew has been used for centuries as a treatment for migraines. John Hill championed it in The British Herbal, 1772, “In the worst headaches this herb exceeds whatever else is known.” A century earlier, Culpeper stated that, in addition to being helpful post-childbirth, feverfew

… is effectual for all pains in the head coming of a cold cause, the herb being bruised and applied to the crown of the head : as also for the vertigo, that is, a running or swimming of the head. The decoction thereof, drank warm, and the herb bruised, with a few corns of bay-salt, and applied to the wrists before the coming of the ague fits, does take them away.

Some texts also suggest making a tea, much like chamomile as the plants are related.  The active ingredient in supplements made from feverfew is parthenolide which, according to Manitoba Agriculture, varies widely among genetic lines. For this reason, it is not expected that the results will be the same for every user of fresh feverfew.

To process the herb for storage and later use, it can be dried and ground into powder. Again according to Manitoba Agriculture,

Feverfew should be dried on screens out of direct sunlight for 10 – 14 days. Feverfew leaf, the only part used in registered anti-migraine preparations, is used in powdered form, best produced by a shear mill. For homeopathic purposes, a tincture can be prepared. The leaf material should be stored in a cool, dark area as it has been found that dried feverfew leaf loses at least 20% of its parthenolide content in the first year and more than 50% after two years of storage unprotected from heat and light.

photo credit Ali Graney, Flickr.

While the plant does grow wild, Ada Teetgen reminds us that it is “not common enough in the wild state to repay collection” but rather should be cultivated. However, she cautions us that,

Few medicinal herbs, properly speaking, are garden plants. They are “chlidren of nature” and in all probability the less gardening to which they are subjected once they are transplanted the better. Most of them are perennials, and are quite equal to taking care of themselves year by year, provided they are weeded and properly protected.

The good news is that feverfew is tolerant of poor soil and is drought-resistant but to prevent it from taking over your garden, it should be cut back in the fall. Happily, its daisy-like flowers also look lovely in containers along with other herbs or edible flowers such as calendula. Constraining the plant to containers will also help to keep it from spreading too far afield.

photo credit Cheryl DeWolfe

Is there anything more heartbreaking than the sight of seedlings, stripped of their leaves overnight by slugs?

In the Wright Encyclopedia of Gardening (1933), Walter P. Wright has this to say about slugs and snails,

Gardeners are not yet satisfied of the useful part played by the slug in the economy of Nature.  Knowing it as a voracious feeder on young plants, they have classified it as an enemy that must be rigorously repressed. But the slug takes a good deal of subduing. Nocturnal in habits, clever at finding hiding-places, it often ends triumphant.

Not exactly fighting words. Mrs Jane Loudon, in Gardening for Ladies (1869) was more blunt, calling slugs and snails “the terror of all gardeners.” She continues, “the destruction they effect in some seasons in small gardens is almost beyond the bounds of credulity.”

Mrs. Loudon suggests that ladies encourage birds to the garden, as they “live almost entirely on insects and destroy great numbers every year,” but I’m not convinced that will do much to combat slugs — especially here on the “Wet Coast!”

Wright suggests using alum, burnt lime, or lime-water:

[put] a lump of fresh lime as big as a coco-nut in a pail of water, straining off the liquid a few hours afterwards, and watering with it at night , 2 or 3 nights in succession.

Modern gardeners would not be advised to do this, however, as lime is best added to the garden after the growing season.

Wright has a few more tricks up his sleeve, though. He also suggests using “fresh brewer’s grains,”  bran “damped with vinegar” or orange peel as bait then checking after dark — and presumably killing any slugs that take the bait. He also recommends the “V.T.H. slug trap, obtainable from large seedsmen.”

A quick web search turns up commercial products (both organic and chemical, the latter not recommended for use in food gardens), copper barriers,  loose eggshells, coffee grounds, and various traps; the Weekend Gardener has a great round-up of methods. Another article, on PlanTea, suggests that brewed coffee, rather than grounds, is more effective as it is the caffeine that repels the slug.

Ultimately though, almost every site recommends the same best practice: hand-picking. While not for the squeamish, it is certainly the most practical. Good luck!

photo credit: Cheryl DeWolfe

One of my favourite poems by William Carlos Williams features the plum:

This is just to say

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

How can you not fall in love with a fruit that evokes such an image? Plums are a stone fruit, like cherries, peaches and apricots — in fact “pluots” are a hybrid between plums and apricots. A south-facing wall that reflects heat will provide the largest fruits but plums do well in almost any location that gets at least a few hours of direct sun.

In A Treatise of Fruit Trees (1757),  suggests a wall with late afternoon sun in its plan for a small (two acre) kitchen garden:

The wall C receives but little sun, for it shines not upon it till three in the afternoon; but it may serve for fruits which ripen in summer, as cherries, plums, and some kinds of pears.

The book further  suggests that by training trees against walls will provide protection from wind in addition to the reflected heat.

There are by some reports as many as 2000 varieties of plums and most can be traced back to either the European (Prunus domestica) or Japanese (Prunus salicina) group. In general, Japanese plums are round where European plums are egg shaped, often with a point at the bottom end. Japanese plums are grown more widely in the U.S., but in Canada you can find heritage European plums just as easily. Damsons and Green Gages (a.k.a Reine-Claudes) (Prunus insititia), both of which are prized for jam and jelly making, are often grouped with the European plums.

The popularity of plums has led to many hybrids and varieties, making some trees a challenge to identify. At the left is an illustration from a booklet promoting several new varieties introduced by Luther Burbank through Fancher Creek Nursuries in Fresno, California, at the turn of the last century. Along with Gaviota, the brochure lists Formosa, Vesuvius, Santa Rosa, and Rutland Plumcot.

Despite the number of varieties in existence, only a handful are available commercially for orchards or through nurseries for the home garden. If you are lucky enough to have a heritage variety in your yard (or your neighbour’s yard), treat it well. Make sure it gets ample sunlight and water, and keep it well-pruned to ensure its continued fruit production. Plums generally give fruit for 20-40 years, depending on the variety, but may live another 40 years past that in “retirement.”

While researching this post, I came across a wonderful post on making sugarplums — plums preserved in sugar — the kind that dance through the dreams of children in Clement C. Moore’s “Twas the Night Before Christmas.” As cooking goes hand in hand with food gardening, you can expect more links to The Historical Cookery Page in future Garden History posts.

In addition to ensuring the plants are hardy for the region, the practice of seed saving also ensures a greater variety to the global seed stock. At a time when corporations like Monsanto expressly forbid seed saving by farmers using their “products,” seed saving has also become a political act.

Back in 1603 it was not political; Richard Gardiner, in Profitable Instructions for Kitchin Gardens, has this to say about “The best way to obtaine seede Beanes for Gardens”:

There be three kindes of Beanes, whereof there is but one perfect good for Gardens, that is the great and large white Beane: and when your Beanes are fully ripe, choose yearely the greatest of them for seede, and you shall finde great profit in so doing, if you have cause to sowe many of them, and your Beanes will prove very profitable in the common wealth.

About lettuce, George Johnson had this to say in The Kitchen Garden (1836):

To produce seed, some of the finest and most perfect plants of each variety that bave survived the winter, or from the forwardest sowing of the year should be selected. The seed from any that have run up prematurely cannot be depended upon. All other plants must be removed from their neighbourhood, themselves being left at least a foot apart; neither is it allowable for two varieties to flower near each other, or only mongrel varieties will be obtained. Each stem is advantageously attached to a stake as a support in tempestuous weather. It is to be observed that the branches must be gathered as the seed ripens upon them and not left until the whole is ready, as some will ripen two or three weeks before others, and consequently the first and best seed will be shed and lost. It must be particularly well dried before it is beaten out and stored.

Both Gardiner and Johnson describe methods for saving seeds of the most common vegetables and herbs. For the modern equivalents, check the International Seed Saving Institute (ISSI) which also classifies plants in to beginner, experienced and expert levels for seed saving.  Closer to home, read and watch how it’s done at Salt Spring Seeds.

photo credit: Cheryl DeWolfe

One of my favourite things in the world is strawberry-rhubarb crumble and I was very excited on moving into our new home to find rhubarb growing in the back of the lot. According to the neighbours, the last owners had tried to eradicate it — I’m glad they were not successful. Now you know how I ended up with rhubarb in my yard, but how did it get to North America?

Rhubarb is a perennial that grows from a rhizome  – like ginger and irises. There are actually several varieties, all of which originated in Asia — the most famous having been used for centuries in China as a natural laxative.  The varieties grown in North America are descended from English varieties which most likely came from Siberia/Russia. Fred S. Thompson says, in Rhubarb or Pie Plant Culture (1894):

The rhubarb commonly grown for commercial purposes under the name of Pie Plant is called by the botanist “Rheum Rhaponticum”; it is also called English Rhubarb and is a native of southern Siberia in Asia. Having been cultivated early in the seventeenth century in Padua, whence it was brought to England, the first plant being raised there about the year sixteeen-hundred and twenty-eight.

Called the Pie Plant in North America, it proved popular for just that — rhubarb pie — and one prime factor was noted in Practical strawberry and general berry fruit culture (1902):

The leaves grow out very fast and will, on good soil, yield a liberal and continuous supply. The same roots last for years,  and  yield their crop every spring. Once tried, no housewife will be without it.

In Victoria, Rhubarb is ready for harvest in late spring or early summer; it can be planted in late fall through to early spring, as long as the ground can be worked for planting. What I didn’t know, is that you can force rhubarb. Forcing is often done commercially but similar methods can be used by home growers. In Winter forcing of rhubarb (1927), C.B. Sayre explains:

For home use rhubarb may be forced in a cellar… After the roots have been frozen, they are bedded close together on the cellar floor and dirt is filled in around the roots. Ashes or sand may be used in place of soil, as the function of the soil is merely to hold moisture for the roots. Four or five large roots will supply all the rhubarb an average family will use during the winter. The roots should be placed in a darkened part of the cellar and protected from direct light. A subdued light does no harm, but direct light will result in large leaves and crooked stems, because the stalks will bend toward the light. By placing brown paper over the windows, a satisfactory subdued light may be secured that will not affect the growth.

I’m pretty sure that I’m OK with the growing season we have here, but it’s still good to know. Another thing that’s good to know? In the United States, rhubarb is officially recognized as a fruit (as far as taxation is concerned) even though botanically, it’s a vegetable.

There are some warnings about rhubarb, however. For starters, if you aren’t familiar with the plant, please don’t try to eat the leaves: they are toxic. Another warning comes from Ada Teetgen in Profitable Herb Growing and Collecting (1919) who states that “The garden Rhubarb ought to be avoided as a food by gouty people.” Finally, lest we forget that several varieties are prized for their laxative effects, go easy on the pie.

With the current popularity of food gardening, a common question from beginners is “How much space do I need?”  The answer is, as Johnson suggests, impossible to determine without considering a number of other factors. Johnson suggests a few:

…it ought to be proportionate to the size of the family, their partiality for vegetables, and the fertility of the soil.

It may serve as some criterion to state that the management of a kitchen garden occupying the space of an acre, affords ample employment for a gardener, who will also require an assistant at the busiest periods of the year. In general a family of four persons, exclusive of servants, requires a full rood of open kitchen garden.

A rood, in case you were curious (I was) is a quarter of an acre where an acre is divided in four strips instead of four squares [Land Measurement]. This is the same amount of land suggested by the US Department of Agriculture for family Victory Gardens. In 1948, Henry Teuscher suggested that a family of five could build a suitable vegetable garden on a city lot measuring 25×100 ft (if my math is right, that’s about a third of the size suggested above) [Montreal Botanical Garden Bulletin no. 3] which may have more to do with agricultural improvements over the years than anything else.

However, I think Ida Bennett says it best when she states that the location of the vegetable garden, “is a point which admits of little discussion or advice, as, in the majority of cases, circumstances decide this arbitrarily” [The Vegetable Garden, 1908]. In other words, work with whatever you have. If all you have room for is a single container on the deck of a condo, fill it with herbs or mixed greens; if you have lawn to spare, start digging!

photo credit Cheryl DeWolfe

Tent caterpillars (a term used to describe more than 20 species in the genus Malacosoma )  are easily recognized by their bright colours and the distinct spun-web tents that provide shelter when they aren’t defoliating trees.

When I was little, I remember my Dad taking care to prune nests of tent caterpillars out of our fruit trees then throw them all into the incinerator. I’m pretty sure there were curse words uttered in the process. It’s not a particularly modern method but it’s still one of the most effective ways to deal with an invasion.

A hundred years ago, however, the most common suggestion I’ve found was to spray the tree with “arsenate of lead” which is exactly what it sounds like — a compound made with lead and arsenic. That people sprayed on fruit trees and other food plants.

As early as 1919, studies showed that regular washing of food was not removing the poisons but the pesticide was used for many more years before a replacement was found: DDT [Western Washington University Tree Fruit Research & Extension Center].

Happily, not every garden book suggested chemicals.  Walter P. Wright, in Pictorial Practical Fruit Growing: a concise manual, suggests that,

the best way of dealing with the Lackey is to look out for the egg patches at pruning time, cut off the twigs, and burn them. As a rule, a great number are not found in each tree, and consequently the labour is not great. When however, it is remembered that each patch may yield a large number of caterpillars, it is seen that the work is worth doing.

The book includes this beautiful engraved print showing the life cycle of the Lackey moth (one of the tent caterpillar species found in England) including the egg patches:

Pictorial Practical Fruit Growing, p. 73

Mr. Wright also notes that “an old broom intelligently wielded facilitates the removal of many swinging caterpillars” although in my experience, tent caterpillars don’t swing as often as they creep.

In Manual of  Fruit Insects, Mark Vernon Slingerland and Cyrus Richard Crosby suggest another method for dealing with the tents:

The nests may be destroyed by wiping out with the hands. It should be done while the caterpillars are at home, which is usually the case during stormy weather and in the heat of the day. Burning out the nests is not to be recommended as there is the danger of injuring the tree; burned areas in the bark often develop cankers that may destroy the whole branch.

And here I thought it went without saying that you should prune them out before burning them.

This 1942 film produced by the US Department of Agriculture discusses the importance of Victory Gardens and encourages the whole family to pitch in — and they’d need to with a garden that size! I don’t know of many families now who have quite as much room as they have — about 1/4 of an acre.

A product of its time, this film also encourages the use of chemical sprays and fertilizers but that only adds to the allure for historians. Notice that the Victory Garden campaign was supported by the 4H club and branded as “Food for Freedom!”

Some statistics:

• In 1942, the program’s first year, about 15 million families planted victory gardens — in backyards, in empty lots, and even on city rooftops. [North Carolina Digital History -- 8.2 Victory Gardens]
• In 1943, 20 million victory gardens produced more than 40 percent of the fresh vegetables grown that year in the U.S. [North Carolina Digital History -- 8.2 Victory Gardens]
• By 1944 the value of home gardens was estimated at $68,000,000. [North Carolina Digital History -- 8.3 4-H and Home Demonstration Work during World War II]
• By the end of 1943, there were more than 200 000 victory gardens in Canada, producing about 550lb of produce each! [Home from the War: Victory Gardens]
• The number of gardens in Vancouver, including New Westminster, Burnaby, North and West Vancouver by the end of the year was 52,000; the value of the food they produced in the 1943 season was estimated (in the dollar value of the time) as $4 million.[City Farmer: Garden Warriors of 1942]