{"id":7922,"date":"2011-12-29T02:13:00","date_gmt":"2011-12-29T07:13:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2020-08-13T18:23:12","modified_gmt":"2020-08-13T22:23:12","slug":"growing-like-its-1855-inspiration-from","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gardern.co.za\/2011\/12\/growing-like-its-1855-inspiration-from\/","title":{"rendered":"Growing like it’s 1855 – Inspiration from the past for a new gardening year"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A WARDIAN CASE IS DIFFERENT THAN A <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n \n<\/div>\n \nAt the end of each year, I treat myself to a small selection of rare gardening books. Like many gardeners, I prefer to choose my own books, as many of you would understand, I am not the easiest person to buy a plant book for!. This year, I’ve found 5 very nice vintage gardening books, all printed between 1802 and 1908. , and most focus on the subject of growing potted plants indoors, either under glass in some of the country’s first greenhouses, or in conservatories. I find the subject of 18th century greenhouses appealing for many obvious reasons, but mainly, as a New Englander with a glass house, living just outside of Boston ( where many of these books were published), I can relate to this desire people had for ‘keeping a glass house’ in the middle of winter where one can grow tender plants, trees and shrubs collected from around the world. <\/div>\n \n<\/div>\n <\/p>\n \n<\/div>\n \n<\/div>\n \n<\/div>\n \nIn the 1800’s, a glass structure in which to grow plants was a luxury item indeed, yet they were far more common than today. Most every estate or large home had some sort of conservatory or greenhouse, but they also very necessary for florists, farmers and produce stores, for providing a constant supply of fresh flowers. veggies and fruit for the markets. Otherwise, the greater population would need to survive on winter storage vegetables like roots, turnips, cabbages, carrots and potatoes.<\/div>\n \n<\/div>\n \n Oranges could be shipped via trains, and Pine Apples by ship, but fresh flowers had to be locally grown, and some crops such as oranges could be grown for both their blossoms ( for winter weddings) and for fruit. If one wanted any sort of fresh green vegetable, it had to be forced or ‘forwarded’ in a hot bed,or grown under glass in a greenhouse. A New England farm always kept both cold frames and hot beds ( lined with fresh manure to heat the roots), where they grew both late and early crops of many vegetables, but with those with horticultural interests, such methods were also used for forcing rhubarbs, growing violets, and forwarding Tuber Roses, a favorite flower of the time around the Civil War. If one wanted orchids, and if one had deep pockets, a hot house was needed, or a ‘stove house’. where temperatures were kept as high as 110 deg. F in the day, for growing equatorial plants. These were rare, and only the very wealthy could afford their maintenance. A proper greenhouse would be kept at 40-50 degrees ( like mine) and many plants could be kept throughout the long, snowy winter with a heated brick flue and a fire.<\/div>\n \n<\/div>\n \n<\/div>\n \nMost of all, these books are showing me just how sophisticated people with the plants they attempted to grow indoors. Many chapters deal with plant windows, forcing on a windowsill, and the culture of Wardian Cases ( precursor to the modern terrarium). Plants for homes could be found via mail catalogs and in the large east coast cities around the mid 1800’s. These books are so inspiring, that I think I will refocus much of my blogging from growing rare plants, to how people grew plants 250 years ago. <\/div>\n \n<\/div>\n \n I will be sharing with you such things as how to grow crops of cut-flower Tuberoses in a method I never saw before, how to master Sea Kale shoots, how to create organic coldframes with ‘paper glass’ created from rag paper and boiled linseed oil, how to force rhubarb ( one day in 1851, a cart in Boston with fresh, forced, blanched rhubarb in January sold more then 2 tons worth!), and many other lost or forgotten methods that gardeners with a curious mind, will appreciate. <\/div>\n \n<\/div>\n \n<\/span><\/div>\n \n \nPlants were often kept in 17th and 18th century homes in the north, and many thrived where they could not today, since nights became cold due to the fact that all homes were heated by fires. The selection and variety of plants available was far more extensive than I even imagined. Even last night, I spent 3 hours on Google trying to find sources for many of the plants, which are available, but not being grown by anyone doing mailorder. It is ironic that even in our modern world of air freight, that the 1850 gardener – with his world of steam ships and trains actually had access to far more plant material, than a modern greenhouse enthusiast does today. \n <\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n One book, has sample ads from Boston nurserymen and seed catalogs, some offering as many as 1300 varieties of just named forms of Anemone and Ranunculus which could be imported from Holland. Frittilaria, Cholchicum, Clivia nobilis, Ixia, and many Australian shrubs were also offered as ‘in-stock items. Again, I remind you – this was before the Civil War! Maybe I am just naive, but I was shocked to imagine such material even being introduced at that time to the American gardener. Even more impressive is the diversity of species suggested for greenhouse culture in these books (many are still hard-to-find rare bulbs which continue today to be elusive in the trade like Lachenalia, Ornithogalum, Massonia, Brunsvigia, Boophane and Nerine). Sadly, these were all wild collected, a practice not encouraged today. Yet seeds are also listed.<\/span><\/p>\n Many of those late 18<\/span>th<\/span><\/sup> century and early nineteenth century greenhouse shrubs arrived on whaling and merchant ships who often had natural history collectors on board as their routes traversed the unexplored regions of Australia, the south seas, Chile, Argentina and the cape of South Africa. I am about to invest in a year full of new ventures with plants, and one that you will be able to share with me as I experiment with recreating old and forgotten methods of propagation, the culture of Tube Roses in pots and trellis, on forcing Rhubarb and Sea Kale, on building forcing frames from paper coated in boiled linseed oil, on hot beds, cold frames, blanching cardoons, and training topiaries in the old style. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n A WARDIAN CASE IS DIFFERENT THAN A At the end of each year, I treat myself to a small selection of rare gardening books….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7923,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[77,60],"class_list":["post-7922","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-style","tag-techniques"],"yoast_head":"\n |