Seeds & Plants - Jefferson's "Belles of the Day" at Monticello - Bulbs in the Garden

Thomas Jefferson by Tadeusz Andrzej Bonawentura Kosciuszko (1746-1817)

Thomas Jefferson's "Belles of the Day" at Monticello

". . . the flowers come forth like the belles of the day, have their short reign of beauty and splendour, and retire, like them, to the more interesting office of reproducing their like. The Hyacinths and Tulips are off the stage, the Irises are giving place to the Belladonnas, as these will to the Tuberoses, etc. ...  - Jefferson to Anne Cary Bankhead. Monticello. May 26, 1811

Thomas Jefferson wrote this often-quoted passage to his granddaughter as a means of instructing her on the ephemeral nature of beauty, the normal transitions in life, and the inevitable passage of time. That he used flowering bulbs as his metaphor is fitting. Jefferson often looked to the natural world for descriptive inspiration, and bulbs by comparison, through their unfolding transformations, compress the stages of a human lifetime into a single season.

Bulbs -- often called bulbous or flowering roots in the 18th century -- were common in American gardens by Jefferson's day. Their light-weight, easy portability during dormancy, as well as their ability to be shipped dry, were key factors in their dissemination. Because they could be layered into boxes, wrapped in pouches, stuffed in satchels, and tucked in pockets, they were ideally suited for the vagaries of transcontinental and transatlantic voyages. They were, undoubtedly, flowers that caught Jefferson's attention early on. The very first entry in his Garden Book, a diary of gardening activities kept for nearly sixty years, reads: "Purple hyacinth begins to bloom." This observation -- made on March 30th, 1766 -- was followed a week later with "Narcissus and Puckoon open." By the next year Jefferson, ever the scientist, began charting the regularity of their blooming periods, noting that both the hyacinth and narcissus were flowering on March 23rd, a full week earlier. Bulbs were the primary focus in his "Calendar of the bloom of flowers in 1782," where he, in a sense, graphically portrays the passage he later wrote to his granddaughter by showing the overlapping sequence of blossoms from the narcissus, jonquils, and hyacinths of March and April to the anemones, ranunculus, and tulips of May and on to the lilies of June.

Jefferson rarely specified beyond the genus of his bulbs, offering few clues as to the dozens of varieties or cultivars he might have grown. Yet, there is evidence of the sophistication of his taste and the tastes of the times. For example, Jefferson often sought the more highly developed florist types of flowers. He consistently ordered the double forms of anemones, Persian Ranunculus, and tuberose and, while in Paris in 1786, he sent double tulip bulbs to Francis Eppes at Monticello. He listed double hyacinths in separate colors of pink, yellow, white, blue, and red, and, in 1812, he received from Philadelphia nurseryman Bernard McMahon "3 Double blue Hyacinths, named Alamode by the Dutch, remarkably early & proper for forcing." Today, double hyacinths are rare commercially and very expensive. Likewise, his "1 Root silver striped Crown Imperial,"(Fritillaria imperialis) is now virtually a museum piece nurtured in Dutch botanical gardens.

If frequency is an indicator of preference, then the tulip, which is mentioned more than any other flower in the Garden Book, should be considered Jefferson's all time favorite. Jefferson was not unique in this, even in America. In the 1730s Williamsburg's John Custis received "Double Tulips" and "early tulips" from his mentor Peter Collinson of London, and a portrait of Custis clearly shows him holding a well-worn book with the words "of the Tulip" legible on its spine and a streaked tulip blossom beside it. Tulipomanea, a 17th-century European tulip "fever" where fortunes could be made or lost through the purchase of a single bulb, had long subsided from its peak in the 1630s. Yet, tulips retained universal appeal and remained the intense focus of florists well into the 19th century. Again, thanks to the discriminating Bernard McMahon, Jefferson was receiving some choice forms by 1806, when a shipment included such classics as: Bizarre (mustard yellow flowers marked red or brownish-black), Bybloemen (white ground marked deep rich purple), and Rose (white feathered with red or rose markings). Also in the package were the Baguet Rigauts and Primo Baguets, which had rosy-purple or brownish-red markings on a white ground with pure white bases. According to Anna Pavord, in The Tulip: The Story of a Flower that has Made Men Mad, the Baguets, a Flemish specialty, were amongst the most sought-after tulips of the late 17th and early 18th centuries. They were wide-cupped, round-petalled flowers, said to be capable of holding "a pint of wine" in their blossoms. While we can be impressed with Jefferson's florist tulips, the major caveat of these types was that they were not really meant for the garden. Pavord stresses that they were aristocrats, meant to be cosseted, covered, and protected from harm. Better suited for the garden were the "2 Roots Parrot Tulips ... red, green and yellow mixed" sent by McMahon in 1812.

When Jefferson divided his winding flower walk on the West Lawn into 10-foot compartments in 1812, bulbs were a major consideration in the planting scheme. Each of the 87 beds (43 on the North side and 44 on the South) were numbered such that: "the odd compartments are for bulbs requird. taking up the even ones for seeds & permanent bulbs." Thus, Jefferson tried to insure that each type of bulb would be cared for appropriately, and obvious perennials like daffodils would be left undisturbed. Bulbs were precious things then. Unlike today, they could not be replaced readily, and they required proper storage and cultural attention in order to multiply. An exchange between Jefferson and his daughter Martha in 1816 clearly reveals this arduous process. Jefferson, writing from his occasional retreat, Poplar Forest, on November 10th, asked that his faithful gardener, Wormley, bring "some of the hardy bulbous roots" divided from the Monticello collection: "... daffodils, jonquils, Narcissuses, flags & lillies of different kinds, refuse hyacinths &c. ...." Ten days later Martha responded that it was already too late to send all that he listed because the roots were actively growing, but she sent instead "... a number of offsets of tulips and hyacinths ... the smaller ones are not blooming roots yet, but will be in a year or 2. the tulips & hyacinths are mixed but Cornelia knows them all ...." The waiting was always part of the experience.

This leads to the natural question: what did beds of flowering bulbs really look like in early American gardens? Of all modern-day attempts to recreate 18th- and 19th-century flower plantings, the ubiquitous bulb display, featuring thousands of uniformly spaced blossoms, is probably the most misleading. Jefferson's modest planting of 50 ranunculus, 24 anemones, 27 hyacinths, and 20 tulips in 1807, for example, would seem starkly weak in comparison, especially when considering Ann Cary Randolph's appraisal of the borders in March of the following year. She reported to her grandfather, who was still serving as President, that all the bulbs were "coming up very well particularly the tulips of which he [Burwell] counted at least forty flourishing ones." By April 15th, 1808, she further observed that "neither the hyacinths nor Tulips grow as regularly this spring as they did the last. Wormley in taking them up left some small roots in the ground which have come up about in the bed & not in the rows with the other."

Jefferson's interest in bulbs extended to native sorts, as well. Like his contemporary, Jean Skipwith of Prestwould Plantation in south central Virginia, Jefferson grew the spectacular American Turk's Cap or Spotted Canada Martagon (Lilium superbum), received from McMahon in 1812. Because Jefferson pre-dated the great wave of Japanese introductions by about fifty years, nursery lists such as McMahon's offered a combination of North American and European species. Thus, the "various sorts of lillies" he ordered included not only the European Turk's Cap (L. martagon) but also possibly any number of native species, such as the Canada Martagon (L. canadense). The White Lily (L. candidum) of Europe, which became known as the Madonna Lily later in the Victorian period, was likewise at Monticello and Prestwould. More unusual were the Atamasco Lily (Zephyranthes atamasco), a southeastern U.S. species of Rain Lily similar to the Z. candida, and the "Columbia Lily." The latter is believed to be a western species of Fritillaria (Fritillaria pudica) collected during the Lewis and Clark Expedition and planted at Monticello in 1807 as: "Lilly. the yellow of the Columbia. it's root a food of the natives." While this diminutive, yellow bell-like flower is prolific throughout the Northwest, it has proven impossible to grow in central Virginia.

It is always intriguing to speculate if any bulb colonies have survived. Although some species, such as Narcissus, are extremely long lived, there appear to be no ancient stands of daffodils remaining from Jefferson's time. One unusual species, however, still thrives in the Monticello landscape. The southern European Tassel Hyacinth, Muscari comosum, has spread so abundantly that it has naturalized in the flower gardens, down the slope to the kitchen garden, and throughout the fruit garden. Jefferson's 1782 reference to Feather Hyacinth blooming from mid May to mid June and the "6 Feathered Hyacinth roots, Hyacinthus monstrosus L." sent by McMahon in 1812 technically implies the Tassel Hyacinth's more showy cousin, Muscari comosum 'Plumosum', whose blossom has turned the purple-blue tassel or topknot into a feathery plume. Whether the common names were confused or the bulbs were mixed or both forms were planted is not clear, but the longevity of the naturalized colonies is certain.

For the most part, Jefferson's "belles of the day" were indeed temporary beauties during a fleeting chapter of his life. In a touching remembrance made by his granddaughter Ellen Randolph Coolidge, she describes the magical moments of her childhood when new beds were prepared for his flowers. "I remember the planting of the first hyacinths and tulips, and their subsequent growth .... There was Marcus Aurelius, and the King of the Gold Mine, the Roman Empress, and the Queen of the Amazons ...." Their winter-long anticipation was answered when one of the grandchildren would "discover the tender green breaking through the mould, and run to granpapa to announce, that we really believed Marcus Aurelius was coming up, or the Queen of the Amazons was above ground!" The entire family was in ecstacy "over the rich purple and crimson, or pure white, or delicate lilac, or pale yellow of the blossoms," and Jefferson would sympathize in their admiration and discuss new groupings, combinations, and contrasts. She concludes, "Oh, these were happy moments for us and for him!"

This joyful scene dissolved relatively quickly when, after Jefferson's death in 1826, curiosity and souvenir seekers came in droves for mementoes of the great Sage of Monticello. In 1827 Virginia Randolph Trist reported to her sister Ellen Coolidge that, sadly, "Mama's choicest flower roots have been carried off ... and everything and any thing that they fancied." In this, the conclusion of Jefferson's 1811 "belles of the day" letter to Anne Cary Bankhead seems all the more poignant as he himself accepts the inevitable: "... as your mamma has done to you, my dear Anne, as you will do to the sisters of little John, and as I shall soon and cheerfully do to you all in wishing you a long, long goodnight."

From The Twinleaf Journal by Peggy Cornett, Tho Jefferson Center for Historic Plants, January 2001

Research & images & much more are directly available from the Monticello.org website. 

Garden to Table - Home-Made Birch Tree Wine

 

John Greenwood (American artist, 1727-1792) Sea Captains Carousing, 1758.  Detail

Old-Time Recipes for Home Made Wines Cordials & Liqueurs 1909 by Helen S. Wright

BIRCH TREE WINE
The liquor of the birch-tree is to be obtained in the month of March, when the sap begins to ascend. One foot from the ground bore a hole in each tree, large enough to admit a faucet, and set a vessel under; the liquor will run for two or three days without hurting the tree. Having obtained a sufficient quantity, stop the holes with pegs. To each gallon of the liquor add one quart of honey, or two and one-half pounds of sugar. Boil together one hour, stirring it well. A few cloves may be added for flavor, or the rind of a lemon or two; and by all means one ounce of hops to four and one-half gallons of wine.  Work it with yeast, tun, and refine with isinglass. Two months after making, it may be drawn off and bottled, and in two months more will be fit for use, but will improve by keeping.

Old-Time Recipes for Home Made Wines is a cookbook for those who want to make their own wines & liqueurs from available ingredients, including fruits, flowers, vegetables, & shrubs from local gardens, farms, & orchards. It includes ingredients & instructions for making & fermenting spirits, from wine & ale to sherry, brandy, cordials, & even beer. 

Colonial Era Cookbooks

1615, New Booke of Cookerie, John Murrell (London) 

1798, American Cookery, Amelia Simmons (Hartford, CT)

1803, Frugal Housewife, Susannah Carter (New York, NY)

1807, A New System of Domestic Cookery, Maria Eliza Rundell (Boston, MA)

1808, New England Cookery, Lucy Emerson (Montpelier, VT)

Helpful Secondary Sources

America's Founding Food: The Story of New England Cooking/Keith Stavely and Kathleen Fitzgerald Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press, 2004.

Colonial Kitchens, Their Furnishings, and Their Gardens/Frances Phipps Hawthorn; 1972

Early American Beverages/John Hull Brown   Rutland, Vt., C. E. Tuttle Co 1996 

Early American Herb Recipes/Alice Cooke Brown  ABC-CLIO  Westport, United States

Food in Colonial and Federal America/Sandra L. Oliver

Home Life in Colonial Days/Alice Morse Earle (Chapter VII: Meat and Drink) New York : Macmillan Co., ©1926.

A Revolution in Eating: How the Quest for Food Shaped America/James E. McWilliams New York : Columbia University Press, 2005.

Geo Washington (1732-1799) - Conserving the Soil

George Washington as Farmer by Junius Brutus Stearns. 1851

George Washington: Farmer (1915) by Paul Leland Haworth (1876-1936) 

 

Conserving the Soil

The Revolution rudely interrupted Washington's farming experiments, & for eight long years he was so actively engaged in the grim business of checkmating Howe & Clinton & Cornwallis that he could give little time or thought to agriculture. For more than six years, in fact, he did not once set foot upon his beloved fields & heard of his crops, his servants & his live stock only from family visitors to his camps or through the pages of his manager's letters.

Peace at last brought him release. He had left Mount Vernon a simple country gentleman; he came back to it one of the most famous men in the world. He wasted no time in contemplating his laurels, but at once threw himself with renewed enthusiasm into his old occupation. His observation of northern agriculture & conversations with other farmers had broadened his views & he was more than ever progressive. He was now thoroughly convinced of the great desirability of grass & stock for conserving the soil & he was also wide awake to the need of better tools & methods & wished to make his estate beautiful as well as useful.

Much of his energy in 1784-85 was devoted to rebuilding his house & improving his grounds, & to his trip to his Ohio lands--all of which are described elsewhere. No diary exists for 1784 except that of the trip to the Ohio, but from the diary of 1785 we learn that he found time to experiment with plaster of Paris & powdered stone as fertilizers, to sow clover, orchard grass, guinea grass & peas & to borrow a scow with which to raise rich mud from the bed of the Potomac.

The growing poverty of his soil, in fact, was a subject to which he gave much attention. He made use of manure when possible, but the supply of this was limited & commercial fertilizers were unknown. As already indicated, he was beginning the use of clover & other grasses, but he was anxious to build up the soil more rapidly & the Potomac muck seemed to him a possible answer to the problem. There was, as he said, "an inexhaustible fund" of it, but the task of getting it on the land was a heavy one. Having heard of a horse-power dredge called the Hippopotamus that was in use on the Delaware River, he made inquiries concerning it but feared that it would not serve his purpose, as he would have to go from one hundred to eight hundred or a thousand yards from high water-mark for the mud--too far out for a horse to be available. Mechanical difficulties & the cost of getting up the mud proved too great for him--as they have proved too great even down to the present--but he never gave up the idea & from time to time tried experiments with small plots of ground that had been covered with the mud. His enthusiasm on the subject was so great that Noah Webster, of dictionary fame, who visited him in this period, says that the standing toast at Mount Vernon was "Success to the mud!"

Every scientific agriculturist knows that erosion is one of the chief causes of loss in soil fertility & that in the basins & deltas of streams & rivers there is going to waste enough muck to make all of our land rich. But the cost of getting this fertility back to the soil has thus far proved too great for us to undertake the task of restoration. It is conceivable, however, that the time may come when we shall undertake the work in earnest & then the dream of Washington will be realized.

The spring & summer of 1785 proved excessively dry, & the crops suffered, as they always do in times of drought. The wheat yield was poor & chinch bugs attacked the corn in such myriads that our Farmer found "hundreds of them & their young under the blades & at the lower joints of the Stock." By the middle of August "Nature had put on a melancholy look." The corn was "fired in most places to the Ear, with little appearance of yielding if Rain should now come & a certainty of making nothing if it did not."

Like millions of anxious farmers before & after him, he watched eagerly for the rain that came not. He records in his diary that on August 17th a good deal of rain fell far up the river, but as for his fields--it tantalizingly passed by on the other side, & "not enough fell here to wet a handkerchief." On the eighteenth, nineteenth & twenty-second clouds & thunder & lightning again awakened hopes but only slight sprinkles resulted. On the twenty-seventh nature at last relented and, to his great satisfaction, there was a generous downpour.

The rain was beneficial to about a thousand grains of Cape of Good Hope wheat that Washington had just sown & by the thirty-first he was able to note that it was coming up. For several years thereafter he experimented with this wheat. He found that it grew up very rank & tried cutting some of it back. But the variety was not well adapted to Virginia & ultimately he gave it up.

In this period he also tried Siberian wheat, put marl on sixteen square rods of meadow, plowed under rye, & experimented with oats, carrots, Eastern Shore peas, supposed to be strengthening to land, also rib grass, burnet & various other things. He planted potatoes both with & without manure & noted carefully the difference in yields. At this time he favored planting corn in rows about ten feet apart, with rows of potatoes, carrots, or peas between. He noted down that his experience showed that corn ought to be planted not later than May 15th, preferably by the tenth or perhaps even as early as the first, in which his practice would not differ much from that of to-day. But he came to an erroneous conclusion when he decided that wheat ought to be sown in August or at the latter end of July, for this was playing into the hands of his enemy, the Hessian fly, which is particularly destructive to early sown wheat. Later he seems to have changed his mind on that point, for near the end of his life he instructed his manager to get the wheat in by September 10th. Another custom which he was advocating was that of fall & winter plowing & he had as much of it done as time & weather would permit. All of his experiments in this period were painstakingly set down & he even took the trouble in 1786 to index his agricultural notes & observations for that year.

 "On sixteen square rod of ground in my lower pasture, I put 140 Bushels of what we call Marle viz on 4 of these, No. Wt. corner were placed 50 bushels--on 4 others So. Wt. corner 30 bushels--on 4 others So. Et. corner 40 bushels--and on the remaining 4-20 bushels. This Marle was spread on the rods in these proportions--to try first whether what we have denominated to be Marie possesses any virtue as manure--and secondly--if it does, the quantity proper for an acre." His ultimate conclusion was that marl was of little benefit to land such as he owned at Mount Vernon.

Many of his experiments were made in what he called his "Botanical Garden," a plot of ground lying between the flower garden & the spinner's house. But he had experimental plots on most or all of his plantations, & each day as he made the rounds of his estate on horseback he would examine how his plants were growing or would start new experiments.

One of Washington's successes was what he called a "barrel plough." At that time all seed, such as corn, wheat & oats had to be sown or dropped by hand & then covered with a harrow or a hoe or something of the kind. Washington tried to make a machine that would do the work more expeditiously & succeeded, though it should be said that his plans were not altogether original with him, as there was a plan for such a machine in Duhamel & another was published by Arthur Young about this time in the Annals of Agriculture, which Washington was now perusing with much attention. Richard Peters also sent yet another plan.

Washington's drill, as we should call it to-day, consisted of a barrel or hollow cylinder of wood mounted upon a wheeled plow & so arranged that as the plow moved forward the barrel turned. In the barrel, holes were cut or burnt through which the corn or other seed could drop into tubes that ran down to the ground. By decreasing or increasing the number of holes the grain could be planted thicker or thinner as desired. To prevent the holes from choking up he found it expedient to make them larger on the outside than on the inside, & he also found that the machine worked better if the barrel was not kept too full of seed. Behind the drills ran a light harrow or drag which covered the seed, though in rough ground it was necessary to have a man follow after with a hoe to assist the process. A string was fastened to this harrow by which it could be lifted around when turning at the ends of the rows, the drill itself being managed by a pair of handles.

Washington wrote to a friend that the drill would not "work to good effect in land that is very full either of stumps, stones, or large clods; but, where the ground is tolerably free from these & in good tilth, & particularly in light land, I am certain you will find it equal to your most sanguine expectation, for Indian corn, wheat, barley, pease, or any other tolerably round grain, that you may wish to sow or plant in this manner. I have sown oats very well with it, which is among the most inconvenient & unfit grains for this machine.... A small bag, containing about a peck of the seed you are sowing, is hung to the nails on the right handle, & [pg 109] with a small tin cup the barrel is replenished with convenience, whenever it is necessary, without loss of time, or waiting to come up with the seed-bag at the end of the row."

As Washington says, the drill would probably work well under ideal conditions, but there were features of it that would incline, I have no doubt, to make its operator swear at times. There was a leather band that ran about the barrel with holes corresponding to those in the barrel, the purpose of the band being to prevent the seeds issuing out of more than one hole at the same time. This band had to be "slackened or braced" according to the influence of the atmosphere upon the leather, & sometimes the holes in the band tended to gape & admit seed between the band & the barrel, in which case Washington found it expedient to rivet "a piece of sheet tin, copper, or brass, the width of the band, & about four inches long, with a hole through it, the size of the one in the leather."

Washington was, however, very proud of the drill, & it must have worked fairly well, for he was not the man to continue to use a worthless implement simply because he had made it. He even used it to sow very small seed. In the summer of 1786 he records: "Having fixed a Roller to the tale of my drill plow, & a brush between it & the barrel, I sent it to Muddy Hole & sowed turnips in the intervals of corn."

[Another passage from his papers in which he mentions using his drill plow is also illustrative of the emphasis he placed upon having the seed bed for a crop properly prepared. The passage describes his sowing some spring wheat & is as follows: "12th [of April, 1785].--Sowed sixteen acres of Siberian wheat, with eighteen quarts, in rows between corn, eight feet apart. This ground had been prepared in the following manner: 1. A single furrow; 2. another in the same to deepen it; 3. four furrows to throw the earth back into the two first, which made ridges of five furrows. These, being done some time ago, & the sowing retarded by frequent rains, had got hard; therefore, 4. before the seed was sown, these ridges were split again by running twice in the middle of them, both times in the same furrow; 5. after which the ridges were harrowed; and, 6. where the ground was lumpy, run a spiked roller with a harrow at the tail of it, which was found very efficacious in breaking the clods & pulverizing the earth, & would have done it perfectly, if there had not been too much moisture remaining from the late rains. After this, harrowing & rolling were necessary, the wheat was sown with the drill plough on the reduced ridges eight feet apart, as above mentioned, & harrowed in with the small harrow belonging to the plough. But it should have been observed, that, after the ridges were split by the middle double furrows, & before they were closed again by the harrow, a little manure was sprinkled in."

No man better understood the value of good clean seed than did he, but he had much trouble in satisfying his desires in this respect. Often the seed he bought was foul with weed seeds, & at other times it would not grow at all. Once he mentions having set the women & "weak hands" to work picking wild onions out of some Eastern Shore oats that he had bought.

He advocated planting the largest & finest potatoes instead of the little ones, as some farmers out of false ideas of economy still make the mistake of doing, & he followed the same principle that "the best will produce the best" in selecting all seed.

He also appreciated the importance of getting just the right stand of grain--not too many plants & not too few--upon his fields & conducted investigations along this line. He laboriously calculated the number of seed in a pound Troy of various seeds & ascertained, for example, that the number of red clover was 71,000, of timothy 298,000, of "New River Grass" 844,800 & of barley 8,925. Knowing these facts, he was able to calculate how much ought to be sowed of a given seed to the acre.

In the spring of the year that he helped to frame the Federal Constitution he "Sowed the squares No. 2 & 4 at this place [Dogue Run] with oats in the following manner--viz--the East half of No. 2 with half a Bushel of Oats from George Town--and the west half with a Bushel of Poland Oats--The east half of No. 4 with half a bushel of the Poland Oats & the west half with a bushel of the George Town Oats. The objects, & design of this experiment, was to ascertn. 3 things--1st. which of these two kinds of Oats were best the George Town (which was a good kind of the common Oats)--2d. whether two or four bushels to the Acre was best--and 3d. the difference between ground dunged at the Rate of 5 load or 200 bushels to the Acre & ground undunged."

This experiment is typical of a great many others & it resulted, of course, in better yields on the manured ground & showed that two bushels of seed were preferable to four. But if he ever set down the result of the experiment as regards the varieties, the passage has escaped me.

While at Fredericksburg this year visiting his mother & his sister Betty Lewis he learned of an interesting method of raising potatoes under straw & wrote down the details in his diary. A little later when attending the Federal Convention he kept his eyes & ears open for agricultural information. He learned how the Pennsylvanians cultivated buckwheat & visited the farm of a certain Jones, who was getting good results from the use of plaster of Paris. With his usual interest in labor-saving machinery he inspected at Benjamin Franklin's a sort of ironing machine called a mangle, "well calculated," he thought, "for Table cloths & such articles as have not pleats & irregular foldings & would be very useful in large families."

This year he had in wheat seven hundred acres, in grass five hundred eighty acres, in oats four hundred acres, in corn seven hundred acres, with several hundred more in buckwheat, barley, potatoes, peas, beans & turnips.

In 1788 he raised one thousand eighty-eight bushels of potatoes on one plantation, but they were not dug till December & in consequence some were badly injured by the frost. An experiment that year was one of transplanting carrots between rows of corn & it was not successful.

He worked hard in these years, but, as many another industrious farmer has discovered, he found that he could do little unless nature smiled & fickle nature persisted in frowning. In 1785 the rain seemed to forget how to fall, & in 1786 how to stop falling. Some crops failed or were very short & soon he was so hard up that he was anxious to sell some lands or negroes to meet debts coming due. In February, 1786, in sending fifteen guineas to his mother, he wrote:

"I have now demands upon me for more than £500, three hundred & forty odd of which is due for the tax of 1786; & I know not where or when I shall receive one shilling with which to pay it. In the last two years I made no crops. In the first I was obliged to buy corn, & this year have none to sell, & my wheat is so bad I can neither eat it myself nor sell it to others, & tobacco I make none. Those who owe me money cannot or will not pay it without suits, & to sue is to do nothing; whilst my expenses, not from any extravagance, or an inclination on my part to live splendidly, but for the absolute support of my family & the visitors who are constantly here, are exceedingly high."

To bad crops were joined bad conditions throughout the country generally. The government of the Confederation was dying of inanition, America was flooded with depreciated currency, both state & Continental. In western Massachusetts a rebellion broke out, the rebels being largely discouraged debtors. A state of chaos seemed imminent & would have resulted had not the Federal Convention, of which Washington was a member, created a new government. Ultimately this government brought order & financial stability, but all this took time & Washington was so financially embarrassed in 1789 when he traveled to New York to be inaugurated President that he had to borrow money to pay the expenses of the journey.

After having set the wheels of government in motion he made an extended trip through New England & whenever public festivities would permit he examined into New England farm methods & took copious notes. On the first day up from New York he saw good crops of corn mixed with pumpkins & met four droves of beef cattle, "some of which were very fine--also a Flock of Sheep.... We scarcely passed a farm house that did not abd. in Geese." His judgment of New England stock was that the cattle were "of a good quality & their hogs large, but rather long legged." The shingle roofs, stone & brick chimneys, stone fences & cider making all attracted his attention. The fact that wheat in that section produced an average of fifteen bushels per acre & often twenty or twenty-five was duly noted. On the whole he seems to have considered the tour enjoyable & profitable in spite of the fact that on his return through Connecticut the law against Sabbath traveling compelled him to remain over Sunday at Perkins' Tavern & to attend church twice, where he "heard very lame discourses from a Mr. Pond."

About 1785 Washington had begun a correspondence with Arthur Young & also began to read his periodical called the Annals of Agriculture. The Annals convinced him more than ever of the superiority of the English system of husbandry & not only gave him the idea for some of the experiments that have been mentioned, but also made him very desirous of adopting a regular & systematic course of cropping in order to conserve his soil. Taking advantage of an offer made by Young, he ordered (August 6, 1786) through him English plows, cabbage, turnip, sainfoin, rye-grass & hop clover seed & eight bushels of winter vetches; also some months later, velvet wheat, field beans, spring barley, oats & more sainfoin seed. He furthermore expressed a wish for "a plan of the most complete & useful farmyard, for farms of about 500 acres. In this I mean to comprehend the barn, & every appurtenance which ought to be annexed to the yard."

Young was as good as his word. Although English law forbade the exportation of some of these things--a fact of which Washington was not aware--he & Sir John Sinclair prevailed upon Lord Grenville to issue a special permit & in due course everything reached Mount Vernon. Part of the seeds were somewhat injured by being put into the hold of the vessel that brought them over, with the result that they overheated--a thing that troubled Washington whenever he imported seeds--but on the whole the consignment was in fair order, & our Farmer was duly grateful.

The plows appeared excessively heavy to the Virginians who looked them over, but a trial showed that they worked "exceedingly well."

To Young's plan for a barn & barnyard Washington made some additions & constructed the barn upon Union Farm, building it of bricks that were made on the estate. He later expressed a belief that it was "the largest & most convenient one in this country." It has now disappeared almost utterly, but Young's plan was subsequently engraved in the Annals.

In return for the exertions of Young & Sinclair in his behalf Washington sent over some American products & also took pains to collect information for them as to the state of American agriculture. His letters show an almost pathetic eagerness to please these good friends & it is evident that in his farming operations he regarded himself as one of Young's disciples. He was no egotist who believed that because he had been a successful soldier & was now President of the United States he could not learn anything from a specialist. The trait was most commendable & one that is sadly lacking in many of his countrymen, some of whom take pride in declaring that "these here scientific fellers caint tell me nothin' about raisin' corn!"

Young & Sir John Sinclair were by no means his only agricultural correspondents. Even Noah Webster dropped his legal & philological work long enough in 1790 to propound a theory so startlingly modern in its viewpoint that it is worthy of reproduction. Said he:

"While therefore I allow, in its full extent, the value of stable manure, marl, plaster of Paris, lime, ashes, sea-weed, sea-shells & salt, in enriching land, I believe none of them are absolutely necessary, but that nature has provided an inexhaustible store of manure, which is equally accessible to the rich & the poor, & which may be collected & applied to land with very little labor & expense. This store is the atmosphere, & the process by which the fertilizing substance may be obtained is vegetation."

He added that such crops as oats, peas, beans & buckwheat should be raised & plowed under to rot & that land should never be left bare. As one peruses the letter he recalls that scientists of to-day tell us that the air is largely made up of nitrogen, that plants are able to "fix it," & he half expects to find Webster advocating "soil innoculation" & speaking of "nodules" & "bacteria."

Throughout the period after the Revolution our Farmer's one greatest concern was to conserve & restore his land. When looking for a new manager he once wrote that the man must be, "above all, Midas like, one who can convert everything he touches into manure, as the first transmutation toward gold; in a word, one who can bring worn-out & gullied lands into good tilth in the shortest time." He saved manure as if it were already so much gold & hoped with its use & with judicious rotation of crops to accomplish his object. "Unless some such practice as this prevails," he wrote in 1794, "my fields will be growing worse & worse every year, until the Crops will not defray the expense of the culture of them."

He drew up elaborate plans for the rotation of crops on his different farms. Not content with one plan, he often drew up several alternatives; calculated the probable financial returns from each, allowing for the cost of seed, cultivation & other expenses, & commented upon the respective advantages from every point of view of the various plans. The labor involved in such work was very great, but Washington was no shirker. He was always up before sunrise, both in winter & summer, & seems to have been so constituted that he was most contented when he had something to do. Perhaps if he had had to engage in hard manual toil every day he would have had less inclination for such employment, but he worked with his own hands only intermittently, devoting his time mostly to planning & oversight.

One such plan for Dogue Run Farm is given on the next page. To understand it the reader should bear in mind that the farm contained five hundred

No. of Fields 1793 1794 1795 1796 1797 1798 1799
3 Corn & Potatoes Wheat Buckwheat for Manure Wheat Clover or Grass Clover or Grass Clover or Grass
4 Clover or Grass Corn & Potatoes Wheat Buckwheat for Manure Wheat Clover or Grass Clover or Grass
5 Clover or Grass Clover or Grass Corn & Potatoes Wheat Buckwheat for Manure Wheat Clover or Grass
6 Clover or Grass Clover or Grass Clover or Grass Corn & Potatoes Wheat Buckwheat for Manure Wheat
7 Wheat Clover or Grass Clover or Grass Clover or Grass Corn & Potatoes Wheat Buckwheat for Manure
1 Buckwheat for Manure Wheat Clover or Grass Clover or Grass Clover or Grass Corn & Potatoes Wheat
2 Wheat Buckwheat for Manure Wheat Clover or Grass Clover or Grass Clover or Grass Corn & Potatoes
twenty-five arable acres divided into seven fields, each of which contained about seventy-five acres.

Of this rotation he noted that it "favors the land very much; inasmuch as there are but three corn crops [i.e. grain crops] taken in seven years from any field, & the first of the wheat crops is followed by a Buck Wheat manure for the second Wheat Crop, wch. is to succeed it; & which by being laid to Clover or Grass & continued therein three years will a ford much Mowing or Grassing, according as the Seasons happen to be, besides being a restoration to the Soil--But the produce of the sale of the Crops is small, unless encreased by the improving state of the fields. Nor will the Grain for the use of the Farm be adequate to the consumption of it in this Course, & this is an essential object to attend to."

In a second table he estimated the amount of work that would be required each year to carry out this plan of rotation, assuming that one plow would break up three-fourths of an acre per day. This amount is hardly half what an energetic farmer with a good team of horses will now turn over in a day with an ordinary walking plow, but the negro farmer lacked ambition, the plows were cumbersome, & much of the work was done with plodding oxen. The table follows:

He estimated that seventy-five acres of corn would yield, at twelve & a half bushels per acre, 937-1/2 bushels, worth at two shillings & sixpence per bushel £117.3.9. In this field potatoes would be planted between the rows of corn & would produce, at twelve & a half bushels per acre, 937-1/2 bushels, worth at one shilling per bushel £46.17.6. Two fields in wheat, a total of one hundred fifty acres, at ten bushels per acre, would yield one thousand five hundred bushels, worth at five shillings per bushel three hundred seventy-five pounds. Three fields in clover & grass & the field of buckwheat to be turned under for manure would yield no money return. In other words the whole farm would produce three thousand three hundred seventy-five bushels of grain & potatoes worth a total of £539.1.3.

A second alternative plan would yield crops worth £614.1.3; a third, about the same; a fourth, £689.1.3; a fifth, providing for two hundred twenty-five acres of wheat, £801.11.0; a sixth, £764. Number five would be most productive, but he noted that it would seriously reduce the land. Number six would be "the 2d. most productive Rotation, but the fields receive no rest," as it provided for neither grass nor pasture, while the plowing required would exceed that of any of the other plans by two hundred eighty days.

On a small scale he tried growing cotton, Botany Bay grass, hemp, white nankeen grass & various other products. He experimented with deep soil plowing by running twice in the same furrow & also cultivated some wheat that had been drilled in rows instead of broadcasted.

Dogue Run Farm. The plan of this barn, drawn by Washington himself, is still preserved & is reproduced herewith. He calculated that one hundred & forty thousand bricks would be required for it & these were made & burnt upon the estate. The barn was particularly notable for a threshing floor thirty feet square, with interstices one & a half inches wide left between the floor boards so that the grain when trodden out by horses or beat out with flails would fall through to the floor below, leaving the straw above.

This floor was to furnish an illustration of what Washington called "the almost impossibility of putting the overseers of this country out of the track they have been accustomed to walk in. I have one of the most convenient barns in this or perhaps any other country, where thirty hands may with great ease be employed in threshing. Half the wheat of the farm was actually stowed in this barn in the straw by my order, for threshing; notwithstanding, when I came home about the middle of September, I found a treading yard not thirty feet from the barn-door, the wheat again brought out of the barn, & horses treading it out in an open exposure, liable to the vicissitudes of the weather."

Under any conditions treading or flailing out wheat was a slow & unsatisfactory process and, as Washington grew great quantities of this grain, he was alert for a better method. We know that he made inquiries of Arthur Young concerning a threshing machine invented by a certain Winlaw & pictured & described in volume six of the Annals, & in 1790 he watched the operation of Baron Poelnitz's mill on the Winlaw model near New York City. This mill was operated by two men & was capable of threshing about two bushels of wheat per hour--pretty slow work as compared with that of a modern thresher. And the grain had to be winnowed, or passed through a fan afterward to separate it from the chaff.

Finally in 1797 he erected a machine on plans evolved by William Booker, who came to Mount Vernon & oversaw the construction. Next April he wrote to Booker that the machine "has by no means answered your expectations or mine," At first it threshed not quite fifty bushels per day, then fell to less than twenty-five, & ultimately got out of order before five hundred bushels had been threshed, though it had used up two bands costing between eight & ten pounds. Booker replied that he had now greatly improved his invention & would come to Mount Vernon & make these additions, but whether or not he ever did so I have failed to discover.

By 1793 the burden of the estate had become so heavy that Washington decided to rent all of it except the Mansion House Farm & accordingly he wrote to Arthur Young telling his desire in the hope that Englishmen might be found to take it over. One man, Parkinson, of whom more hereafter, came to America & looked at one of the farms, but decided not to rent it. Washington's elaborate description of his land in his letter to Young, with an accompanying map, forms one of our best sources of information regarding Mount Vernon, so that we may be grateful that he had the intention even though nothing came of it. The whole of Mount Vernon continued to be cultivated as before until the last year of his life when he rented Dogue Run Farm to his nephew, Lawrence Lewis.

As a public man he was anxious to improve the general state of American agriculture & in his last annual message to Congress recommended the establishment of a board of agriculture to collect & diffuse information & "by premiums & small pecuniary aids to encourage & assist a spirit of discovery & improvement." In this recommendation the example of the English Board of Agriculture & the influence of his friend Arthur Young are discernible. It would have been well for the country if Congress had heeded the advice, but public opinion was not then educated to the need of such a step & almost a century passed before anything of much importance was done by the national government to improve the state of American agriculture.

In farming as in politics Washington was no standpatter. Notwithstanding many discouragements, he could not be kept from trying new things, & he furnished his farms with every kind of improved tool & implement calculated to do better work. At his death he owned not only threshing machines & a Dutch fan, but a wheat drill, a corn drill, a machine for gathering clover seed & another for raking up wheat. Yet most of his countrymen remained content to drop corn by hand, to broadcast their wheat, to tread out their grain & otherwise to follow methods as old as the days of Abel for at least another half century.

He was the first American conservationist. He realized that man owes a duty to the future just as he owes a debt to the past. He deplored the already developing policy of robber exploitation by which our soil & forests have been despoiled, for he foresaw the bitter fruits which such a policy must produce, & indeed was already producing on the fields of Virginia. He was no misanthropic cynic to exclaim, "What has posterity ever done for us that we should concern ourselves for posterity?" His care for the lands of Mount Vernon was evidence of the God-given trait imbedded in the best of men to transmit unimpaired to future generations what has been handed down to them.

Labor - Slave Wormley Hughes (1781-1858) Principal Gardener at Monticello

 Wormley Hughes (1781-1858) was born at Monticello in March 1781, the son of Betty Brown and a grandson of Elizabeth Hemings.  He was a skilled gardener and was instrumental in many of the landscaping changes at Monticello and Jefferson’s surrounding properties. He was married to Ursula Granger Hughes, an enslaved cook at Monticello, and they had thirteen children together. He obtained informal freedom from the Jefferson family after Jefferson’s death.

From the age of thirteen (1794) until at least 1809, the young Hughes worked in the nailery. He also worked in the house, although his precise duties are not known. Biographer Henry S. Randall referred to him as a "door-yard servant."

Hughes was the principal gardener at Monticello, probably trained by Robert Bailey, the Scottish gardener who worked at Monticello from 1794 through 1796. References to Hughes's gardening activities are frequent in Thomas Jefferson's records: he planted seeds, bulbs, and trees sent back from Washington; prepared and planted flower beds, and took up bulbs for the winter; and spread dung in the vegetable garden. Jefferson's granddaughter Ellen remembered that Hughes, "armed with spade and hoe," assisted Jefferson in laying out the Monticello flower beds. He also dug the ha-ha (a type of sunken fence) and cleared several roads on the mountaintop. In 1801, Hughes blasted rock for the construction of the Shadwell canal.

In addition to his work in the gardens, Hughes apparently succeeded Jupiter as hostler in the Monticello stables, with responsibility for the care of the horses and stable equipment. His love of horses was recorded by Randall. During Jefferson's retirement years, Hughes often drove a carriage or cart, taking Jefferson's sister Anna to and from Monticello or transporting valuable goods. In 1810, when Hughes drove Jefferson's young grandson home from Monticello to Eppington, Jefferson wrote that "I shall dispatch Francis tomorrow morning in the care of one of the most trusty servants I have." Other references in letters indicate that he was always accorded a high level of trust.

Hughes was married to Ursula Granger (b. 1787), daughter of Bagwell and Minerva Granger and niece of Isaac Granger Jefferson. She was also the granddaughter of George and Ursula Granger, the “King” and “Queen” of Monticello. George Granger had been the only black foreman at Monticello and Ursula Granger had been Martha Jefferson Randolph’s wetnurse and the head cook before James Hemings took charge of the kitchens.  Hughes and his wife had thirteen known children. Ursula Granger Hughes was both a enslaved farm laborer and a cook; she had received a year of training with French chef Honoré Julien at the President's House in Washington, during which time she had given birth to the first child born at the White House.

Hughes dug the grave of Thomas Jefferson in July 1826. He was informally freed by Martha Jefferson Randolph, apparently at Jefferson's recommendation. At the January 1827 sale of Jefferson's estate, his wife Ursula and eight of their children were sold to different purchasers, including University of Virginia professor George Blaettermann. Most were reunited at Edgehill, the plantation of Jefferson's grandson Thomas J. Randolph,  when Randolph bought many of the family members back.

Hughes continued to work for members of the Monticello family. Although he was listed in the 1850 census in the household of his half-brother Burwell Colbert, in 1856 he was living in the household of Jefferson's great-granddaughter Caryanne Randolph Ruffin. He died in the summer of 1858.

All this research & images & much more is directly from the Monticello website -  See: The Thomas Jefferson Encyclopedia at Monticello.org

Labor - Slave Gardens at Tho Jefferson's (1743-1824) Monticello

Thomas Jefferson by Tadeusz Andrzej Bonawentura Kosciuszko (1746-1817)

 African-American Gardens at Monticello

Although Thomas Jefferson often participated in the gardening process himself -sowing seed in the kitchen garden, and labeling and spacing tulip bulbs in the flower beds - he was not the only gardener at Monticello. His daughters, Martha and Maria, and his granddaughters, Ellen and Anne, planted bulbs in the flower borders and sowed cabbage seed in the kitchen garden. Wormley Hughes, the African American often called Monticello's "Head Gardener," collected seed, planted precious plants in the Monticello nurseries, and set out Mr. Jefferson's "pet trees." Gardener John espaliered grapes, aided in the terracing of the kitchen garden, and planted a sugar maple tree that survived for 200 years, while Great George and Goliah led the "veteran aids" in the daily work in the vegetable garden. Itinerant European gardeners like Robert Bailey and Anthony Giannini were employed to care for the orchards and vineyards. But just as Jefferson was not the only gardener, so were the mountaintop flower, fruit, and vegetable gardens not the only gardens at Monticello.

Jefferson's Memorandum Books, which detailed virtually every financial transaction that he engaged in between 1769 and 1826, as well as the account ledger kept by his granddaughter, Anne Cary Randolph, between 1805 and 1808, document hundreds of transactions involving the purchase of produce from Monticello slaves. This documentary record of the purchase of 22 species of fruits and vegetables from as many as 43 different individuals, suggests the vitality and entrepreneurial spirit of the Monticello African American community and the beginnings of an African American horticultural tradition.

Monticello's 1,000-foot-long kitchen garden is legendary for the variety and scope of its vegetable production, so the question immediately arises, "why did the Jefferson family require outside sources to provide for the table?" One explanation might lie in the experimental focus of the Jefferson garden. Although over 300 vegetable varieties were documented, the emphasis was on using the garden as a laboratory rather than on production for the dinner table. As well, much of the produce purchased from Monticello slaves was out of season: potatoes were sold in December and February, hominy beans and apples purchased in April, and cucumbers bought in January. Archaeological excavations of slave cabins at Monticello indicate the widespread presence of root cellars, which not only served as secret hiding places, but surely as repositories for root crops and other vegetables amenable to cool, dark storage. Conversely, inventories of the Monticello cellars curiously omit garden produce, and are dominated by fancy, imported delicacies like capers, olive oil, and Parmesan cheese. Produce harvested from slave gardens at Monticello seemed to be more purposefully directed toward the out-of-season table, and they included more everyday garden staples, like cabbages and potatoes, rather than the new and unusual gourmet vegetables, like artichokes and sea kale, found in the Jefferson garden.

Slave gardens were not unique to Monticello. Similar cash transactions between George Washington and enslaved African Americans took place at Mount Vernon, and numerous 18th-century Virginian travelers documented slave gardens. 

William Hugh Grove in 1732 mentioned "little Platts for potatoes peas and cymlins, which they do on Sundays or at night." 

John Custis of Williamsburg noted how in 1737 one of his slaves grew "a multitude of melons," and Philip Fithian, Princeton educated tutor for the Carter family at Nomini Hall, observed slaves digging up "their small Lots of ground allw'd by their Masters for Potatoes, peas, etc."

...Joseph Fossett, an enslaved Monticello blacksmith, purchased a gold watch, tutoring, and a copy book for his son, Peter, perhaps from income generated from this underground economy. According to Genovese the gardens were important in providing a sense of independence, and they also enabled African Americans to learn the art of economic bartering. At Monticello, Anne Cary, between the age of 14 and 17, purchased vegetables from over 40 slaves, and one can only speculate about the bartering process. At this meeting of white and black worlds, with Ann hoping to pass the rites of adulthood and elderly slaves like Squire aspiring for some marginal self-sufficiency, one wonders which party had the advantage: which party drove the hard bargain?

A debate waged among southern plantation owners about the desirability of these gardens. Some argued they encouraged domestic tranquility and tied slaves more securely to the land. Others felt the gardens, and the independence they encouraged, led to discontent and distracted slaves from labor in the fields. Questions inevitably arose about what crops were whose, master's or slave's? Anthony Giannini wrote Jefferson in Paris and complained of slaves stealing Monticello grapes before they ripened, and at Poplar Forest, Jefferson's retreat home near Lynchburg, John Hemmings, a loyal and skilled African American carpenter, reported to Jefferson that a disgruntled slave, Nace, had stolen all the produce from the kitchen garden. The enormous, 10-foot-high paling fence that surrounded the Monticello fruit and vegetable garden may have been constructed to prevent thievery. Jefferson wrote his son-in-law, Thomas Mann Randolph, in 1792, and thanked him for banning the cultivation of tobacco around slave dwellings. He wrote, "I have ever found it necessary to confine them [slaves] to such articles as are not raised on the farm, there is no other way of drawing a line between what is theirs & mine."

Both Jefferson and Ann Cary specified the person from whom they purchased vegetables and fruit; however, the person involved in the sale might not have been the one gardening. Thirty-one males, averaging about 37 years of age, and twelve females, averaging 41 years old, were involved in the transactions. Since many of the sellers were older, seven of the males were over fifty, they may have been representing the family garden. Squire, for example, a former Peter Jefferson slave leased by Thomas Jefferson from his mother, represented the most sophisticated garden. He sold thirteen different commodities, including cymlins (a patty-pan-shaped squash), potatoes, lettuce, beets, watermelons, apples, and muskmelons. He sold a cucumber to Jefferson on January 12, 1773, suggesting either that the fruit was pickled and preserved, or that artificial heat in a cold frame or hot bed was used to bring this tender vegetable to fruition in the middle of winter, a rather remarkable feat in 18th-century Virginia. Bagwell, Squire's son-in-law, was also a major supplier, and sold Jefferson sixty pounds of hops for twenty dollars. A woody perennial, hops require an arbor or structure upon which to vine, and most importantly, suggest the permanence that perennial crops lend to a garden.

Israel Gillette Jefferson, a waiter and carder in the Monticello cloth factory, represented another productive African American family garden. His father, Edward Gilette, sold watermelons, beans, and potatoes, while Israel sold large quantities of cabbage, fifty to one hundred at a time. Caesar, a farm laborer at Shadwell, Jefferson's birthplace and a satellite farm to Monticello, was another major supplier of cucumbers, cabbages, and greens, and Burwell Colbert, probably Jefferson's most valued and trusted slave, sold "sprouts" to Jefferson. Boys and girls were also involved in the bartering process; Billy, at the age of eight, sold strawberries, perhaps collected from the wild, while Madison and Eston Hemings, most likely Jefferson's sons by Sally Hemings, were 15 and 18 when selling 100 cabbages to Jefferson in 1822.

Except for watermelons, and perhaps sweet potatoes, few of the sold fruits and vegetables were either African in origin, or closely associated with African American food culture. Cucumbers were the most common commodity, with 23 transactions, followed by cabbages, watermelons, hops, Irish potatoes, cymlins, and greens. One wonders if Monticello's slave gardens included other crops specifically identified with African Americans. Jefferson discussed the potato pumpkin, evidently an early bearing squash used as a sweet potato substitute, that was "well esteemed at our tables, and particularly valued by our Negroes." He also attributed the introduction of sesame to the slave trade, and acknowledged an independent African horticultural tradition associated with the culture and use of this plant. Other vegetables grown by Jefferson and associated with African American culture include okra, used liberally around Charleston and New Orleans; eggplant, an African native; sweet potatoes, "which the Negroes tend so generally;" peanuts, often associated with the African groundnut; and the West Indian gherkin, a spiny, round cucumber commonly pickled and grown in the Jefferson kitchen garden. Some historians have also attributed the earliest distribution of tomatoes in the deep South to African introductions.

Monticello was a 5,000-acre plantation organized into a series of four or five satellite farms, and the African American gardens were likely associated with quarter farm communities or isolated cabins out on the farm. Neither documentary nor archaeological evidence has illuminated the character of these gardens. One exception was an intriguing reference, three years after Jefferson's death, to the distribution of peach pits to slaves at Edgehill, a Jefferson family estate adjacent to Monticello, "and thus in a few years there will be two or three trees about every cabin." Traveler's landscape commentaries in the 18th and early 19th centuries often used the term "plats" to identify the slave gardens, an interesting contrast to the word used to describe how white Virginian gardens were organized: into "squares." 

Frederick Law Olmsted, often referred to as America's first landscape architect, described African American gardens in 1860 as about a half acre in size. Work in these gardens took place on Sundays, or in the night after slaves were excused from their field labor. An oral tradition suggests that the evening garden work was illuminated by lighting the animal fat in cast iron pots or pans. 

Peter J. Hatch, Director, Gardens and Grounds, January 2001

All this research & images & much more is directly from the Monticello website - to begin exploring, just go to Monticello.org.

Garden to Table - Geo Washington - Cooling the Wine

George Washington as Farmer by Junius Brutus Stearns. 1851

 Cooling the Wine

To cool wine, meat & other articles, Washington early adopted the practice of putting up ice, a thing then unusual. In January, 1785, he prepared a dry well under the summer house & also one in his new cellar & in due time had both filled. June fifth he "Opened the well in my Cellar in which I had laid up a store of Ice, but there was not the smallest particle remaining.--I then opened the other Repository (call the dry Well) in which I found a large store." Later he erected an ice house to the eastward of the flower garden.

His experience with the cellar well was akin to that of his friend, James Madison, on a like occasion. Madison had an ice house filled with ice, & a skeptical overseer wagered a turkey against a mint julep that by the fourth of July the ice would all have disappeared. The day came, they opened the house, & behold there was enough ice for exactly one julep! 

From: George Washington: Farmer (1915) by Paul Leland Haworth (1876-1936) 

Colonial Era Cookbooks

1615, New Booke of Cookerie, John Murrell (London) 

1798, American Cookery, Amelia Simmons (Hartford, CT)

1803, Frugal Housewife, Susannah Carter (New York, NY)

1807, A New System of Domestic Cookery, Maria Eliza Rundell (Boston, MA)

1808, New England Cookery, Lucy Emerson (Montpelier, VT)

Helpful Secondary Sources

America's Founding Food: The Story of New England Cooking/Keith Stavely and Kathleen Fitzgerald Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press, 2004.

Colonial Kitchens, Their Furnishings, and Their Gardens/Frances Phipps Hawthorn; 1972

Early American Beverages/John Hull Brown   Rutland, Vt., C. E. Tuttle Co 1996 

Early American Herb Recipes/Alice Cooke Brown  ABC-CLIO  Westport, United States

Food in Colonial and Federal America/Sandra L. Oliver

Home Life in Colonial Days/Alice Morse Earle (Chapter VII: Meat and Drink) New York : Macmillan Co., ©1926.

A Revolution in Eating: How the Quest for Food Shaped America/James E. McWilliams New York : Columbia University Press, 2005.

Garden Design - The Hedge as a Fence

Early Americans planted hedges, plantings of bushes or woody plants in a row, to act as defensive fences, decorative garden dividers, or windbreaks.

As colonial British America was just being settled, Francis Bacon (1561-1626), English philosopher, statesman, scientist, lawyer, jurist, & author, wrote of the more formal garden hedges of the 17th century in his 1625 Essayes or Counsels, Civill and Morall in the essay entitled Of Gardens. "The Garden is best to be square, encompassed on all the four sides with a stately arched hedge; the arches to be upon pillars of carpenter's work, of some ten foot high, and six foot broad, and the spaces between of the same dimension with the breadth of the arch. 

"Over the arches let there be an entire hedge of some four foot high, framed also upon carpenter's work; and upon the upper hedge, over every arch, a little turret, with a belly enough to receive a cage of birds: and over every space between the arches some other little figure, with broad plates of round coloured glass gilt, for the sun to play upon: but this hedge I intend to be raised upon a bank, not steep, but gently slope, of some six foot, set all with flowers.

"Also I understand, that this square of the Garden should not be the whole breadth of the ground, but to leave on either side ground enough for diversity of side alleys, unto which the two covert alleys of the Green may deliver you; but there must be no alleys with hedges at either end of this great enclosure; not at the hither ends for letting your prospect upon this fair hedge from the Green; nor at the farther end, for letting your prospect from the hedge through the arches upon the Heath."

In 1705, "An act for prevention of trespasses by unruly horses, cattle, hogs, sheep, and goats" passed by the General Assembly of Virginia. It stated that "an hedge two foot high, upon a ditch of three foot deep and three foot broad" was "so close that none of the creatures aforesaid can creep through."

The South Carolina Gazette advertised a garden in a house-for-sale ad in 1749, "genteely laid out in walks and alleys, with cassini and other hedges."

At Riversdale inPrince George County, Maryland, Rosalie Steir Calvert wrote he father in 1805, "We are...going to surround" the orchard "with a hedge."

New Yorker John Nicholson emphasized the practical use of hedges in early America as fences in The Farmer's Assistant in 1820, "For making these, different sorts of trees have been used, and the hedges have been made in different ways. Some have prefered planting the hedge on the top of a bank, thrown up for the purpose; while the more modern method is, to plant it on the surface, without any bank.
"This latter method is the cheapest, and, as is observed by Mr. Pickering, of Massachusetts, would seem to be the only proper method, in some hilly situations...

"In level lands, however, a hedge set on a bank, properly made, would seem to be most formidable to cattle; but the bank we should prefer would be one raised between two small ditches...
"We have, at the same time, no doubt that a good hedge may eventually be made, in dry level lands, without the aid of a bank...

"We have seen the Washington-thorn (crataegus cordata) planted in Maryland, without any bank, on uplands; some of which were sufficiently dry...the thorn...requires a bed of moderately dry earth...
"Where hedges are to be made of this tree, without being set in a bank, we should advise to the method pursued by Mr. Quincy, of >Massachusetts, which is, first, to cultivate the ground, intended for bearing the hedge, with potatoes; having it properly manured, and kept clear of weeds...

"When the plants of thorn are about 2 feet high, they should be set out in a single row...at the distance of about eight inches apart, and beded in good mould.
"Mr. Miller (Philip Miller) directs that, before transplanting, they should be cut off at the height of about 8 inches from the ground; and that, after having had a years growth, they should be headed down, similar to the manner directed by Mr. Forsyth (William Forsyth).

"Which operation will produce a stronger and thicker growth...when they get to about the height of 6 or 7 feet, or less where they grow on a bank, the tops are to be cut down to an uniform height, and the trees to be trimed, and then plashed.
"In the plashed state...the young trees, after having been headed down, as before mentioned, are supposed to send out at least two sprouts from each tree, which number, and no more, are to be trained up, the rest being cut away. Of the shoots thus trained, every 4th one is to be left standing erect, and the others are to be bent downward...and wove alternately on each side of the upright shoots, in the manner of weaving threads in making common cloth...

"The failure of one or two trees in a place produces a chasm in the fence; and this at first is only to be obviated by some temporary method of filling up the gap; as it must at least require time to make any after-growth supply the place of trees which may be missing.
"With all the imperfections, however, to which hedges may be liable, we consider them a much safer protection to the growing crop, and...less expensive, than the wooden fences which at present are commonly made in this Country.

"Instead of plashing the hedge, a substitute is recommended by Mr. Main, of Georgetown, which he has found effectual. This is to cut or trim the top of the hedge down to an even height, of about 3 and a half, or 4 feet, and then to lay thereon light durable poles, tied together at the ends; and presently the new shoots will start up on each side of the poles, and thus hold them to their places...the young hedge soon becomes enabled to withstand the attempt if any creature to push its way through...
"The Palmetto Royal ( Yucca Aloefolia) is said to make the best hedge that is known; but it will not endure the severity of the Winters of the more northerly States. It is well adapted to the more southerly part of this Country.

"Mr. Kirk, of Pennsylvania, particularly recommends his method of making hedges. He makes them of the common Locust. He merely makes a furrow, with the plough run once or twice each way, to serve as the bed for the young trees. These are to be of 2 years growth when set out in the furrow; they are to stand at the distance of about 11 inches from each other, and they are to be set leaning, or slanting, alternately in opposite directions, in order to be plashed or wove together, and tied in that position...
"In 4 or 5 years, Mr. Kirk says, the young hedge, when thus made, will form a sufficient fence; and as the shade of locust is not injurious to the growth of the adjoining grain, and is even beneficial to that of grass, the hedge may be suffered to grow up as high as it will.

"In about 30 years after planting, it will reach the full meridian of its growth; when the whole may be cut down, at the height ot about 5 feet from the ground, and then the stumps, thus left, will stand and serve as an impenetrable fence for as much as 15 years more; giving about 40 years as the length of time which that growth of locust will serve the purpose of a fence.

"Mr. Kirk says that, on cuting the locust down, a new growth of sprouts will start up in abundance; from which sufficient may be selected for training up a new hedge, to supply the place of the stumps when they shall have failed...

"The culture of locust, for hedges, we should be disposed to place this tree in the first rank...It forms a timber of the first rate for every use, where hardness, durability, and strength are required: It is also rapid in its growth, and excellent for fuel...
"Mr. Taylor, of Caroline, Virginia, makes his hedges of cedar; and he says that, in 7 years, a hedge made of this tree becomes as close, from bottom to top, as box, of a breadth not exceeding tour feet; and that it is more likely to prove effectual against Hogs, than any of the family of shrubs, as it unites great density...

"The boughs of this tree, being pliant, are easily wove between the bodies of the trees, without any bending of them, for the purpose of plashing...
"Mr. Peters, of Pennsylvania, thinks that, in point of elegance at least, the common hemlock (Pinua Abies Ccmadenais) is entitled to a preference to cedar...

"M. De La Bigarre recommends the white-mulberry for hedges, particularly on account of the value of the leaves of this tree for feeding silkworms."

seeds & Plants - Growing Flax & Producing Linen BUT not in 18C England

Kathy King tells us in her 2006 article in the Quarterly Archives of the Tredyffrin Easttown (Pennsylvania) Historical Society that "when flax, a bast—or plant—fiber that grows about a yard high, is processed & woven it becomes linen. Linen was not produced in 18C England, since the country was very protective of its woolen industry. In an attempt to help Ireland become more prosperous, the British government decided to promote linen production there & provided tax incentives, tariffs, & encouraged artisans from continental Europe with linen skills to immigrate to Ireland. There was plenty of cheap labor in Ireland for the onerous chore of flax preparation & spinning. Ireland became the capital of British fine linen manufacturing.

"To grow flax you plow the land twice, plant seeds close together so it grows tall with little branching, hand weed it, and, when ripe, pull it—cutting it will discolor it & keep the fiber from being as long. It is back-breaking work. Then you dry it, remove the seeds, & rett it—submerge it in a pond for a couple of weeks so it rots & the fibers separate. Then you dry it again, use a flax break to pound it to loosen the bark & connective tissue, & then scutch it—use a wooden sword-like tool to strike against the fiber to remove the bark & connective tissue. Next you hackle [there are many ways this was spelled at that time; I have used the modern spelling] it by repeatedly drawing it through a tool with many long, sharp metal teeth that rids the flax of short fibers—the tow—and bark. Then it is spun. It's harder to spin flax than wool, as it's long & wiry."

For European farm families, linen provided clothing and bedding as well as grain sacks and other items necessary for farm work. Most of the backbreaking work in making linen was performed by women, as portrayed in the pictures below, taken from a German Almanac published in 1882.

Step 1 - Pulling
Flax was sown in March or April. It was a fast growing plant that grew about 40 inches tall. Sometime during August, when the plants’ color turned to a golden hue, the plants were ready for harvest. In order to produce the best quality linen possible, the fiber had to be hand harvested by either pulling the whole plant by the root or by cutting the stalks very close to the ground.

Step 2 - Separating
After the harvest, flax seeds were removed through a process called “rippling”. During this process the plant stalks were pulled through a rippling comb, which was an iron or wooden device that was studded with nails for the easy removal of seeds and other undesirable plant elements.

Step 3 - Retting
To dissolve the pectin, which binds the plant fibers together, the remaining flax stalks had to be rotted or “retted”. This could be achieved periodically, to allow the dew to accomplish the rotting process. A faster way to decompose the pectin was to submerge the stalks deep into the local pond and weigh them down with heavy objects, such as stones or logs. With this method, the retting took just a few days.

Step 4 - Drying
In late August or early September, after the plants were retted and retrieved, the farmers tied them into small bundles and laid them out in the open fields to dry. This was done to bring the rotting process of the fibers to an end. Retting the flax stalks too long would render them brittle and unsuitable for textile production.

Step 5 - Roasting
When the weather was damp, it was often necessary to roast the flax in special ovens at very low temperatures until it was dry.

Step 6 - Breaking
After drying, the flax was ready for “scutching”, also called the “swinging” process. Small bundles of stalks were dragged in a swinging motion across a nail-spiked board to remove the woody parts of the fibers. At this time, only the long, soft flax strands remained, which were twisted into braids, ready to be spun. When the work was done, the young people of the village would meet for an evening of play and dance, the so-called “swing dances”.

See: Quarterly Archives : Volume 43 of the Tredyffrin Easttown (Pennsylvania) Historical Society Real Colonial Women Don't Weave Cloth by Kathy King Source: Spring 2006 Volume 43 Number 2, Pages 62–70