It is fast approaching that time of year for the Annual Fort de Chartres Heirloom Jardin Potager Seed Swap. On March 9, from 10 a.m.-3 p.m. in the Guards’ Room at Fort de Chartres State Historic Site, one can peruse a selection of free heritage seeds from the jardin at Fort de Chartres and other heirloom plant seeds appropriate for the eighteenth-century. Event visitors are welcome to bring their own garden seeds to share with other gardeners. If you would like to bring your own seed, it is asked that the seeds are cleaned, i.e. free of other organic material such as pods, leaves, and stems. Additionally, please mark the variety of seed and year the seed was collected clearly on a small envelope. As part of the mission and public outreach project of the garden at the Fort, encouragement is offered to direct sow seeds in home gardens as a more cost-effective way for individuals and families to grow vegetables and flowers, as well as increase the diversity in the variety of plants in one’s garden. Exploring and growing heirloom seeds is a wonderful way to bring the past alive through foodways history.
Thank you to Les Amis du Fort de Chartres for their support in printing informational flyers for this event and to Fort de Chartres staff for site support. Fort de Chartres Heritage Garden Project is an independently funded garden at the site. To support this heritage jardin potager and its outreach projects now entering its 15th year, one can DONATE here. Merci!
Annual Fort de Chartres Heirloom Jardin Potager Seed Swap Press Release
If you (like many others) are curious of having early Salleting, take Care that your Gard’ner make the Hot Beds to Sow Lettuce-Seed for Sallets, and Radishes, that you may have them as early as possible, Glass Bells will be a great Help to him in rearing up Cabbage-Letttuce, Melons, and Cucumbers…
Let the Gard’ner imploy himself in making Mats to lay over his Hot Beds, as also to cover some certain Plants. He may likewise in all Weather, when he cannot work abroad in the Gard’en, mend or cause to be mended, the Cases, or make new ones for Fig-Trees, or any other Use…
Carry out Dung to lay on the Beds where you intend to Sow the Kitchen Garden Seeds in their Seasons.”
-from Le Jardinier Solitaire written by Francis Gentil , 1704
The recent holiday season officially closes with the area’s French heritage communities as they celebrate the end of Advent which occurs this Friday evening with the Twelfth Night Balls scheduled to be held this Saturday. And as these celebrations come to an end, life resumes aat slower pace and offers time for reflection and planning for this new year, hopefully providing inspiration on how best to turn garden dreams into reality.
Autumn heirloom crop of Forellenschluss Lettuce
Before moving forward to the new season, a reviewing of the jardin potager’s journey over the course of 2023 certainly indicates that the year had its challenges and extremes, from a late and damp spring to months of drought and heat through the summer and fall. Every garden season has it own successes and challenges and this past year offered a boon year for carrots, cucumbers, leafy greens, leeks, peppers, radishes, and squash. The remaining vegetables struggled with the weather conditions and the pests of the four-legged kind and the heirloom apple and pear crops were devastated by strong summer storms. To follow the garden’s seasonal progress and activity over the last year, one can view online in almost weekly detail athttps://www.facebook.com/fdcjardin. You are invited to check in throughout the year and follow the garden, through its successes and it challenges. The triumphs and trials to be found in the jardin potager adventure are a thoughtful reminder of all the generations of resilient Illinois country gardeners and their foodway traditions that have survived and persevered through the centuries.
As the year begins, it might be wise to heed the additional advice from the eighteenth-century Carpathian monk Gentil, as he recommends the need to nurture our gardens throughout the year, even in the early month of January. In the cold and often dreary days at the start of this new year, it doesn’t seem possible to accomplish much of anything in the garden. The advice to use hot beds in the kitchen garden was a method that was developed by our gardening ancestors by which gardeners could extend the growing season, usually for crops such as herbs, fruits, and vegetables, The heat source used for germinating seed in hot-beds was the easily accessible, if somewhat strong smelling, fresh manure.
Gentil manuscript illustration, 1704
From François Gentil, Le jardiniere solitaire-
“The Manner of making Hot Beds
The South Aspect is best to lay you Hot Beds in. They ought to be made of Horse-Litter, just taken out of the Stable, they should be about Four Foot high, and as much in Breadth, the Length proportion’d to the Ground where you think fit to make them. You must cover them over with Mould the Thickens of about Eight or Nine Inches. They should be made Six or Eight Days before you Sow the Seeds, that the great Heat of the Dung may have Time to wear off, and that there may remain only a moderate Heat. You will discern this by putting your Finger into the Bed. Without this precaution you will indanger burning the Seeds.
The paths of the Beds ought to be a Foot broad, to the end, that when ‘tis necessary to recruit their Heat, you may have the Convenience of laying warm Dung between every Two Beds: which Dung will keep up a true Degree of Heat, to make the Plants thrive and prosper.”
Photo: Dave Rolpfe/Winston Salem Journal “Horse Manure: Critical to building hotbeds during winter” By Amy Dixon. Jan 6, 2017
A modern writing on eighteenth-century hot-bed construction techniques reports; “The principle of a hot-bed was to lay a layer of fresh stable manure mixed with straw well below the rooting level of the plants, then covered with soil to a depth which would support the root systems of the plants to be nurtured. The interaction of manure and straw insulated by the top layer of soil would be able to sustain tender plants in the cold weeks of late winter and early spring. Most hot-beds were constructed with a border of wooden planks which was raised above ground level. To take advantage of any sunshine to supplement the heat generated by the manure, most hot-beds were oriented to be south-facing. The front of the hot-bed border was between eight to twelve inches high while the back could be as much fifteen to twenty inches high, to catch any incoming sunlight and reflect it back onto the plants in the bed.” The Regency Redingote
Taking that eighteenth-century gardening advice to amend the garden’s raised beds while preparing hot-beds for the first sowing of seeds, is a reminder to us all to seasonally renew and prepare our garden, actions that provide a foundation for success throughout the upcoming season. And in this first week of the new year, this jardiniere looks forward to another season in the jardin potager at Fort de Chartres, continuing to explore our region’s eighteenth-century foodways, furthering the research that began in earnest over two decades ago. Hopeful this year’s journey will not only yield a successful season of harvests in the garden, but will additionally offer new opportunities to follow the path of French colonial gardening traditions in the Midwest and across the North American continent, exploring how it adapted to the exposure to new multi-cultural influences. Taking a new step along that twisting and winding path, my husband Nick and I travelled to visit family and friends in my hometown located in Northwest Ohio, an area steeped in the history of the Black Swamp, Commodore Perry, and Anthony Wayne. We included a side-trip to the Monroe, Michigan area, whose history and place names call to its French roots, to explore its heritage and foodways. Through connections made through the French Heritage Society, Chicago Chapter’s French Heritage Corridor Initiative, and with the assistance of FHC Michigan Ambassador, Dr. Michael Nassaney, we were able to connect with Jami Keegan at the River Raisin National Battlefield Park and with her help met some of the Park staff, especially site volunteer Rusty Davis, who made it possible to conduct a bit of foodways history research in their archive files from local researcher Ralph Naveaux’s collection and a 1780s Trading Post Journal. The staff was welcoming and informative and we can thoroughly recommend a visit to this NBP site located in SE Lower Michigan along the western shoreline of Lake Erie and discover the significant role the Great Lakes region played in the War of 1812. This site preserves and interprets the January 1813 battles of the War of 1812 and their aftermath, a result of a historic collision of multiple nations and that aftermath continues to be of key importance today. We also were able to connect and spend a grand time with Lynn Reaume, Monroe County Historian and Ralph Naveaux at the Monroe County Museum. They are both offered a sincere thank you for being so generously willing to share their related period materials. This visit will result in another type of winter garden project and a perfect way to begin 2024. Time will be spent reviewing these sources and exploring that region’s French and Native Peoples culinary and agricultural heritage to discover the ways the culinary history on the shores of western Lake Erie connects with the Illinois country. Just another step taken to further understand more fully how these centuries-old histories interconnect and reveal themselves in our gardens and foodways. Continuing the Pays des Illinois heritage garden journey, the work continues to create an atmosphere of nurturing and exploration. You are invited to visit and share in the jardin potager season throughout the year, to follow in the footsteps and practices of French habitant gardeners at time of the 1750s-era Fort de Chartres, whether visiting in person or just following the garden season online.
One never knows where this garden journey will lead, from feelings of exultation to heartbreak, and to all the people that you meet along the way. Thank you to Kim Atkins of Atkins’ Acres Educational Farm located in Millstadt, Illinois and Gerianne Holzman, National Garden Clubs, Inc. 3rd Vice President and Editor, The National Gardener. Kim visited the jardin potager this past summer and offered her support and appreciation for the garden at the Fort. She facilitated an opportunity for an article to be written about the Fort de Chartres heritage jardin potager which has been published and can be read in the magazine’s first quarterly edition PDF, The Winter 2024 Edition of The National Gardener. Thank you to them both for such a singular opportunity to share the Fort de Chartres Heritage Garden Project and Fort de Chartres State Historic Site in a national gardening publication. Whether you are a longtime visitor and supporter or just newly acquainted to this heritage garden project, welcome to our 2024 journey.
Best wishes to all for health, happiness, and new adventures in the upcoming year-both personal and of the gardening kind. Salut to 2024 and to all new adventures yet to be!
On this cloudy and damp March afternoon, late winter garden work is at a standstill. Cold gusts of wind rattle window panes, forcing long days to be spent indoors. Hours spent house-bound offer a fitting time for reflection of the first two and a half months of this new year, along with our expectations and anticipation of what is yet to be. Mid-March, the Ides of March in ancient times, once signified the new year, a time which involved many celebrations and much rejoicing. Ides were ancient markers used to reference dates in relation to lunar phases. They refer to the first new moon of a month, which usually fell between the dates of the 13th and 15th. It seems like it was just yesterday that we closed out the old year and heralded in the new with the the French Colonial holiday celebrations, solemn and gay. The winter holiday celebrations of Le Reveillon and La Guiannée are age-old memories that are preserved in the present-day Illinois country. These modern celebrations hold within the long-ago visions of New Year’s Eve processions of costumed La Guiannée singers making their way door to door to offer song and New Year greetings and echoing cries of “Au gui l’an nuef! Mistletoe for the New Year!” The extant modern celebrations faintly echo the traditions of those French villages of the Illinois country centuries ago.
The first verse of the Prairie du Rocher La Guiannée song has its singers calling for mistletoe:
Bon soir la maitre et la maitress
Et tout le monde du logis
Pour le dernier jour de lannee
La Guiannée vous nous devez
Good master and mistress of the house
And the lodgers all, good night to you
For the last day of the ending year
The La Guiannée is to us due.
White Mistletoe, Mixed Media Collage. Mary Delany. 1776
La Guiannée? A celebration demanding mistletoe for the new year? This celebration begs the question as to why mistletoe was so honored and coveted. The answer can be uncovered once again in ancient times, when mistletoe must have seemed magical in its ability to retain its green leaves, even growing white berries during the winter months, thus becoming a symbol of life, fertility, and prosperity. The archaic celebration of mistletoe has its roots dating from Celtic Druids of Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, traveling through the civilizations of Greece and Rome. Norse mythology heralded that this semi-parasitic plant was a sign of love and peace, while in the forests of medieval Europe, mistletoe was a plant that held extraordinary powers of life and health. Here in the new world, mistletoe (Phoradendron leucarpum) was a native plant existing in North America and regionally, right here in Illinois. Today mistletoe can be found in the southern one sixth of the state extending northward along the Wabash River to Clark County. Understanding this natural connection from the past to the present, helps us fathom how this tradition traveled from Europe with the early French colonists to the middle of the North American continent, known as Haute-Louisiane.
In an effort to appreciate the true nature of mistletoe, the center of these winter celebrations, one can look to its Latin name Phoradendron , which is Greek for “thief tree,” describing how this plant gets its nourishment from its host trees. Modern science has revealed mistletoe to be a semi-parasitic plant that utilizes photosynthesis and grows by taking water and nutrients from its host tree. Unusually, the plant grows in all directions at once and forms a spherical ball that can reach up to over three and a half feet in diameter. Its leaves are thick and quite tough; small flowers give rise in autumn to sticky white berries. The seeds contained in these berries are spread on the branches of trees by birds regurgitating or excreting the undigested fruits. Mistletoe can be found on any tree but mostly prefers soft woods such as apple, sycamore, ash, and poplar; rarely is it found on oak trees. In times past, herbalists called it “all-heal” and used it in infusions and teas to promote growth and cure infertility. The leaves, bark, and berries of mistletoe are now known to be highly toxic, so today its use only as decoration is warranted. In nature when found, the green winter’s growth of mistletoe brings a bit of welcome color to the brown and gray winter landscape. That color revealed by mistletoe’s presence in the heart of winter offers a reminder to those of us engaged in outdoor pursuits. It reminds us that the year’s journey which began in those new year’s celebrations, continues to bring us hope and the passage of these early months lead ever closer to the upcoming seasons of growth and bounty.
The garden in early March
Well into the month of March, our focus has long turned from the winter holidays and the general winter landscape to our gardens and the preparations are underway required for the upcoming garden season. In-between the recent see-saw bouts of unsettled weather, there is a certain comfort in the return to basic garden tasks to be accomplished in winter. John Randolph, in his eighteenth-century “A Treatise of Gardening,” published in Virginia, offers the mid-winter advice:
“February
Sow Asparagus, make your beds and fork up the old ones, sow Sugar Loaf Cabbages* latter end transplant Cauliflowers, sow carrots and transplant for feed, prink out endive for seed, sow lettuce, Melon in hot beds**, sow Parsnips, take up the old roots and prick out for sees, sow Peas and prick them into your hot beds, sow radishes twice, plant Strawberries, plant out Turnips for feed, spade deep and make it fine, plant Beans.”
March
You should sow your Peas every fortnight, and as the hot weather comes on, the latter sort should be in a sheltered situation, otherwise they will burn up. I would recommend the sowing in drills about two or three inches deep, levelling the ground very smoothly with light mould, in rows about four feet asunder, for the convenience of going between, in order to gather the crop, and raising Cabbages or other things at the same time. In the spring let your rows be east and west, in the summer north and south, for a reason which must be obvious, viv. the giving them as much sun as possible in the first instance, and as little as possible in the last. When your peas are well up, they should be hilled once or twice before they are stuck; this not only strengthens them, but at the same time affords them fresh nourishment; the manner of sticking them everybody knows; I shall only therefore mention a caution to put your sticks firm in the ground, otherwise they are apt to fall, when the vines grow rampant, and not to stic on them in too near the roots, lest you do the plant an irreparable injury. In the spring it has been found that scattering some dry cow dung in the trenches before you sow your peas, has been very beneficial.”
Pisum sativum, Adam Lonicer, Etching, 1557
In the Le Jardinier Solitaire written by French Carthusian monk Francis Gentil in 1704, recommends:
‘Work to be done in March-
…In wet Earth, Plant all sorts of Trees in this Month, Pear-Trees, Apple-Trees, Peach-Trees, Apricok-Trees and Plum Trees.
Continue to Graft in the Cleft.
Towards the End of the Month Soe in the naked Earth, all sorts of Sallating-Seeds, except Golden Purslane and also Seeds of Edible Roots.
Sprinkle Mould over Beds you have Sown, and Plant Asparagus.
Tho’ you had sown Peas in November and December, Sow more now, to have some when the First are gone.
Plant not out into the naked Earth till the Beginning of May, the Plants you have Raised in Hot Beds because the Earth ought first to be warm…*
If you have any Borders to be Planed with Pot-Herbs, or Sweet Herbs, fail not to do it about the End of this Month tho’ the Beginning of April is not too late.
Planting peas, March 2023
The actual work that has taken place in the habitant jardin potager at Fort de Chartres in February and March is at a pace with the above eighteenth-century advice. Arriving at the mid-way point in March, the seasonal garden tasks of pruning the espaliered French heritage apple trees, pear trees, wild grapes, and the potager’s fruit shrubs is completed. The raised beds are being weeded and the soil turned, followed by the late winter’s first sowing of heritage runner bean, beet, cabbage, leek, lettuce, onion, pea, and spinach. As daylight stretches ever longer through the fluctuating conditions harbored within the month of March, there is a building of quiet anticipation for the upcoming growing season, full of all the hope and promise only a new year can bring. As winter fades with the long hours of darkness giving way to light, so do our visions of the early celebrations of this new year. The presence of these celebrations born in the cold and dark days of deep winter offers us an understanding that our present-day wants and desires are not so dissimilar to those of our region’s ancestors. We share a timeless hopeful yearning to be blessed with good health, vitality, and prosperity in the new year. Au gui l’an nuef!
An early March evening in the jardin potager at Fort de Chartres
*Cone-shaped head cabbages
** The hot bed allowed colonists to start vegetables before spring thawed the ground, protecting seedlings from the bitter cold and provides the heat needed for out-of-season growth. Gardeners would have layered soil over fresh manure from livestock to create a heat source. Once the manure cooled to seventy degrees F, the bed was ready for seeds. Straw placed on top provided protection from the elements. If prepared properly, the hotbed could retain its heat for several weeks.
Sources:
John Randolph, “A Treatise on Gardening.” 1760
Francois Gentil, Le Jardinier Solitaire, the Solitary Or Carthusian Gard’ner. 1706
Adam Lonice, Revised version of Eucharius Rösslin’s herbal. 1557
And so, it begins. The new garden season is heralded with the pruning of the Fort’s espaliered French heritage apple trees. “How well they may bloom and how well they may bear, so we may have apples and cider next year.”* Throughout the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries, as noted in French gardening treatises, espaliered fruit trees maximized fruit production in the jardin potager. These hedge rows of pruned fruit trees marked garden divisions and were used to help screen raised bed gardens from the elements, providing a protective environment conducive to growing. To fulfill these functions, sometimes frameworks were created of either trellises, lattice work, or rails to give support to these trees.
Bernard M’Mahon, eighteenth-early nineteenth-century self-described “Nursery, Seedsman, and Florist,” wrote a popular calendar for American gardeners in 1806 and ran a successful nursery and botanic garden in Philadelphia. His definition of espaliered referred to “hedges of fruit-trees. . . trained up regularly to a lattice or trellis of wood work. . . commonly arranged in a single row in the borders and boundaries. . . of the kitchen-garden.”
The recent Illinois country late winter weather continues to swing mightily between cold and warm temperatures, accompanied by frozen wintry weather-mixes and rain. While we feel like we are on a bit of a weather see-saw, the new season gardening efforts can begin with both the planning and sowing of seeds indoors along with outdoor garden work preparing raised beds and fruit tree/shrub pruning on those warmer more temperate days of the late winter jardin. On a recent February afternoon, my granddaughter helped sow cabbage and kale seeds indoors, along with a few other heirloom seed varieties that are more difficult to direct sow in the garden, jumpstarting the growing season. Always a joy to share these gardening activities with her whether indoors or outdoors, making this gardener feel like we are sharing our hope for the future and the garden year ahead as we prepare and plant seeds together. Joy, knowledge, and hope simply expressed in the act of preparing and sowing seeds .
While work may have just begun in the jardin, busy preparations have been ongoing for the upcoming Saturday, March 12th, Fort de Chartres Jardin Potager 5th Annual Heirloom Seed Swap from 10 a.m.-noon. The seed exchange will take place in the Fort de Chartres Guards’ Room* and free heirloom sample seed packets will be available for visitors. You can bring your favorite or extra seeds to the Fort and share your seed bounty while having an opportunity to select seed from the garden project or from others’ shared seeds. The seeds you might want to share do not necessarily need to be heirloom, just seeds you would like to share with others. Available during this event will be informational flyers about the direct sowing of seeds, raised bed soil preparation, companion planting, historical uses of vegetable and herbs, and my heritage seed collections for sale. The sales of the heritage seed collections support the Fort de Chartres kitchen garden project. Seed collection types include Early Spring, Spring-Summer, Fall vegetable selections, along with Herb, Flower, and Native Garden Mound options. After a break and weather permitting at 1 p.m., we will move into the Fort’s kitchen garden and learn about the upcoming growing season and which vegetable and flower seeds can be direct sown in late winter garden in the Illinois Country. If it is too cold outside or the ground is too damp to work in the jardin in the afternoon, it will be lovely to visit indoors with anyone who stops by.
This event is free and open to the public. For any updated event information about this garden event, check the jardin’s FB page at www.facebook.com/fdcjardin. If you would like more information about the Fort de Chartres State Historic Site, Site Staff at 618-284-7230. For directions and site information, please visit http://www.fortdechartres.us/contact-us.
Hope to see you Saturday, March 12!
* Apple Tree Wassail, The Watersons, 1975 Album “For Pence and Spicy Ale”. Apple Tree Wassails are the songs that are sung to the health of the apple trees; the expression is also used for the overall celebration which usually takes place in the orchards or wherever there is an apple tree. This reference is made in memory of Norma, a true inspiration and force of nature. She and her family represent the power and value of tradition through song and story. The world is a less vibrant in her absence.
**In the event of cold weather, the Seed Swap will move to the much warmer conditions of the Fort de Chartres Trading Post on the northern corner of the Fort site, the corner Fort building nearest the jardin potager.
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