12 avril 2021 lundi
67 degrees F , partly cloudy
10-20 mph, NW wind
Spring has arrived at Fort de Chartres and in the Illinois Country. Just as in French Colonial times, the agricultural fields in the American Bottom are tilled and seeded and the new growing season is underway. Wheat is one of the important crops that has been grown throughout the centuries in these rich fields in the Bottom, the land being continually renewed by the flooding waters of the great Mississippi River.
In 2018, Fort de Chartres Heritage Garden Project and Les Amis du Fort de Chartres have worked together to showcase a heritage spring breadwheat Triticum aestivum (var. Rouge de Bordeaux) representing the type of wheat that might have been grown as this region’s important ancestorial crop. With support of the Village of Prairie du Rocher, a small wheat plot was planted on village land through our Heritage Garden Project. Unfortunately, the very wet conditions and flooding of the surrounding area in recent years has not made for a successful effort thus far. In an effort to improve the plot’s drainage, Les Amis du Fort de Chartres purchased lumber in 2020 to build a raised bed to place in that village plot so that even if the surrounding ground was saturated, the soil could drain and allow the wheat to thrive. Thank you to Nick Kuntz for preparing the lumber for the plot and Jason Duensing for helping Nick prepare the bed sides and finish constructing the bed on the plot site in Prairie du Rocher. Once the bed was in place, the Village placed soil in the bed, then the soil was amended and raked in preparation for planting, with the assistance of Sabre, our garden project volunteer. I was able to sow the wheat seed shortly thereafter and now we just wait and see if our efforts are rewarded. All of the projects related to our French Colonial garden journey are always an adventure and fingers-crossed that this new adventure will be successful. If you are driving by, please don’t hesitate to park on the gravel road near the project’s sign, take a short walk to our red raised bed and check out our wheat as it grows! To revisit the original wheat project post for more of this project’s story, visit here this jardin’s previous post, Blé from mai 2018
Offering heirloom seeds has been an important and ongoing component of this independently funded heritage garden project located at Fort de Chartres and it has been a disappointment these past two seasons not to be able to host the usual site garden events, where free small seed packets and seed growing information could be shared. Seasonal flooding and the current pandemic have restricted Fort site use but these seed sharing opportunities will resume once normalcy can safely return to our lives. So, for now, my La Jardiniere’s heirloom seed collections can offer a way to share the French Colonial and Native Garden seeds and their history. Currently these heirloom seed collections now include seven different types. Newly added this fall, a French Colonial Heirloom Annual Flower Collection showcasing the easy to grow and much-loved period annual flowers grown in the Fort de Chartres jardin potager. All of the heirloom seed packet collections are packaged in the typical manner of an eighteenth-century letter and sealed with red wax. The package itself opens to detailed information reflecting the history and additional growing details of each variety. Ten individual small seed packets are contained in each vegetable, flower, and herb collection packet. The Three Sisters Native Garden collections contain corn, bean, and winter squash varieties plus additional information about this Native Peoples tradition. This summer there was hope to add a Late Summer-Early Autumn Seed Collection but was unable to locate adequate seed for the collection, so this new vegetable collection will have to wait until next year.
The beginning of the autumn season brought warm weather and sunny skies, perfect conditions to gather the garden’s heirloom produce, seeds, and its largest crop yet of heritage apple and pears. October’s recent frosts and colder weather have brought an end to the last harvests of Cornfield beans, Bull Nose peppers, and Listada de Gandia eggplants. As the more hectic garden work subsides, now time is spent gathering the last seeds for next year and finish cleaning up spent frost-bitten crops while nourishing and tending the fall-planted, cold-hardy vegetables. These autumn vegetables are chosen for their cold tolerance and shorter growing season, such as cabbage, carrot, kale, leeks, lettuce, peas, radishes, and spinach.
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