Late summer is typically the start of harvest season for the earliest crops, but this year the weather was so odd in July that we seem to be a little behind. As we start to harvest (and eat!) we’ll keep adding to this post to share how our crops are looking as we harvest the rewards of the first year of the OCHM Garden. 

First up: onions! Though they are a bit smaller than their maximum potential, they look good! Spring-planted onions are typically smaller than fall-planted varieties, and so this is a very respectable first attempt. As the onions spend a month curing inside, we are looking at the empty bed in the garden and making plans to try some fall-planted onions! To check out the start of our onion journey which began way back in February, visit All About Onions: Sowing Our First Seeds!

We’re too busy eating our tomatoes to get the post up now, but stay tuned!

In previous blog posts, we took a look that the two crops we planted in the OCHM Garden that were successfully introduced to the region early: onions and potatoes. In this update, we are dealing with two more crops planted in the garden that were introduced later on: tomatoes and cucumbers.

Though quite common in gardens today, you would have been hard-pressed to find tomatoes and cucumbers in local gardens prior to the Revolutionary War. Tomatoes originated in the Andes before being introduced to Mexico and then spread the world over through Spanish exploration. Tomatoes require a long, warm growing season so the first tomatoes grown in America were primarily in the southern colonies. It wasn’t until the early 1800s, with the development of hotbed glass and cold frame techniques, that small, local farmers in this region, referred to in that period as “market gardeners”, began mass-producing tomatoes. Also, in the early 19^th century, you would not see anything like the variety of tomatoes that you see in the grocery store today. More likely your choices would be like those of one Boston-based seed producer who, in their 1834 catalog, advertised two varieties of tomato: small and large. 

An article in the Taunton Daily Gazette on April 7, 1919, detailing the merits of cold frame gardening. With this technique the sun’s warmth is captured in the glass-enclosed area, making it possible to grow warm-weather plants in cooler climates.

Cucumbers are native to India but were introduced to France as early as the 9^th century. From, there they made their way to England in 14^th century, and finally to North America in the mid-16^th century. Though cucumbers were grown in parts of America as early as the 1600s, like tomatoes they were not mass-produced in this region until more advanced growing methods were popularized.

Today, in our climate, cucumbers are a great crop for a home gardener. To get a head start you can start them indoors, but they also grow great when directly sown in late spring. The key is to wait until the weather has warmed up to daytime temperatures between 65 and 75 degrees, and nights over 50 degrees. Cucumbers thrive with consistent moisture and soil with good fertility, (we’ve amended with compost prior to and at planting time). A healthy plant can keep your salads fresh all summer!

A cucumber seedling as of June 15, 2021.

For our tomatoes and cucumbers, there are lots of varieties to choose from. We are growing an heirloom homestead variety of tomato and a burpless variety of cucumber, both from Eden Brothers. The term heirloom typically refers to seed varieties that were grown prior to World War II whose genetic characteristics are passed down from one generation of plant to the next through their seeds. Burpless cucumbers tend to have a sweeter taste and a thinner skin, making them the ideal cucumber for pickling.

Botanical print of a tomato in the Flore pittoresque et me´dicale des Antilles, v.6 (1828).

We began both seeds indoors in late winter (to learn more on indoor starting techniques, see our Seed Starting post), and planted them outside just before Memorial Day Weekend. This year, Memorial Day Weekend was 45 degrees and rainy for three straight days. So it was not the best start to our plants’ outdoor lives, but now, a few weeks later, they are looking great. We also added some cucumber seeds directly to the planting bed, just to test which method is more successful.  

One thing to keep in mind with all plants that are started indoors is that they require an intermediate step of “hardening off” before they are planted into the ground. This means that you need to take your seedlings outside, still in their pots, for a few hours. Let them sit in a protected area without direct sunlight or strong wind, and then take them back inside. The next day, you want to do the same thing, but for a few hours more. Keep extending the time outside for about a week, until they are staying out overnight (remember, as long as it’s at least 50 degrees). This acclimates your plants to life outside after the safe and stress-free life they had been living in your seed starting area, and means they are ready to go into the ground.

March 11, 1919 “Gardening Book” in the Taunton Daily Gazette

As both tomatoes and cucumbers are vining plants they both require some type of apparatus to aid their growth; in this case cages for the tomatoes and a trellis for the cucumbers. Growing cucumbers on a trellis keeps them up off the ground which offers good air circulation. This should help reduce the chance of leaf spot and make harvesting a snap.

Both plants will take about eighty days to fully mature, and in the meantime, we will regularly fertilize our tomatoes and cucumbers using a fish-based, high nitrogen organic fertilizer that we got from Neptune’s Harvest out of Gloucester, MA.

Part of this exhibit is trying new things and learning, so we also tried experimental “banana tea” fertilizer. Here’s a bit more on that from our YouTube Channel.

And we are off to a promising start, so we hope you’ll stay tuned and see how our heat-loving veggies grow this summer! We’ll be posting updates to our social media and right here on the exhibit blog. 

Tomato flowers on June 25, 2021.

Archaeological evidence suggests that vegetable farming in New England dates back more than one thousand years.  Three plants, known as the Three Sisters, were grown together by Native Americans: corn, beans, and squash. The term three sisters come from the way in which these three crops have a symbiotic relationship in their growth: the corn stalks provide vertical space for the beans to grow to reduce competition for space with the squash, the beans strengthen the corn stalks against any inclement weather and add nitrogen to the soil, and the large leaves of the squash plant shelter the soil to maintain the optimal moisture levels required for all three plants. In our Three Sisters Garden, we are growing native variants of each crop: flint corn, runner beans, and our squash of choice, pumpkins. We are also going to compare this indigenous approach to farming with more modern planting techniques for bush bean and sweet corn, still mass-produced staple crops of New England today.

Our seeds for our Three Sisters Garden.

The first type of corn we are planting is also the first crop of our historic Three Sisters Garden. For this corn, we went with Otto File Flint Corn. Flint corn, or Zea mays indurata, was the variant of corn planted by the local Native American population for centuries prior to the English arrival, and became a crucial part of early colonist survival. In March 1621, after Governor Carver signed a peace treaty with Massasoit Ousamequin, one of his men Tisquantum, or Squanto, stayed behind to teach the Mayflower passengers how to survive off the land. According to Pilgrim accounts, Squanto was quite successful in his teachings:

“We set the last Spring some twentie Acres of Indian Corne … and according to the manner of the Indians, we manured our ground with Herings or rather Shadds, which we have in great abundance…  Our Corn did prove well, & God be praysed, we had a good increase of Indian-Corne [sic]” — Edward Winslow, Mourt’s Relation.

Prize-winning corn from the Mason Farm in Attleboro, 1912. Flint corn(left) and sweet corn judged by the Bristol County Agricultural Society.

Flint corn requires full sun, little water, and will reach its full maturity in about 115 days at six feet tall. It produces long, narrow 8- 12 inch cobs, one per plant. The cobs are more orange than the corn you most often see in a supermarket, and has been prized as a polenta corn for years. Flint corn is also known as a great popping corn. Here is an ad for a tasty popcorn ball from the Taunton Daily Gazette in 1909.

We have an L-shaped bed, in which we plan to have two distinct three sisters groupings. You can see our plans here:

After last frost, we directly sowed our flint corn about an inch into the soil, which had been amended with additional compost. The spacing for our corn is key; for a three sisters planting, we need to plan ahead for the next two plants to join the grouping. So we wanted the corn at the center of our grouping, stalks six inches apart, with plans for our second sister, the runner beans, to join around the outside of the circle in a few weeks. This formation is crucial as the beans need the corn stalks as supports on which to grow. 

Here’s our first Three Sisters Garden planting video, focused on flint corn.

For comparison, we also planted modern sweet corn. Sweet corn is one of the more popular types of corn grown in New England and is a staple crop of farmers in this region. Our sweet corn, an ambrosia variety, has very similar planting requirements to flint corn. We planted the seeds one inch in the soil, and like flint corn, sweet corn requires full sun and little watering. The biggest differences are the maturity times, sweet corn matures about 30 days before flint, and the harvest yields; flint corn produces one single ear per stalk, whereas sweet corn will produce two to three ears per stalk.

And this is how we planted our sweet corn:

Runner beans were first cultivated in Central America nearly 4,000 years ago. In New England, runner beans, along with flint corn, squash and artichokes, were among the first crops identified by Samuel de Champlain during his voyage along the Cape Cod coast in 1605. Beginning in 1621 runner beans were one of several crops for which the colonists sought native cultivation advice. Runner beans are excellent sources of nitrogen and will aid the growth of any other compatible plants they are grown with. Our runner beans are scarlet emperor beans, often grown today for ornamental purposes due to their bright red flowers.

On May 25 we planted runner beans. Because they grow up the corn stalks for support, we waited for the corn to be about 6 inches tall before planting the beans.  Each bean got a small amount of compost in it’s planting hole, and we planted in a ring outside the corn, which you can see here:

An here’s a video from that planting:

The third sister in a Three Sisters garden is typically a squash, and we chose to grow pumpkins. Pumpkins, a type of winter squash, is native to North America and was a domesticated plant as early as 7500 BCE. Locally, archaeological evidence suggests that New England indigenous people had begun farming pumpkins as far back as a millennium ago. Pumpkins were one of the first crops identified by European traders in the 17th century, and by 1630 were a favored crop of the first Plymouth Colony settlers. So loved was the pumpkin by the first English settlers that, in 1636, a law was passed in Cambridge to levy hefty fines on the owners of any chicken, hen, or turkey that damaged a pumpkin plant in the town. Our pumpkin of choice, the small sugar pumpkin, is ideal for pumpkin pies and will only reach a maximum weight of 5 pounds.

We planted pumpkins last, Here you can see our growth from seed, to first sprouts, to the third sister rounding out the garden in June.

June 11

Everything is up and growing!

July 2

Corn made it “knee-high by the Fourth of July.” Here you can see the difference a month makes!

July 27

Sister 1: Flint corn is starting to show tassels, but it’s all about whether they were able to wind pollinate if we get good cobs or not.
Sister 2: No runner beans yet, but there are beautiful flowers and the plants have certainly run their way up the corn stalks.
Sister 3: The pumpkin plants have lots of flowers which bodes well for some small sugar pumpkins! We had one unfortunate incident with our landscaping company and one vine trailing out of its bed, but things are still looking good overall. 

Be sure to check future updates as we add our next sisters and to see how the garden is growing.

Potatoes are one of the more versatile foods that we eat and one of the earliest-introduced crops of the Old Colony region, which is how they found their way into the OCHM garden. Originally from Peru, the first potatoes grown in New England arrived on ships from Ireland. Those ships’ passengers settled in the Merrimack Valley of New Hampshire in April 1719 and immediately began growing potatoes. Over the following two decades potato production proved to be successful, and by the 1740s potatoes were not only a staple crop of the local population but also an important export of the colony. Still widely grown and widely enjoyed, today farmers in the United States produce on average over 20 million tons of potatoes each year.

For our garden, we are growing Russet Burbank potatoes. First developed in Massachusetts in 1876, Russet Burbanks quickly became the primary potato of choice for New England farmers, particularly in Maine. Today, this breed of potato is the most widely grown potato in North America and several other varieties of russets, including the popular Idaho russet potato, can trace their origins to the Burbank.

1875 seed potato advertisement from the Taunton Daily Gazette

To grow potatoes, in general, you want to start with seed potatoes, which have been specifically grown to ensure healthy plants free of disease. Potatoes are grown in all 50 states, however, to guarantee quality and disease free-potatoes, the United States restricts the growth of seed potatoes to only the 15 states that have optimal potato weather. The best weather for seed potato growth is hard, cold winters and long sunny days in the summer. Our Russet Burbank seed potatoes come from Maine and are officially certified as Maine seed potatoes with an accompanying USDA certificate from the grower. We ordered through Pinetree Garden Seeds back in January and they were shipped when it was safe to plant in April.

Our USDA Seed Potato Certificate

Once you have your seed potatoes, and the ground is workable in spring, there are two ways to go about planting depending on the size of your garden. If space is not an issue, you can plant the seed potatoes whole right into the ground. This method requires more space between potato rows as you are laying out your beds, as more plants are likely to grow from each seed potato. For smaller garden plots, like ours, we suggest cutting the seed potatoes into pieces containing 2-3 eyes per piece. This allows you to put your rows a little closer together, though you still want to try for about 3 feet between rows, as now only 2 to 3 plants will grow from each piece. One thing to note in your planning is that if you are going for the cut method you need to allow the pieces to dry for 24 hours at room temperature before planting. This gives the cut side a chance to toughen up just a bit before it goes into the ground. 

Here’s a quick peek of our potato prep!

After we cut our six seed potatoes in half, we let them dry for 24 hours. The following day we dug three trenches in our plot, each 6-8 inches deep and about 2 1/2 feet apart.  We then filled the bottom of each trench with compost and placed each potato piece, cut-side down into the compost. Each trench got 4 pieces of potato, about 6 inches apart. We covered our potato pieces with dirt, leveled the soil, marked our rows, and then watered the bed. It is important to note that during the entire growth process, as vines become visible, we are going to add more compost and dirt to cover the vines. This process is known as “hilling” and it keeps the potatoes working to grow high up through the hill, rather than wide. The taller the hill the deeper the tubers will be growing, and this is important as depth and darkness improve the flavor of potatoes. As the plants grow up, and wind and rain knock down the hills, we’ll keep adding compost to keep the potatoes deep down in the dirt.

Our Russet Burbank potatoes will take 100 to 125 days to mature. They can be planted when the soil is warm enough to be worked, which in some cases is 4 to 6 weeks before the last frost date, and we planted on April 29th. This (hopefully) ensures that our sprouts will start to appear after our estimated last frost, which is important as frost may damage young sprouts. If all goes according to plan, in about 4 months we will dig into the soil and hopefully uncover lots of delicious spuds!

You can see a whole video of planting our potatoes here:

UPDATE June 4: Hilling Up

Here is a “before and after” of the first “hilling up” of our potatoes. We will keep adding more material when the plant gets about 8 inches above the most recent hill.

 We’re talking about beginnings in this post and wanted to share a little more about the beginnings of our project. 

For the past few summers, we have had a homemade mini-golf course on our front lawn. It was fun, eye-catching, and a low-key way to introduce people to the museum. We used lumber from the “cull” pile at the local hardware store, plywood, green turf, and PVC pipes for the holes.

As we looked to summer 2021, the course’s weather-beaten physique and our desire to move away from sharing putters while still dealing with COVID-19, meant we maybe needed to re-think our mini golf course. At the same time, we were brainstorming topics for our Spring 2021 exhibit and were particularly conscious about trying to develop something that would be safe to visit in person, but also allow us to benefit from our new ways of engaging with our audience by combining a physical exhibit with a robust virtual experience.

We realized that by using the existing mini-golf course, after removing the fake grass and plywood tops, we essentially had a set of raised beds and at no extra cost. Raised beds are contained gardening units, usually outlined in wood, stone, or concrete blocks that sit on top of the existing soil. The benefits of raised bed gardening are that the gardener has greater control over the soil, it can be easier to control weeds, and you can typically extend the planting season because the soil tends to warm faster than the ground which is coming out of winter freeze.

One thing to note is that there is some concern about pressure-treated lumber being used in raised bed gardening. The concern is that chemicals in the pressure-treated wood can leech into the garden bed and then the plants growing there. We did have some pressure-treated wood in our mini-golf course but used those pieces in the non-edible parts of our garden to avoid this issue. If you try this out at home, you’ll want to avoid pressure-treated wood.

Typical raised beds are a bit taller than what we were working with—but remember, we are reusing materials we already had. Inside each bed, we now had complete control and we set to work making each garden bed the best it could be for our project. Dirt is the foundation of any garden, and preparing your site is one of the most important (and overlooked) steps that any gardener can take.

To ensure our best chance at success, we turned over a foot of soil inside each bed removing the grass, roots, rocks, and weeds that already existed. This gave us a blank canvas to drop in clean, sifted loam/compost mix that we ordered from a local business. Loamy soil is a key element of a healthy garden as its three components (sand, clay, and silt) allow for plenty of room for root growth while helping the dirt retain all its nutrients for even healthier plants. We worked our new soil into the existing soil and filled each bed up to the top of the wood sides. From here, each time we plant we will add in some organic compost to really give the plants and seeds the best chance of survival. Compost is broken down organic matter, such as leaves and food scraps, which helps soil retain moisture and nutrients. When you add compost it not only nourishes your plants, but also works its way through the soil and will improve a planting area over time. We’re amending our soil in spring because this garden is starting from scratch, but if you are working in your garden at home, you can add 2-3 inches of compost to the garden in the fall, and allow it to work in over the winter to prepare your beds for spring planting.

The one exception to our compost plan is for the wildflowers. We are sowing seed for 18 native wildflowers found throughout New England, in three separate beds. Wildflowers want well-draining soil and lots of sun, but they do not need a lot of nutrients. So for these beds, we’ll leave the soil alone and just scatter the seeds and let nature take it from there.

Our beds were in place for mid-April when we officially opened the exhibit by transplanting our onions. Onions don’t mind some cooler temperatures, but our other plants would not do so well if planted now. They are going to wait for some warmer temperatures, and we’ll look to transplant our seedlings and sow some additional seeds closer to mid-May.

You can check out a video of this whole process, and lots of our other videos on our Youtube Channel! 

Lavender is a lovely, fragrant perennial that can be grown in flower beds or containers and is a great plant to attract pollinators to your garden. Unlike most of the flowers you see in our garden, lavender is not native to North America but is indigenous to the Mediterranean. The name comes from the Latin verb lavare, meaning “to wash” which gives away how it has been used for nearly 2,500 years. Lavender has long been celebrated for its fragrance and has been used in baths, soaps, and perfumes since the days of ancient Egypt and Rome. It also was discovered to have medicinal benefits and has been used to treat stomach ailments, coughs, nerves, muscles, headaches, and even depression.

Explorers during the Age of Discovery, from the late 15^th through the 17^th century, brought lavender back to Europe where it quickly became incredibly popular. Used for its scent and medical and culinary benefits, it also became a staple in traditional English gardens; something still true today.

Its popularity with Europeans ensured lavender quickly came over to North America along with the first European settlers. We chose to add lavender to our garden because of its medicinal uses among colonial settlers. Here are some examples of uses from the OCHM collection.

Dr. John Williams’ Last Legacy; or, the Useful Family Herbal, by Dr. John Williams, 5th edition, printed 1829.

So, now on to growing lavender. And, to be honest, lavender is a little tricky. First of all, there are lots of varieties of lavender and so if you have a variety in mind, you want to read about it and make sure you can provide the right growing conditions in your garden. Lavender plants can be found locally at nurseries and garden centers, but we are trying everything from seed and that adds a few extra challenges. When growing from seed, keep in mind that: 

• Seeds require cold stratification
• Lavender seeds are slow to germinate
• Plants grown from seed may not flower in the first year
• You need to start early and be patient

Going into it we knew we may not be successful, but in gardening, that happens! We won’t know until we try. So on we go.

January 28th

After ordering our seeds from Eden Brothers, we started the cold stratification process and the whole batch of seeds went into the freezer at the very end of January where they stayed for the next six weeks.

March 6th

In early March the mixture was removed from the freezer and distributed over an 8-pack seed cell filled with seed starting mix.

Now, again, lavender is a bit tricky. The seeds actually need light to germinate, so the pack went immediately to the grow lights.

March 13th

After a week. There wasn’t a lot of action. But we knew we needed to be patient. The seed packet says it could take 14-28 days to germinate!

March 20th

Two weeks after planting–a beautiful sight! Some tiny lavender seedlings have germinated. We will nurture the baby lavenders as they grow, and repot them into 3-inch pots once they are a bit bigger.  They will go outside after all danger of frost has passed.

Once outside they will still need our attention. Lavender needs some special soil amendments and the plants are prone to overwatering (tricky, we told you). But we’ll go over all of that later in the spring.

While we wait, we can plan our visit to the Cape Cod Lavender Farm and make plans for Drying Flowers this fall.

Say tuned for updates! 

March 25th