New Plants and Planting in the Rain

Last Friday was one of the days that I look forward to all year. Along with April Deitrich and Judy Candela, my coworkers here at the museum, I went to the annual Landis Valley Herb and Garden Faire in Lancaster County, PA. It's a long drive, but the incredible volume and variety of plants for sale at the Landis Valley Museum every Mothers Day Weekend makes it worth the trip.

Though it is so easy to be distracted by all of the beautiful and unusual plants, I was on a mission to acquire new medicinal plants for the Pry Garden. I made a two-page wish list and both April and Judy got their own copy. I was hoping to scratch a few more items off the list than I did, but I came home with a good haul and we all had a great time. It all seemed to be over too quickly!

Here are some pictures from the trip:

heirloom tomatoes and other vegetables

April and Judy!

Plant Sitting! The museum would babysit your plants while you kept shopping!

Even though I did not get as many different plants as I wanted, I still had a lot to plant.

I also had to plant the the seedlings that I have been growing at home since winter.

Tomatoes from seed!

Saturday was our scheduled planting day, but unfortunately the weather did not cooperate. We had rain throughout most of Friday night and Saturday. That kept most of our volunteers away and made the garden paths very muddy. Luckily a few dedicated volunteers did come out to help and we had a two-hour stretch without and rain, and even a little blue sky!

Standing in the mud!

Refreshments for volunteers

For a brief time, it was a beautiful day!

 Thanks to those who came out and helped! It really made an ambitious day possible!

Despite the thick mud, it's not looking too bad!

Spring Bees

Yesterday was April Fool's Day, but I have refrained from making any prank posts. I suppose there is always next year. Instead, I have been taking advantage of good April weather to get out in the garden and do the work that is so badly needed.

One of the best signs of spring is the return of the honeybees! Here is a picture I snapped of one of the first honeybees to visit the garden in 2013. I'm not a professional photographer, so excuse the poor image.

Honeybees are not native to the Western Hemisphere but were introduced to North America by European settlers in the early 17th century. Since that time, they have become fundamentally interwoven with the fabric of American agriculture and ecology.


For most people, the first thought of honeybees is understandably the production of honey. Around the time of the Civil War, honey was only just becoming a commercially viable agricultural product. In earlier times, harvesting honey meant destroying the bees and their hives. Several 19th century innovations, especially the movable frame or Langstroth hive, made honey production sustainable and affordable.

After the Civil War, other inventions like the centrifugal honey extractor (1865) and the hand-held smoker (1875) would continue to make bee-keeping a more practical venture.

Honey is a very unique food. It has been argued that honey is the only food which humans eat that has been manufactured by another animal. If stored properly, honey will last indefinitely, for centuries or more! It is also widely understood to promote healing in burns and cuts, also possessing powerful antibiotic properties. Some people will use it in place of antibiotic ointment in dressing minor wounds.

While most people love honey, that is only a small fraction of what makes honeybees vital to our modern existence. Honeybees are the largest pollinators in the United States. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, honeybees are responsible for pollinating 80% of all flowering crops, which constitutes at least 1/3 of America's food supply.

Alarmingly, honeybees are in serious trouble. Pesticides introduced in the 20th century often have the unintended effect of killing bees that visit crop fields. The arrival of invasive parasitic mites has also been detrimental to honeybee colonies. Currently the greatest threat to bee survival is a phenomenon known as "Colony Collapse Disorder," in which most of the bees in a hive disappear suddenly without any apparent provocation. Theories abound to explain the cause, including pesticides, parasites, genetic faults, and electromagnetic radiation.

 Honeybees in the Pry Garden's lavender last June

Late Winter Seeds

Spring is on our doorsteps, and accordingly, I have begun sowing some of the first seeds in the garden. With snow falling on the ground yesterday afternoon, it might seem as though I am a bit early, but it's recommended that some early spring crops be sown a few weeks before the last frost. For example, the University of Maryland Extension Office recommends beginning to plant spinach as early as March 10, and leaf lettuce on March 15.

Before putting seeds in the ground though, the soil had to be turned over. I think that nothing works better than a plain old shovel.

I had some help from Kady, a Museum Studies student at nearby Shepherd University. Kady was visiting us last week to fulfill her museum practicum requirement. Helping in the garden was one of the many hands-on experiences we tried to show her during her visit.

I have put in six varieties of heirloom leaf lettuce. I have stayed away from head lettuce, both because I am not as much of a fan and because it was difficult to find an appropriate variety to the 1860s. The now ubiquitous and tasteless iceberg lettuce just wasn't around. As they take shape, I might talk more about the varieties I did select.

This is the first year for spinach in the garden. I am a big fan of the nutritious green leaf, so I hope that come spring we will have a bountiful harvest for salads and cooking. 

Inside, some of the first seedlings are emerging and looking healthy! This picture is already a few days old, but you can see some fenugreek sprouting. I hope that will have a few more seedlings to show you next week!

New Compost Bins

I try to update this blog every Tuesday evening, but we were fairly busy at the museum yesterday, preparing and hosting our second happy hour at Brewer's Alley to premiere our latest brew in the Civil War Beer Series: First Draught. The event was great time and well-attended, and the beer is delicious! It's a tasty twist on Belgian dubbel, so give it a try!

Read About the Event!

Read about the Civil War Beer Series!

I mentioned last week that that we had the Boys Scouts from Troops 279 and 277 at the Pry House. They were taking the opportunity to practice some basic scout skills on a winter camp out, but also pitched in for the museum, helping to get some work done in the garden. One thing they did, was to convert some simple trashcans into compost bins.

I spent some time looking online for some simple, inexpensive, and fool-proof methods of doing compost. Many different people all recommended this method. It simply requires taking a basic plastic trashcan with a secure lid, and drilling the sides, bottom, and lid with a number of holes using a power drill.

These are supposed to make great containers for compost. They make it easier to regulate heat and moisture while keeping most animals out. The many holes promote air circulation, which is crucial to getting the compost to break down. Putting it up on simple cinder blocks further improves circulation.

Like most compost techniques, I add alternating layers of "green" matter - like weeds, grass clippings, green leafy trimmings, and kitchen scraps - with brown matter - like straw, leaves, sawdust, or even paper; really anything that seems woody. Purported experts all have have their own notions of the the "correct" ratio of brown to green. I a trying about half and half.

Three things in particular attracted me to the trashcan technique:

- It doesn't require a large amount of compost material to make it work quickly, unlike open-air piles

- It is cheaper than buying purpose-made compost boxes

- These round cans with firm lids can be easily turned over and rolled around as a simple way to turn the compost periodically.

I am hoping it works out! I will keep you posted!

Boy Scouts Lend a Hand

This past weekend, we had Boy Scout Troop 279 of Point of Rocks, MD camping in the barn at the Pry Farm. They were joined by members of Troop 277 of Brunswick, MD. Troop 279 is was my home during my time as a boy scout, where I earned my Eagle Rank in 2006.

During their stay, the scouts helped me to get some work done in the garden, getting it ready for the coming spring.The boys did great work in removing lots of dead matter from the beds and sprucing up the garden paths.

We also got up on a ladder to replace the twine on the hop trellis. Unfortunately no one got a picture of that comical operation.

The scouts also took some round plastic trash cans and converted them into new compost bins for the garden. The work mostly consisted in drilling a series of holes in the cans to promote air ventilation for the compost in progress. I have been dabbling in compost before, but I think that these new bins will be a more work able system. I will talk more on that in a future post.

This is not the first time that Troop 279 has been camping at the Pry House to do volunteer work for the museum. The troop has been coming to the house for years, even before the museum was opened in 2005. Their first service project was helping to clean out decades of dirt and broken-down animal manure from the bottom of the Pry Barn. If only I had all of that dirt for the garden!

You can see me here as a boy scout, wearing my Civil War reenacting uniform. I had no idea then that I would some day work at the Pry House as it's director of programming and official gardener!

Anti-Bacterial Herbs

I was shopping at the supermarket recently and purchased a disinfecting multi-surface cleaner made by Seventh Generation, a company that sells household cleaners and other products which are supposed to "help protect human health and the environment." The active ingredients in green alternative products like this one are very often plant-based. This particular cleaner lists "Thymol," a component of thyme oil, as its active disinfectant agent.

Seeing thyme oil listed on the bottle as an important ingredient of this very modern product reminds me of a continuity from 19th century household practices and today. A century and a half ago, thyme was a very popular cooking herb, just as it is today, but it also had medicinal and other household uses.

Common Thyme and the Chemical Structure of Thymol

In the 19th century, thyme was sometimes used in home medicine when washing wounds, a practice that could help prevent infection and sepsis. Today we understand that this is because compounds in thyme oil have anti-microbial properties and can kill infection-causing microorganisms. Civil War Era Americans did not understand the importance of bacteria and germ theory, but they did recognize strong, fragrant herbs like thyme as promoting a healthful influence.

Thyme was not the only common garden herb that was used this way. Savory was also utilized in washing wounds. Savory seems to often be a forgotten herb in today's cooking, but it was quite popular among Victorian Americans and imparts a very tasty Italian herb flavor to food.

Winter Savory

Common Sage

Sage was even more frequently used as a home remedy in washing or dressing dressing wounds. Its anti-microbial properties may contribute to its traditional role as an ingredient in pork sausage, further helping to prevent spoilage.

Herbs weren't just used in cleaning wounds, but also in everyday cleaning around the household. Fragrant herbs like thyme, sage, rosemary, and lavender were a common ingredient in cleaning mixtures for washing floors, tables, and other surfaces in the home, not merely because they smell quite nice, but because they were believed to help promote a clean and healthy atmosphere.

A Ward of Armory Square Hospital, Washington, DC in 1865

General hospitals during the Civil War also made use of herbal cleaning supplies for just the same reasons. We can appreciate today that those practices may have helped to reduce the spread of disease and infection among sick and wounded soldiers.

Stratifying Seeds (I Hope)

I took a break from the blog last week because it was New Year's, and in the wake of the Christmas holiday there was nothing much to talk about. I hope that most were able to enjoy a little time off with friends and family.

We are in the heart of winter now, but it's still time for me to begin the preparations for new plants in the spring. I wrote in previous posts that in the fall I collected some seeds from the wild and from plants in the garden. Many of those seeds have to be properly prepared if I am going to sow them for growing this year.

Separating milkweed seeds from the fluff

When we buy packets of seeds from the store or online, they are usually properly prepared and ready to be planted right away. However, the seeds of many plants, especially perennials, have to go through a winter's cold before they are willing to germinate in the spring. This is a protective measure so that seeds do not drop in the fall and begin to sprout, only to be killed by freezing temperatures.

Because I collected these seeds rather than leaving them in the dirt outside, I will need to give them a simulated winter inside before I can use them in the spring. This process is called stratification. this is something I have never tried before and I am hoping that it works, giving me productive seeds to start a little later this year.

Milkweed seeds ready for a cold treatment

To stratify the seeds, I needed some kind of medium to hold them during the process. Many experts have recommended a variety of options including vermiculite, perlite, and sand. I have chosen fine peat moss, made from decomposed sphagnum. I purchased it from a garden store, so it is sterile, meaning that it should be free from diseases and unwanted seeds from weeds.

Peat Moss

I took a bit of peat moss from the sealed packaging and added some water in a bowl. I then nestled the seeds in the dampened moss. Dampening the moss is supposed to allow the seeds to absorb some moisture, helping prepare them for eventual germination.

I put each bunch of seeds into small plastic resealable bags. After a few days at room temperature to encourage the seeds to take up some moisture, I put those bags in the refrigerator. I chose the bottom drawer of the refrigerator because that tends to be the coldest place without freezing.

I am currently stratifying for different species: Common Milkweed, Butterfly Weed, Jimson Weed, and Common Mullein. Stratification times can vary widely for different types of seeds, but for these particular species I think that about a month will be enough time in the cooler. 

I am very hopeful that this process will yield positive results come spring. If it does not work out though, it was at least an interesting learning experience.