I'm very interested in Amy Stewart's work, so I was happy to see Sharon's post about her yesterday. But I think Stewart probably overstated ergot's part the Salem witch trials—if it had any part at all. (Ergot is a fungus that infects grain and can cause hallucinations and erratic behavior in those who eat it.)
My great grandmother, 10 generations back, was a woman named Rebecca Nurse, who was hung for being a witch in those trials. I've spent a lot of time reviewing the trial transcripts to see what really happened. In a nutshell, it started with two girls, cousins, who had seizures that the adults around them blamed on witchcraft. It is these seizures that Stewart attributes to ergot—a charge that has been refuted by academics, and which doesn't make sense to me based on what followed. The afflicted girls singled out a West Indian slave girl named Tituba and two women who were social outcasts as witches. To deflect the anger of the community, they falsely implicated others, who implicated others, who implicated others.
In Rebecca Nurse's case, her family had had a property dispute with the family of the woman who accused her of witchcraft. During the trial, the accusers contended that Nurse used supernatural arts to inflict great pain on them. To bolster their case, when she cocked her head to the side during the trial to hear something more clearly (she was 71 years old, and reportedly hard of hearing), a couple of her accusers jerked their heads to the side and screamed. That kind of thing was obviously theatre designed to get a conviction.
As it happened, Nurse was acquitted by the jury. But sadly, this was before the day when one couldn't be tried twice for the same offense. Nurse was in the presence of others who had been accused when one of them said "she was one of us." When Nurse didn't respond, the jury took it as assent that she was a witch like them. But other explanations are more likely: she didn't respond because she didn't hear, or if she did hear, she didn't respond because she understood "one of us" to mean "one of those falsely accused." But then her accusers and the jury went to the governor and convinced him to override the innocent verdict and hang her, which he did, even after receiving a petition from dozens of people who put their own necks on the line by supporting her.
After the execution, the thing mushroomed until so many people were accusing so many people that the governor finally said "enough!" No more charges were entertained, no more trials conducted, and the thing died away as quickly as it came.
Rebecca Nurse's conviction was reversed posthumously, one of the girls who had charged her admitted to having fabricated the charges—and her house is now the Salem Witch Museum.
John Greenleaf Whittier wrote the following, which is on Rebecca Nurse's granite monument in Danvers, Massachussets.
I have read and enjoyed all of Amy Stewart's books from her first From the Ground Up: The Story of a First Garden to her most recent, Wicked Plants: The Weed That Killed Lincoln's Mother & Other Botanical Atrocities. But I heard her speak for the first time on the 17th of this month at the excellent Annual Garden Seminar of the Master Gardeners of Orange County.
Turns out Stewart is as interesting in person as she is in print. Low-key, drily funny, full of surprising facts told entertainingly. If she comes to your area, don't miss her. Check her speaking engagement calendar here.
Some tidbits from her book mentioned in her talk, which was based on Wicked Plants:
. Rye ergot, a fungus that grows on rye, especially after wet winters, may have caused the deranged behavior that lead to the Salem witch trials. The fungus causes wild hallucinations.
. The ghastly symptoms of pellagra, a syndrome caused by a diet containing too much corn, could have inspired the myths of vampirism in Bram Stoker's Dracula --- pale skin that erupted in blisters when exposed to the sun, sleepless nights, an inability to eat normal food, and a morbid appearance just before death.
But the most important thing I learned from Amy's lecture was that Sago palms are one of the most toxic plants your pet may encounter. All parts of the plant, but especially the seeds and leaves, contain carcinogens and neurotoxins. I was grateful to know this because there are Sago palms all over my neighborhood. Now I know I need to be attentive when I take Lucy, my Cavalier, for her daily walks because she thinks everything is edible.
I caught up with fellow Southern Cailfornia garden writer Debra Lee Baldwin between presentations at the Annual Garden Seminar of the Master Gardeners of Orange County on October 17. (If you haven't gone to this seminar before, put it on your calendar for 2010; their roster of speakers is always excellent.)
Anyway, somehow Debra and I got onto the subject of photography. And, more specifically, about magazines and books never showing anything but young, flawless flowers and plants. Never any spots or fading or crinkled edges or other signs of age. As if there weren't beauty in those stages, too. (I know, I know, Sunset perpetuates this illusion, too.)
"You'd like my post on Gardening Gone Wild about Wabi-Sabi in the garden," said Debra in response to our conversation. And so I did. If you're not familiar with the expression, here's how Debra defines "wabi-sabi" on her post--"the Japanese aesthetic that finds beauty in imperfection and transience."
Below are two photos from Debra's post. I encourage you to check out the rest.
I also found out from Debra that her second book on succulents from Timber Press, which will be titled Succulent Container Gardensis coming out sooner than I expected. It is targeted for a January release.
Despite our conversation, don't expect many photos like the ones above in Debra's new book. They're going to look like the one on the cover of her new book shown below. Gorgeous and perfect.
We just can’t get enough of vertical gardens and, last week,
I met the man who invented them. Patrick Blanc was in town working on a 1,700
square foot vertical garden for the Drew School in San Francisco, a project
that will be his biggest in the U.S.
Having worked for nearly three decades as a botanist for a
Paris-based research organization, Blanc travels the world studying plants. He
recalled taking a trip to Malaysia when he was 19, and having a lightbulb moment: He saw plants growing
from rocks, without soil, and that inspired him
to create a soil-less systems for growing plants. He built his first
large-scale vertical garden for a Paris science museum in the
late ‘80s, but “nobody was interested,” he says.
That quickly changed. A few years later, at a French garden exhibition, Blanc
built three living walls—and people went crazy over them. He’s since created countless
vertical gardens around the world.
Bonnie Fisher, principal and landscape architect with Roma
Design Group, the architecture firm behind the Drew project, says they
wanted to work with Blanc because “he brings science and art
together—that’s
very compelling for a school in particular. When you see Patrick’s
work, you
see there’s another entire way of dealing with vertical surfaces that
hasn’t
been done before. We can see this is going to be a project that’s
transformative to the entire city.”
I shopped
with Blanc at Flora Grubb Gardens while he gathered ideas for the Drew
project’s plant palette. This was his first trip to San Francisco, and he noted our enviable climate that makes this a
playground for gardeners and allows us to grow a huge diversity of plants. “Side by side you see plants from desert and tropical climates," he says. "There
are not too many places like this in the world.”
But he also noted the absence of natives in our
landscapes, and plans to incorporate native Dudleya, penstemon,
ceanothus, and mimulus in the project. “It’s important to save California
natives because you have plants that need to be protected," he says.
And on a larger level, he hopes his work will help green otherwise gardenless cities around the globe, saying, "Now, more than half the world is living in urban environments, so
it’s very important to have patches of nature inside."
This rendering of the Drew School vertical garden (courtesy of Roma Design Group) gives a glimpse of what you'll be able to see in person at California and Broderick Streets in San Francisco. The project's scheduled to be complete by the end of 2010.
In tomorrow night's PBS special, The Botany of Desire, Michael Pollan tells how the genetic variability of apples allows them to fit neatly into a remarkably wide range of climates—and how people like Johnny Appleseed helped disperse them.
One might add Kevin and Marty Hauser's names to that list. Raising fruit in Riverside, a short distance from California's first Washington Naval orange, they've experimented with more than 100 apple varieties, most of which are clearly out of zone in Southern California—and most of which are healthy and productive.
So what's going on here?
In part, the Hausers succeed because they experiment with apples that nobody's tried because they shouldn't have had a chance in mild climates. 'Wealthy' is an example. The first apple hardy enough to tolerate Minnesota's cold winters, it should demand a great deal of winter chill (total hours between 32° and 45° F) to set fruit, and it clearly wouldn't get that in Riverside. But in point of fact, how does it perform in the Hausers' orchard? Well enough to make Kevin's top 20 list.
The Hausers have also connected with a large network of apple growers to find out which apples have a good track record in warm climates. Kevin told me that 'Rome Beauty' grows in the flatlands of Indonesia, so it's no surprise that it does well in his own orchard.
In fact, he says, "I haven't found an apple that won't fruit here. But just because it fruits doesn't mean it's good." Apples that do well elsewhere ('Northern Spy' comes to mind) can be "horrible" in Riverside. And 'Braeburn' "fruits like crazy but rots from the inside out."
All this success doesn't mean that the Hausers are going to start a commercial orchard any time soon. In mild-winter climates, apples that have compact flowering and fruiting times in cold-winter climates tend to flower and fruit over a long period. That's bad for commercial growers, who want everything to fruit at once to reduce labor costs. But it is actually better for home gardeners, who like the season to stretch out a bit.
The Hausers do sell small grafted apple trees of many varieties to people who want to mimic their success where winters are balmy. Most are available on dwarfing rootstocks, so if you get the apple bug, you can, like them, grow 100 varieties on a city lot. Their mail-order operation is called Kuffel Creek Apple Nursery. And for a bite-by-bite account of many of the apples the Hausers grow, check out Kevin's blog.
The answer, says Doug Ito of Ito Nursery in San Juan Capistrano, is "yes." But it's going to take a little effort.
First get your plants in the ground before Halloween (they'll be leafless-- just roots and growth buds at this point). Then, says Ito, fool your peonies into thinking they've had a real winter instead of a faux one by dumping ice on them every night for a minimum of two weeks. More is better.
You can dump out the contents of your ice drawer, put out several sacks of ice, or use big blocks. The method doesn't matter, says Ito, but the quantity does. You can't just toss out the leftover ice cubes from your ice tea and expect results. You need enough to cool the soil.
Since the coolest temperatures always occur between 6 p.m.. and 3 a.m., you'll get the most from your ice if you apply it in the evenings, says Ito.
Adding some cottonseed meal and bonemeal at the time of planting and then again in late December will also encourage bloom, he says.
The peony shown here, incidentally, is Ito's favorite, `Sarah Bernhardt." Others than he likes are `Karl Rosenfeld', `Kansas',`Festiva', and `Red Charm'.
I'm not willing to work this hard for flowers myself, but, if you long for peonies--and they are the most romantic of flowers, I'll admit--why not go for it? As indulgences go, plants are cheap. This icing method can also be used to fool other deciduous plants that would prefer a colder climate, such as lilacs and Chinese wisteria, says Ito.
Brent Green of the Los Angeles firm GreenArt Landscape Design, is, as you know if you are a regular reader of Fresh Dirt, one of our heroes. See our first post about him. And the second. And the third in which we let you know he was going to be a guest on The CBS Evening News Hour with Katie Couric.
That appearance was, unfortunately, postponed. Then postponed again. The episode on Green, who CBS is calling a modern Johnny Appleseed, finally ran on Friday, October 17. If you missed it, go to this link and watch it on video.
***
We don't like seeing Brent Green's name linked with Johnny Appleseed, though. If you've read Michael Pollan's book The Botany of Desire you'll know Appleseed wasn't quite the hero we were taught he was. If you haven't read the book, watch the upcoming PBS show based on it which will air the 28th of this month. Read Julie's teaser here for more about the show.
Blogger Adriana Martinez, our favorite anarchist--she calls herself a cross between Martha Stewart and the Sex Pistols--passed on a great gardening tip on E's That Morniing Show recently. (That's Martinez below being prepped for filming.)
Instead of using those little peat pots to start your seedlings, suggests Martinez, make your own biodegradable pots out of empty toilet paper rolls, which she then demonstrates how to do. Looks easy. And it's good for the planet and your wallet, too. Clever girl, that Adriana.
If you read my post a few days ago, you already know. If not, go take a quick look.
I didn't have a photo to illustrate the concept then, so asked you to use your imagination. Since then Donna Eadie's neighbor, Joe Licari, emailed me some shots he took of Eadie's garden last year. The idea is even more amusing in reality than it sounded on paper, don't you think?
If you love Michael Pollan’s
work as much as we do, you’ll want to see The Botany of Desire, a TV special
based on Pollan’s book of the same name.
Focusing on four crops—apples,
tulips, cannabis, and potatoes—the show explores how the plants may very well
be exploiting us instead of the other way around. And it’s packed with
interesting factoids. Some of my favorites (that won’t spoil anything for you if
you’ve not read the book):
Most apples in the wild aren’t
sweet, and are basically inedible. (And Johnny Appleseed isn't quite the person you thought he was...)
During the Dutch “tulip
mania” in the 1600s, tulips were valuable commodities that signified wealth—bulbs of one variety cost $10 to 15 million each in today’s
dollars.
Cannabis extract was found
in many over-the-counter medicines and was basically available anywhere before states starting outlawing it in the
early 1900s.
We might think we
have a lot of choices between Idaho russet, Yukon gold, fingerling, and red
potatoes. But in Peru, where spuds were first domesticated, people still cultivate
more than 5,000 varieties.
The Botany of Desire airs on Wednesday, October 28 at 8
p.m. on PBS.
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