7 mars, 2022 lundi
37 degrees, cloudy
5 mph, N wind
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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