Mid-June in the Vegetable Garden

Published on June 15, 2025 by In The Vintage KitchenLeave a comment

If I walk out of the back door very quietly on these early, almost-summer mornings, I can usually spot Lily eating grass at the edge of a way too overgrown decades-old daylily bed. Lily, as we came to call her due to her preference for this area of the yard, is a baby rabbit about the size of a teacup. She was born to Lefty, a wild cottontail that lives in our woods.

Lefty came by her name because she holds her left paw in the air whenever she is at rest. Whether that is some sort of injury or just her natural proclivity, we don’t really know, but she gets around great regardless, seemingly unfazed by what, if anything, troubles that part of her leg. Originally, we thought Lefty was a boy bunny because of her big size, but once we realized that Lefty made Lily, we started calling her Lefty Lucy after that sing-song mechanical phrase, righty tighty lefty loosey about tightening screws and bolts. Obviously, Lefty Lucy is not running around the yard with carpentry tools, but she is an important component and a key contributor to the natural health, vitality, and inner workings of the woodlands that back up to our property, so Lefty Lucy seemed fitting in more than one way.

Every year, spring seems to bring on a new set of circumstances and situations to be considered when it comes to how, what, where, and why we are growing food here at 1750 House. Year one, it was learning the capabilities of the greenhouse. Year two, it was tackling the slugs. Year three, it was increasing perennials. Year four, we are learning the wilds.

This is our first spring without Indie chasing all the squirrels, corraling all the chipmunks, and defending us from turkeys and deer, coyotes and foxes, and that one time glimpse of a bear. Indie was not a classically trained working dog, but she had the super smart instincts of her collie/shepherd breeding and was pretty skilled at keeping everything wild at the far perimeter of the property and away from all the garden beds.

When we first moved to 1750 House, in an effort to co-exist in happy harmony with the surrounding wildlife, we taught Indie some loose boundaries. We established an imaginary border for her that separated the yard from the woods and it took her no time at all to understand that the yard was her territory and the woods belonged to the wild animals. This worked pretty well, on both the wild creatures’ side and Indie’s. During the day, the wildlife mostly kept to the woods and the treetops and Indie mostly kept to the yard. At night though, our garden camera showed a different story. While Indie was asleep in the house, the yard was full of critter traffic. This proved both Indie’s effectiveness at day patrol and also nature’s clever way of working around our silly ideas about confined borders. Now, without Indie this spring, I wondered how our property would change when there was no presence of a pup. What would happen to the imaginary boundary? Would the wild creatures reclaim the yard as their own?

As it turns out, wholeheartedly yes. To say that the backyard bloomed with critters and creatures is an understatement. Our woodland deer sightings have tripled in size from two to seven. A pheasant, which in the past was just a one-day-a-year passer-through, spent days in early spring wandering the woods. Last month, a female turkey took up residence in the long grass near the bird feeder for a week. A pair of hawks has chosen a nest spot midway through the woods. Lefty and Lily set up home. And a veritable city of chipmunks and squirrels now keep the yard in a continuous state of rustle and bustle from treetop to underbrush, morning to night.

Turkey sighting to the left of the tree trunk

Not realizing how impactful something is until after it’s no longer there, Indie’s absence raised a question. How exactly will her not being here affect the garden this spring? Will the deer feel free to eat every last tomato? Every last flower? Will the squirrels and the chippies destroy the plantings? Will all of our hard work and time spent seed-starting and sowing, building, and bed designing be in vain?

The vegetable garden, almost fully planted out by the first of May, stopped and started, struggled and rallied, round and round again as temperatures jumped between the low 40s and the high 50s in seesaw fashion all the way into early June. Almost everything that we planted was cool-weather hardy and tolerated the damp, sunless days. But my optimism in planting out the tomato, cantaloupe, and squash seedlings proved to be a bit too ambitious. Not fans of cold, wet weather, all three vegetables succumbed to early blight, root rot and/or a general overall malaise that caused yellowing leaves and drooping stems.

The wildlife didn’t seem to mind the wet weather at all, nor the absence of Indie. Whipping up their own kind of fun, a particularly rambunctious set of squirrel siblings made joyful use of the yard unencumbered by a patrol pup. They chased each other through the canna beds, knocking off fragile tips of newly emerging sprouts. They dug holes all over the garden looking for nuts. They upset roots in the pea patch, the corn plot, the bean bed. With their acrobatic leaps and bounds, dangles and dives, they beheaded sunflower starts, dropped tree limbs onto fragile seedlings from overhead, romped through the wildflower bed, and knocked over many a wire cage protecting nerbs and flowers, fruits and vegetables.

The chipmunks celebrated spring in the garden in their own way. Keen on building subterranean housing, they endeavored to make entry and exit tunnels all over the yard and the garden beds. So far they’ve dug golf-ball-sized holes by the Mediterranean herbs, by the witch hazel tree, by the evergreen saplings, by the Hosta plants.

All this energetic play and home building aside though, surprisingly, so far at least, the deer, the squirrels, the chippies, and the bunnies have been very respectful of the actual garden plantings themselves. The deer win the award for best behaviour and for keeping within their boundaries. But the squirrels and the chippies can’t be scolded simply for playing andf home building. Apart from the antics that uprooted the corn and topped off some of the cannas, I’m happy to say that none of our wildlife neighbors have nibbled or rearranged or broken any of the plants or emerging fruits and vegetables in the garden. As it turns out, Indie might have trained them just enough. Either that or it’s the daily birdseed buffet that keeps everyone full and satisfied enough to leave the vegetables alone.

Despite all the cold, rainy weather and the spirited playground, the late spring garden, although not quite as grown up as last year, is starting to finally make some headway. Here are some photos taken in the last few days…

Windsor fava beans in front and Scarlet Emperor pole beans climbing the wire panel in back.

Buttercrunch lettuce in front and dandelion greens in back.

Silver Queen corn – 2nd sewing. This time in pots to sidestep the squirrels.

Dinosaur kale. Currently at 18″ inches in height, this is the tallest kale plant we have ever been able to grow so far.

Overhead view of the tall kale. Also, the first kale plant that has ever escaped caterpillar and slug damage.

Green Globe Artichokes – currently 23″ inches tall.

Nasturtiums grown from seed harvested from last year’s flowers

Experimental porch pots – mint, sweet potato slips, collard greens and artichokes. The collard green leaves on the right are turning pink from too much rain.

Foxglove – these four self-seeded from last year’s blooms.

The tallest foxglove this year reached 4′ feet 5″inches, about a foot shorter than last year. Maybe the lack of sun and heat made them a little smaller.

Other veggies not yet quite photo-ready include eggplant, pepper plants and the second sowings of tomatoes, honeynut squash, cucumbers, and cantalope. There is lots of information to share about the herb garden growing up too, but in order not to make this post a million miles long, details on that project will come in a separate post later this month.

Even though it is a bittersweet spring due to the absence of Indie, it is lovely to be surrounded by our new menagerie of wild animals. They each bring such personality and interest to the day and to the garden. Nature is a remarkable healer.

From all of us at 1750 House, cheers to the growing season and all the surprises it brings.

Advice from Adelma: How to Create an Herb Garden in Partial Shade

Published on April 27, 2025April 29, 2025 by In The Vintage Kitchen4 Comments

In the words of New England herbalist Adelma Grenier Simmons (1903-1997), “the most difficult garden to maintain is an unplanned one.” If you are joining us on this year’s Greenhouse Diaries adventures, you’ll recall that Adelma is our horticultural teacher, creative muse, and gardening inspiration for 2025 as we embrace her expertise in building and establishing an herb garden here at 1750 House.

Although I’ve never met Adelma, she passed away in 1997, and I’ve never had a chance to visit her beloved Caprilands Herb Farm, I do have several things in common with her that makes me feel like we are kindred spirits. We both purchased 18th-century houses in Connecticut that needed an extra bit of care and attention. We both embraced a desire to create heirloom gardens made from scratch. And we have both indulged our passions for history, cooking, and hands-on gardening.

Adelma’s 18th-century Connecticut home – Caprilands.

Ever since my husband and I moved into 1750 House, I’ve had my mind set on building a proper kitchen garden that includes plentiful bouquets of vegetables, fruit, herbs, and edible flowers. I laid out our initial plans in a 2022 post about colonial kitchen gardens, but as we keep digging and discovering, growing and gathering, year by year, we keep refining and expanding plans to fit our abilities, interests, lifestyle, and landscape. Every year, the garden design plans seem to get better and better.

Adelma Grenier Simmons circa 1935. Photo courtesy of the Hartford Courant, Aug 01, 1935

Always interested in tips and techniques that will make my endeavors more successful, when I first discovered Adelma’s book at a local library book sale last year, I had a feeling I was going to be in the good hands of an expert gardener. This is the 1964 book that inspired the project…

Read more about Adelma and her contributions to horticulture in our first post here.

In Herb Gardening in Five Seasons, Adelma lays out how to build, cultivate, create, design, grow, and care for an herb garden utilizing decades of practical, hands-on knowledge learned over her long, enthusiastic career as a gardener, herbalist, lecturer, and horticultural scholar.

Throughout the entirety of 2025, season by season, I’m taking her words to task and building an herb garden from scratch that I hope will continue to remain a stalwart and sustainable feature of the landscape at 1750 House for years to come. Since this is new gardening territory for me, both literally and figuratively, I thought it would be fun to share, along with my experiences, Adelma’s advice, in case you, too, might be interested in building an herb garden of your own. This way we can all experiment together.

In our first Greenhouse Diaries post of 2025, I introduced Adelma and her gardens at Caprilands, which attracted botanical enthusiasts from all over the world. The info I’ll be sharing here in the series this year, although based on my own Connecticut garden, will hopefully prove useful to all of our ITVK readers around the globe, too, who might face similar challenges when it comes to limited sunlight and space constraints. I’m excited to see how successful we can be using gardening knowledge from a 62-year-old book, and I’m also very interested to see just how bountiful a partial-shade herb garden can be.

There’s no way to find out unless we start, so here it goes. Advice from Adelma back then put into practice by me today.

Step One: Choose A Design and Figure Out What You’d Like to Grow…

Thoughts from Adelma: Whether the herb garden is small or large, it needs to be exquisitely neat and weedless, with wide paths and compact borders, the same plant often repeated to make a good showing. (Page 3)

In keeping with Adelma’s advice, I spent most nights in February and March studying stacks upon stacks of gardening books, in addition to hers, to gather ideas and inspiration from real-life examples – all so that our garden here at 1750 House would not fall into that aforementioned “difficult,” “unplanned” territory. Through the winter, I learned about prairie gardens, dry gardens, meditation gardens, bog gardens, dooryard gardens, shade gardens, kitchen gardens, formal gardens, cottage gardens, cutting gardens, woodland gardens, and native gardens in pursuit of coming up with some interesting layouts. What I kept admiring over and over again in book after book was a traditional square garden with pathways, some sort of architectural feature in the middle, and herbs arranged in a balanced fashion around the edges. A timeless design, I liked its simple and tidy scale, which is very much in keeping with our simple 18th-century colonial farmhouse.

In Herb Gardening in Five Seasons, Adelma also offered a variety of her own designs specifically tailored to herb gardens. There were eight in total, each ranging in theme and aesthetic. Had I the space and the sunlight, I would have replicated this one exactly…

Culinary and Knot Garden Design Layout – Adelma Grenier Simmons, 1964

The one challenge that presents itself at 1750 House is a limited amount of full sun spaces. Basically, we have two areas that receive about eight hours of sun a day and the rest is made up of dappled shade or towards the very back, deep shade of the woodland variety. Not every part of the full-sun area is appropriate for garden beds, so our limited sunshine spots are reserved strictly for growing vegetables and flowers in those areas.

One of our full sun spots is a raised bed that we built from rocks collected from around the property. Pictured growing here are peas, tomatoes, pole beans, zucchini, basil, and spinach from the summer 2023 garden.

While a shady garden is a challenge for growing many types of plants, the thing that first drew me to Adelma’s book last year was that she included a long list of herbs (29 of them) that grow well in sun-filtered shade. This was inspiration enough to start thinking about a new gardening experiment in 2025 to see what was possible in the way of a partial-shade garden using her expert advice.

The only compromise to a somewhat shady garden, Adelma noted in her book, is that some of the herbs might grow taller than they would normally in a sunny location, and that they might not be 100% as flavorful as their sun-bathed counterparts. Tall plants are my favorite kind, and while I am growing these herbs for cooking and, of course, would want them to be as flavorful as possible, I figure it’s best to understand their growing conditions and flavor intensity first in order to see what we can improve later.

Step Two: Determine The Location

Thoughts from Adelma: I think of the “perfect” herb garden as about 12 x 18 feet. Well organized, it will not require back-breaking labor once the soil has been prepared, walks laid, a center motif clearly stated, and borders planted with favorite but often miscellaneous plants set out in orderly beauty. (page 4)

The location of the 2025 perennial herb garden

Eight hours of full sun is ideal for herb gardens, but if that amount of sunlight is not possible when it comes to choosing a site, Adelma at least recommends situating your garden in a well-drained location with a slight slope so that plant roots are not swimming in puddles long after it rains or the garden is watered.

Our greenhouse sits in a southwesterly quadrant in the side yard on a natural slope. It’s bathed in sunlight from October through the end of May, but then, due to tree cover becomes partly shady in the summer. This is not ideal for sun-loving Mediterranean herbs like thyme, oregano, and basil, so they’ll have a designated bed near the veggies up front in full sunlight. But this area around the greenhouse gets all sorts of dappled light throughout the day, and I’ve always envisioned the garden beds in this spot to be full of flowers and native plants.

The 2023/2024 foxgloves on the opposite side of the yard measured between 3′ – 5.5′ feet tall.

There are already a few permanent residents in-ground at the greenhouse – last year’s foxglove starts, two Windflower anemones, a newly established hydrangea, and a burning bush. The burning bush was here when we moved in, and the hydrangea was propagated last summer via a clipping from a friend’s garden. Given how well the foxglove seeds grew on the opposite side of the yard throughout 2023-2024, they’ll be a mainstay in the herb garden too to help attract pollinators and add some overall height to this rather flat patch of ground. Otherwise, it’s a blank canvas to cultivate.

Step Three: Decide What To Plant and Gather Your Seeds…

Thoughts From Adelma: For you, herbs will be green medicines, fragrances, seasoning magic, soft tones and muted colors, textures pleasant to the touch, and names that are good to hear and bear much repeating. (page vi)

Location and personal preference will determine your selection of seeds, of course, and climate will determine your timing of when to plant what where. Since we are focusing on a larger shady herb garden with a much smaller full-sun patch and generally would like to grow herbs for cooking and drying, I followed Adelma’s list for shade-tolerant varieties.

This year our herb garden will include forget-me-nots, feverfew, wild bergamot, lemon balm, flax, dill, basil, nasturtiums, chervil, cilantro, parsley, oregano, echinacea, winter savory, English thyme, German chamomile, sweet peas, chives, sage, rosemary, yarrow, lavender, phlox and two different varieties of calendula. Everything highlighted in bold will go in the shade garden, the rest will be tucked into the full sun spots in the garden bed up front. Half of this list is a new, first-time growing experience for me, which makes this gardening project an exciting one on all fronts.

Step Four: Create a Planting Map

Thoughts from Adelma: Let the herb garden throughout look old, peaceful and nostalgic with quiet colors and soft textures. (page 17)

When it comes to the planting decisions of what goes where, I recommend sketching all this out on paper with a pencil. At this stage, there is a lot of penciling in and erasing out, second-guessing and revising, dreaming and deciding. Color, size, height, light, and soil requirements are all things to be considered as well as companion plant pairings and general overall garden aesthetic, plus any decorative items or accessories you may want to include. After months of fiddling on paper, my garden layout finally came together. Adelma can rest assured now. I have a plan.

Ideally, I’m striving for a cottage-style herb garden that is full, colorful, and graduated in size. The greenhouse will act as the central focal point, the pea gravel between the fence and the greenhouse will act as a pathway and giant field stones will become stepping stones in the garden beds. To make it visually interesting beyond texture and flower shape, I’ve selected varieties in the pink, purple, blue, white and yellow families to create a unifying color palette that ties in shades from the front gardens as well as a bit of symbolism.

In addition to practical how-to instruction, one of the most interesting aspects of Herb Gardening in Five Seasons is that it is also peppered with stories about folklore and symbolism surrounding herbs throughout history. If you communicated in the language of flowers, it is entirely possible to grow a garden full of patience (chamomile), virtue (mint), everlasting love (baby’s breath), good wishes (basil), humility (bluebell), courage (edelweiss), and ambition (hollyhock). For a complete list of flower symbolism, visit here.

This year, I’m incorporating a specific symbol in the garden – several patches of perennial forget-me-nots for one special reason. They are the flowers that symbolize memories of enduring love, lasting love, tender love. They will be planted all around our pup, Indie, who was buried in one of the beds next to the greenhouse last September. Her unexpected death left a big hole in our lives and in our hearts for sure. I still find myself looking down one of the long paths towards the woods, thinking that she’ll come around the corner any minute like she did a thousand times before after a good chase with a squirrel or two. She was such a big presence here at 1750 House, especially in the yard, we wanted to make sure she was forever a part of the property’s history.

Covered in seed pods after a romp in the woods.

It’s so strange to think that exactly one year ago, on a warm spring evening, not unlike the ones we have been experiencing lately, long before we added the wooden fence around the greenhouse, we were experimenting with building a wattle fence. Indie kept us company all evening that night, watching over our endeavors, sitting pretty much in the same spot where she would come to be buried four months later. I like to think that she is still sitting there just like in the photo, watching over us and the greenhouse and the garden. If I learned anything about colonial gardening in America in the 17th and 18th centuries, it was that American garden design is rooted in nostalgia and a longing for what once was. Like Indie, the forget-me-nots will forever be woven into the fabric of the garden from here on out, self-seeding our little secret language of love and friendship year after year.

Step Five: Start Your Seeds

Thoughts from Adelma: The business of planting seeds should be a simple process, as natural as nature. (page 58)

Adelma recommends seed starting outdoors when the weather is appropriately suited, but she also understands the rush and excitement of trying to get a head start indoors or in a greenhouse. Either way, she’s a fan of keeping the germination stage on the slightly cooler side with nighttime temps between 50-60 degrees. She also recommends as much time outdoors in the fresh air as possible to encourage strong, healthy growth.

Since our experiments of trying to grow cool weather crops in an unheated greenhouse this past winter flopped, instead of pulling out the greenhouse’s winter coat of plastic and outfitting it with a heater rather late in the season, I opted to start everything indoors in a closet that has a lot of natural light and a fair amount of sun thanks to a big window in a small space. I kept the room temperature between 55-65 degrees during the whole germination process, and all the seeds sprouted like the magical little champions that they are. For the past month, almost daily (depending on the outdoor temperature), I transported all the seedlings out to the greenhouse where they could capture the light and a little extra balmy warmth generated by the sun before bringing them back in when the temp dropped below 55.

Now that our last frost date has just passed on Wednesday, most of these seedlings will be heading out to the garden within the next week or two. They are a bit smaller in size than if I had started them in the greenhouse over winter with the heater, but like Adelma suggested, this cooler germination method might make them a bit more resilient to fluctuating temperatures as the season gradually warms up and we round the corner into May.

Step Six: Prepare the Garden Beds

Thoughts from Adelma: Work up the soil to a depth of 12 inches using a rototiller or a spade. I recommend three rotillings or diggings: the first to remove the sticks and stones; the second to incorporate well-rotted compost or well-decayed cow manure in soil lacking humus; the third to mix in the garden lime spread on top until the ground is nearly white. (page 55-56)

Home soil acidity test using the baking soda/ vinegar method

It’s important to know the acidity level of the soil you are working with since that will determine if you are going to blend in any additives. Adelma recommends turning over the dirt no less than three times and removing all the sticks and rocks that might be present. If your garden beds need some amending, lime and compost are two great additives that will improve the growth of your herbs and strengthen the soil. Compost can be added anytime of year, but Adelma recommends adding lime in the fall otherwise, it could stunt the growth of the plants if added in spring.

Back in mid-March, I did a home soil acidity test recommended by The Spruce, utilizing the baking soda/vinegar method. I’m not sure how accurate this test is, but apparently, if you have acidic soil, the combination of baking soda, vinegar, distilled water, and dirt will cause the samples to really bubble up. Not much happened during my test…

From what I’ve gathered so far, our soil at 1750 House is fairly neutral and, if anything, leans toward a slight acidity, which most plants love. So I’m not adding lime this year. But we did order four yards of organic compost from a local nursery.

Each garden bed received four inches of fresh compost. I’m hoping that will be enough nutrients to start the seedlings off on a good footing. Later in the season, depending on how well everything grows up, I might also add in a seaweed fertilizer and some bone meal. But for now, we’ll see how everything grows in this next month or two before anything else is added.

Step Seven: Enlist Your Helpers

Thoughts from Adelma: “A pleasant summer sound is the hum of bees above a flowering bank of thyme. It is truly the bee’s plant…” (page 67)

Other than a few mentions here and there, Adelma doesn’t discuss the benefits of wildlife much in Herb Gardening in Five Seasons, but as I learned from reading all those gardening books over winter, pollinators depend on all sorts of herbs to help get them through their seasonal travels. Likewise, the herbs depend on them to grow and thrive.

The same goes for the birds. I read recently that the best pest control you can have for your garden is an ample assortment of wild birds. A pair of nesting sparrows alone can eat up to 30,000 insects a week. Just the kind of appetites you want to encourage to help eradicate an overabundance of aphids, scale, beetles, grubs, and a whole host of other winged things that would normally munch on your plants.

We’ve been feeding the birds ever since 2022 here at 1750 House, but last fall we added two new bird feeders and built three new nest boxes this spring to keep encouraging our wild flock. Within a week of putting the nest boxes up, all three houses were occupied by sparrows. It’s so fun to watch them claim their new homes and poke their heads out of the entry holes each morning.

Besides the sparrows, our yard has quite an active bunch of cardinals, mourning doves, chickadees, blue jays, woodpeckers, titmice, nuthatches, bluebirds, juncos, robins, hawks, crows, and occasionally a wild turkey or two. In a future post, later this summer I’ll introduce you to Red, our most sociable cardinal who waits every morning at the feeder for me along with Audi, the one-eared squirrel.

A new batch of hand-painted garden signs to welcome the 2025 season

As of today… the sweet peas are up, the nasturtiums have been transplanted, and the cilantro and echinecea seeds are just starting to sprout under their protective wire covers. My husband built an array of these wire covers in all different sizes and shapes to keep the birds and squirrels from eating the seeds that are directly sown. So far so good.

The preface of Herb Gardening in Five Seasons is titled Herbs are Forever – And For All. I love that turn of phrase. It is such a fitting way to describe the appeal, universality and allure of these tried and true garden reliables. No matter where you go in the world, you can find an herb garden and someone who tends it. Perhaps that is why they are such enduring components to the garden landscape. In the same way, Adelma’s mark on herb gardening has endured too. Long after her death, memories of the beautiful gardens she created at Caprilands still find a place in contemporary conversation. I hope our little herb garden at 1750 House has such a lasting effect. A 275-year-old house deserves the pretty partnership of a timeless garden to travel the years with.

Adelma Grenier Simmons in her later years, as happy as can be amongst her garden paradise.

“Fortunately, the study of herbs touches all aspects of our lives, at all ages, under all conditions. What was rigorous physical experience in youth and middle age may become an absorbing study for the armchair gardener, who halted in activities by age or physical handicap, can still enjoy a fascinating world of legend and history.” Adelma Grenier Simmons, 1964

In the next installment of the Greenhouse Diaries, we will make a spring recipe straight from Adelma’s own kitchen and check in on the seedlings to see how they are growing. In the meantime, cheers to Adelma, to her helpful guidance, and to the act and art of growing a garden.

Growing a Fragrant Year: February’s Helpful Hazel and the Greenhouse Diaries

Published on February 29, 2024February 29, 2024 by In The Vintage Kitchen8 Comments

Witch hazel illustration by Leonie Bell circa 1960s

With a scent ranging from sweet yeasted bread to bubblegum, the centuries-old Hamamelis virginiana (aka the common witch hazel) kicks off Month #1 in this year’s Greenhouse Diaries series. In case you missed our introductory post last month, our theme for 2024 is a Fragrant Year, where we’ll be sharing twelve months of perfumed plants, flowers, and trees that have the power to add a calming, aromatic atmosphere to gardens big and small.

Inspired by the 1967 book, The Fragrant Year by Helen Van Pelt Wilson and Leonie Bell and their idea that planting a scented garden benefits not only one garden but many surrounding it, it’s an exciting project that I hope will bring some discussions and awareness about the power of plants and the perfume they provide.

Acting as guinea pigs and testing fields, the greenhouse and gardens of 1750 House are the experiment stations to see how Helen and Leonie’s suggestions work in our northern landscape. Although we are gardening in New England (Zone 6) and striving for a natural and historical outdoor environment appropriate to the history of the house, it’s my goal with this series to feature fragrant specimens that will grow in other parts of the country too, in case you are looking to augment your own green space with some pretty aromatics.

As I write this, the last of our 11″ inches of snow has just melted and signs of spring are stirring in the daffodils poking through in the front corner bed. Planted long before we ever moved in, I’ve come to rely on those flowers as little time clocks signaling that a new season is close at hand even though nighttime temps are still in the 20s and 30s. Spring, indeed, is happening. Soon.

In the beginning chapters of The Fragrant Year, Helen and Leonie write about the “optimistically planned” winter garden, which if done correctly should “offer us flowers with various shrubs to brighten the dull months.” One of their suggestions for wintertime color and scent is one of the oldest medicinal plants in the New World and a resident of the entire eastern half of the country from Canada to Florida.

Although technically considered a shrub or a small tree, when left to its own devices, common witch hazel can grow up to 30 feet tall, and is one of just a few plants that blooms in the dormant stages of winter. Brightening up the landscape with fringe-like ribbons of golden flowers, it adds bright color to the garden, shelter for birds, and a food source for winter pollinators like the dagger moth that shivers and shudders its way through the cold season.

The common witch hazel in winter. Photo courtesy of TN Nursery

Requiring moist soil, sun to partial shade, and an acidic to neutral PH level, witch hazel is an easy-going, practically carefree planting that grows one to two feet in height each year. Ideal for sunny spots, woodland edges or sloping hills where soil erosion is a concern, the helpful hazel compliments a variety of different landscapes in a variety of different states.

Last year, we had to make the tough decision to bring a tree service in to cut down two trees that were precariously leaning in the backyard. The salve for having to cut down two old trees was knowing that we would plant at least two new ones in their place.

Surrounded by woodlands on two sides and facing a community garden in front, 1750 House is tucked in between acres of beautiful naturally-kept trees, including five elms and two cedars that are over 100 years old. While we have no shortage of very tall trees, we do have a bit of haphazard mid-range tree coverage that reflects over 270 years of garden endeavors executed by previous 1750 House residents. Privet, fruit trees, ornamental shrubs, wild natives, ornamental grasses and a few invasive species all compete for attention to the eye. We are on a mission to corral all these growers into a more cohesive vista so that they can work together to provide interesting layers at different heights to create a unique blend of shapes and colors throughout the year.

The appeal of planting a witch hazel shrub in the backyard is the pretty array of color it will add at eye level in the winter when most of the woodlands boast shades of grey, snowy whites, evergreen, berry reds and blacks. I also love the medicinal factor that witch hazel offers and the future opportunities it will bring later down the road to explore some homeopathic recipes.

Humphrey’s Witch Hazel Oil was made in New Hampshire in the 1870s. Image courtesy of the Boston Public Library.

Befitting a proper and useful kitchen garden of a house built in the 18th century, witch hazel in all its forms, from leaf to stem to flower, has been cultivated for hundreds of years for use in poultices, anti-inflammatory salves, and skincare maintenance. In New England, we have the area’s indigenous tribes to thank for teaching early settlers how to boil the bark for medicinal tinctures to heal coughs, colds, and inflammatory ailments. The leaves were used in wound care. The wood for making bows for hunting. By the 19th century, witch hazel became a key ingredient in the first mass-marketed skincare product – Pond’s Cold Cream – which debuted in 1846 under the name Golden Treasure.

Helen and Leonie offered another use too… clipping a few branches of witch hazel in winter and adding them to a vase along with some balsam sprigs for some invigorating indoor aromatherapy. Even though it can take up to six years for the first blooms of witch hazel to appear, I can already imagine such a bouquet.

Young fruit of the witch hazel shrub. Photo: Katja Schulz

While I have ordered plenty of garden seeds online before, ordering a shrub off the internet was an entirely new experience. As I learned, live agricultural specimens like this one are shipped in timing with the appropriate planting season. So the witch-hazel shrub I selected from Tenesssee won’t arrive until spring even though it was ordered in late winter. That’s a handy system that sets you up for success from the beginning.

So the first month of our Fragrant Year series starts off with a to-be continued. We’ll check back in on our witch hazel planting adventures in spring when the shrubling arrives. In the meantime, if anyone else has any experience working with witch hazel, your thoughts are greatly appreciated. Please share them in the comments section.

Cheers to Helen and Leonie for their advice on adding winter color to the landscape and for the aromatic start to showcasing historic plants in the gardens at 1750 House. Until next month, happy gardening.

Other sights from the February greenhouse…

Not to be upstaged by the witch hazel, and just in time for our first Fragrant Year post, Liz Lemon is blooming and filling the greenhouse with her lovely citrus scents.

Welcome To A Fragrant Year: The Greenhouse Diaries Return for New Growing Adventures

Published on January 27, 2024January 30, 2025 by In The Vintage Kitchen10 Comments

The Greenhouse Diaries are back with new inspirations and a whole new year of growing adventures to explore and discover. Like last year, these new diary entries center around what can be grown in a petite 4×6 greenhouse in our four-season New England climate, but starting this month there is a brand new theme, different from last year, that is guiding our gardening goals in 2024.

Last year, our first year as greenhouse owners and New England residents, we focused on winter gardening from December through May and all the possibilities that a warm greenhouse could offer in a cold landscape. We drew inspiration from Katharine Sergeant Angell White, a lifelong lover of the natural world who also happened to be a marvelous writer, a founding editor of the New Yorker magazine, and the beloved wife of E.B White.

Katharine Sergeant Angell White (1892-1977)

Her 1977 book Onward & Upward in the Garden, featured a collection of horticultural essays that highlighted her ability to embrace challenges by finding joy and solace in the certain uncertainties. Something that all gardeners must face when it comes to designing a pleasing landscape, in Katharine’s case, it was the long Maine winters that were a struggle for her spirit which yearned to be out in the garden digging and clipping, pruning, and propagating. She also had much to say about the confusing advice of garden experts and her own thoughtful attempts of trying to create the garden of her dreams. Her writing was full of spirit, humor and opinion when it came to detailing plans, recommending books and seed catalogs, and offering advice on growing plants and flowers both indoors and out. She was inspiration enough for us to start experimenting with our first winter growing season. Cold weather aside, we had Katharine on our side, lending a unique empathy and encouragement that fueled our desire to get out and grow things regardless of the weather, our experience level or the unseasonability of what we most wanted to achieve.

Our plan last year was to get a head start on establishing garden beds for 1750 House, so we focused mainly on forcing seeds and plants to sprout, bud and bloom early. Using 33 different plants, flowers and herbs as trial-run guinea pigs, we accomplished our goals with a fair amount of success and a few setbacks as we tested the physical capabilities of the greenhouse and grew our garden knowledge.

A greenhouse success – the joy of growing collard greens in 2023

This time, a year wiser, we are reducing the number of overall plants in the greenhouse to just focus on the proven winners that grew well both in the greenhouse and in the garden beds last spring, summer and fall. And to keep things interesting, we are launching a new experiment. This year, we are leaving extra room in the greenhouse to try our hand at growing a new type of perennial garden for year-round enjoyment… a landscape full of plants, flowers and trees that carry a scent.

Marvelously scented magnolia blossoms dotted our landscape down South.

When we lived in the South, we were surrounded by a wide variety of aromatic flowers that made our time there all the more memorable because of the beautiful perfume that continuously lingered in the air. The scent of night-blooming gardenias and fragrant magnolias swirled around our dinner parties. The heat of summer brought heavy humidity but also the delicate, sweet aromas of climbing Carolina jessamine. Roses in every scent and shade toppled and tumbled over hedgerows and brick walls. It was a lovely layer of landscape design that I had never really thought about until we had experienced it firsthand. Of course, we won’t be able to recreate an exact aromatic Southern garden here in New England since it’s a very different climate from there to here, but there are plenty of other options in the Northeast to explore for similar effect thanks to our new inspiration.

Here to guide the 2024 Greenhouse Diaries in our aromatic endeavors is the 1967 book, The Fragrant Year by Helen Van Pelt Wilson and Leonie Bell. Month by month, in words and drawings this book details how to grow specific types of plants and flowers that will continuously unfold new scents in the garden season by season, even in the winter months.

Praised for being the first of its modern kind, The Fragrant Year was lauded both for its scope and its practical application, as well as its healthful benefits. In the opening chapter Helen writes… “if our gardens today were more often planned as fragrant retreats and our rooms were frequently perfumed with bowls of spicy pinks, bunches of aromatic herbs, vases of fragrant roses, and jars of potpourri, perhaps we would not have to depend so much on tranquilizers to hold us together in this frantic, fast-paced world.”

Helen wrote that in 1967 but it is still so applicable today. The world is still frantic and fast-paced. People still look to medicine to calm their nerves. But we think Helen’s theory is pretty wise – there is something much more natural, more gentle, more joyful in tackling frantic nerves and fast paces with this sort of approach instead. It is lovely to think that by selecting a few handfuls of scented botanicals and thoughtfully adding them to the landscape we might not only help create a more calm environment for ourselves but also for the community around us. Who knows what sort of impact that small gesture could have on a greater world.

A prolific writer of gardening books throughout the 20th century, Helen was no stranger to the power of plants. Along with penning a newspaper column titled Our Gardens Within and Without during the 1920s and 1930s, she also wrote for all the well-known women’s magazines including House & Garden, Cosmopolitan, Better Homes & Gardens, and House Beautiful. In between all that she wrote/edited over fifty books on various gardening topics throughout her long and lengthy career.

Born in New Jersey, Helen spent the majority of her life in Philadelphia, PA and Westport, CT where she experimented with gardening projects of all sorts both indoors and out. Her most well-known book was one on caring for African violets published in the 1940s but she was a beloved and trusted authority on a variety of horticultural topics throughout her life. Working with Leonie on several different projects, it was in the 1950s that they learned they shared a mutual love of aromatic botanicals. Upon discovering this, the idea for The Fragrant Year was quick to spark but it took Helen and Leonie ten years of dedicated research and trial-and-error gardening experiments before their book was finally published.

Leonie Bell in the garden. Photograph courtesy of monticello.org by way of Rev. Douglas T. Seidel

Like Helen, Leonie Bell (1924-1996) lived and gardened in suburban Philadelphia. In addition to being a well-respected botanical illustrator, she was also known as a rose expert. Contributing her expertise to several rose garden books published during the 20th century, Leonie was often referred to as a rose genealogist since she had a knack for discovering/uncovering heirloom roses from the past that had been misnamed or believed to be no longer in existence. At one point, her own personal garden contained over 200 different types of roses, most of them old-fashioned heirloom varieties.

If you are ever in Virginia, you can see the impact Leonie made at the Leonie Bell Rose Garden at Thomas Jeffferson’s Tufton Farm, which features a tribute to both Leonie’s legacy and the history of North American rose breeding.

Much sought after in the world of botanical illustration, what’s interesting about Leonie’s art is that she was self-taught. Her intrinsic knowledge of the anatomy of plants combined with her studies at the School of Horticulture in Ambler, PA led her to closely look at botanical subjects from all angles. That well-rounded vantage point carried through to her drawings which shine with scientific detail but also personality.

Excited to share a year full of fragrance here on the blog, each month we’ll feature a new scented flower or plant recommended by Helen and Leonie and detail our gardening experiences as we incorporate twelve new aromatic additions into the landscape at 1750 House. Hopefully, you’ll find this information equally inspiring and insightful too. It would be lovely if we could all experience the calming nature of a scented garden together.

Our next Greenhouse Diaries post will introduce our first fragrant botanical, but in the meantime, here’s a quick update on improvements we made to the greenhouse over the summer and a current list of what’s growing in the greenhouse now…

Current Occupants

As of mid-January, the greenhouse is halfway full with overwintering geraniums, vinca vine, and dracaena spikes from the summer garden. Six different types of succulents, a coffee plant, a pineapple sage cutting from our summer plantings, and Liz Lemon (our six-year-old lemon tree) fill out the rest of the space alongside a batch of newly started seeds… collards, broccoli, beets and four different types of salad greens.

Winter Plastic Wrap

This isn’t a new improvement, but we are on Year No. 2 of dressing the greenhouse in a winter coat – aka wrapping it entirely in a layer of thick plastic – to keep the heat in and protect the plants from drafts during rain, sleet, and snowstorms. The plastic, a temporary solution for the coldest months gets removed in early spring, folded up, and stored in the basement. Once the temperatures drop below 45 in the fall, we put the plastic back on for the season. Aesthetically, it’s not the prettiest site but it gets the job done and keeps our overwintering plants and new seedlings happy and warm. We weren’t sure how the plastic was going to hold up from year to year, but so far it’s nice to see that it is still working just as well. To learn more about this winterization system, see last year’s post here.

Thanks to the plastic wrap, everything stayed warm and dry inside during our most recent January 2024 snowstorm.

New Electrical

Over the summer we added an electrical outlet inside the greenhouse and buried the wiring underground. This was a big (and much safer) improvement from running an extension cord across the yard between the greenhouse and the workshop, which is how we handled things last winter. This new addition is an outdoor-rated 110V 15 amp circuit box which is just what we need to power the heater and lights.

A New Heater

A new mini space heater replaced the tall radiator-style heater used last winter. This smaller size opens up more room to move around the greenhouse and fits nicely on a bottom shelf tucked out of the way when not in use. It has a safety feature that turns the heater off automatically if it tipples over or if any excess moisture drips inside. When the greenhouse reaches a certain temperature, it also automatically turns off to save energy and to keep the plants from overheating.

Normally the heater sits on the pea gravel floor of the greenhouse so that it efficiently heats all areas from bottom to top, but to photo it for this post I put it on one of the higher shelves for a better view. Please note: your greenhouse heater should never be this close to any plants as the proximity to the heat will cause the leaves to shrivel and could become a fire hazard. Any greenhouse heater should have a wide radius that is completely free and clear of other objects.

By using this smaller unit, we don’t have to run out and adjust the heat as the temperature changes over the course of the day, like we had to do last year. Also, we readjusted our required heat temperature in the greenhouse. Instead of keeping it in the mid-70s like last year, we lowered it to 55 degrees, in hopes that the cooler temp will keep spider mites at bay. We learned first-hand last winter how much they just adore a hot greenhouse. The new heater also blows warm air around the space instead of radiating it, so we have continual air movement swirling around inside this year, which I also hope will help with any pests. The final great benefit of this small little worker is that it has an additional fan option too, so in summer we’ll be able to grow our herbs inside the greenhouse without the temperature getting too hot or the air too stagnant.

New Lights

My most favorite new enhancement to the greenhouse came this fall when we added bulb lights to the interior roofline. The lights make it so much easier to work at night, especially in the winter when it can get dark as early as 3:30pm if we have an especially cloudy or rainy weather day.

These bulb lights are a tad too big for the space, so they’ll be swapped out for something a bit more petite this spring, but we had these already on hand and wanted to make sure we liked the light idea before we committed to several sets. At night it looks especially festive. Once all the landscaping is in place around the greenhouse, it will provide a nice light source for outdoor dining during the warm weather days. By then we’ll be at least five months into the fragrant year and the garden will hopefully be on its way to becoming a perfumed paradise. Just dreaming about it now, I can see and smell the summer already.

If you’d like to catch up on the trials and tribulations of our first year of greenhouse gardening start at entry #1 here. Otherwise, it’s on to 2024 and all the delightful aromas that await each new season.

Cheers to ever-evolving garden adventures, to a scent-sational year ahead and to Helen and Leonie for inspiring this new set of diary entries centered around the life and times of one mighty but mini New England greenhouse.

The Greenhouse Diaries Entry #6: How to Keep a Greenhouse Warm in Winter, Spring Seedlings and a Whole Lot of February

Published on March 2, 2023March 2, 2023 by In The Vintage Kitchen3 Comments

Wrap it up like a big present. In plastic. That’s how to keep a greenhouse warm in winter. Luckily, our greenhouse is small so this gift wrapping is not a giant undertaking. And it might not be the right solution for any big greenhouse owners, but for us, and our 4’x6′ growing station, this method of winterization has proved itself most competent. Like a champion, it weathered our second blast of single-digit-polar vortex temperatures in early February, it withstood wind gusts of 35 mph, and it embraced this week’s big snowstorm of 6.5″ inches all while maintaining an even 70-80 degree temperature range indoors. We can officially say, with confidence, that this is an ideal solution for any small greenhouse gardeners who live in a cold weather climate and struggle to keep plants warm throughout the winter.

We got a little behind in our greenhouse diaries updates, but by no means was February an uneventful month around here. As we all know, nature waits for no one. What was exciting twenty days ago in the greenhouse has now been replaced by exciting things happening at this very moment, so this post is a catch-up, a recap, and a new surprise all rolled into one in an effort not to make it a million miles long.

The front side of the greenhouse with a roll-up curtain panel to gain entry.

Here’s a brief recap on the winterization efforts. Essentially, in less than half a day, we built a wooden exoskeleton around the shoulder and roofline of the greenhouse and then wrapped the greenhouse in one giant piece of plastic. The plastic was stapled to the wooden skeleton which was screwed together but not screwed into the greenhouse. Instead, the wood frame rests on top of the greenhouse, secured by gravity from the wooden connection at the peak of the roof.

A 5′ foot wide roll-up curtain panel was made for the door using a curtain rod at the base and more plastic sheeting. Four bungee cords hold the plastic in place along each wall and two butterfly clamps hold the rolled-up panel in place when going in and out of the greenhouse. All it took material-wise was one roll of the plastic sheeting, six pieces of lumber, a curtain rod, a handful of screws, four bungee cords, and two butterfly clamps. If anyone would like a detailed drawing on how to replicate this plastic wrap for your own greenhouse, please send us a message or comment below and we’ll be happy to lay out the steps and materials.

Most days we leave the door panel rolled up to let a little outside air seep in through the draft in the doorframe. Just before dusk, it all gets buttoned back up again. Once winter is over, we will be able to easily remove, wrap up and save this plastic/wood frame system for the cold months later in the year. Using this type of winterization method and our one electric heater has kept the greenhouse a full 50-60 degrees warmer inside than the outside temperature. So on a 25-degree night, it will stay a consistent 75 degrees in the greenhouse. Some days, when the sun is out, the plastic keeps everything so warm we can turn the heater off completely. Both the established plants and the seedlings have really thrived in this much more consistent environment.

The only downside to this method of winterizing is that all the ventilation holes, the roof window, and each side wall from the pea gravel floor to the peaked roof get completely covered with plastic so there isn’t as much free air flow or circulation happening, and the view is reduced to a gauzy, opaque landscape once inside. The trapped heat is great for keeping everything inside warm but also invites pests to come and enjoy the tropical heat.

Over the course of February, we did see an outbreak of aphids, whiteflies, and spider mites, but a simple spray of homemade garlic water and store-bought organic neem oil did the trick to clear those up quickly.

Pureed garlic steeped in water for 24 hours before straining and applying.

One note on the Neem oil though – it does get rid of everything. We had some mushrooms that popped up in the pepper plants in January and also two resident spiders who were helping reduce the unwanted bug population, but unfortunately, mushroom nor spider survived the neem spray. So keep that in mind if you have some critters that you’d like to keep around.

Over the course of the month, we said goodbye and hello to a few plants. The broccoli, the pincushions, and our beautiful nasturtiums all completed their natural life cycle. As much as I hated to see these three go, at least they were moving on to the compost pile for nutrient recycling. Like our sourdough starter recipe published last week, all these first-year greenhouse plants have been the best springboards – the ones that taught us so much about how to begin in the first place. Before their final send-off, I picked the last of the nasturtiums for a bouquet. It was a big colorful cheers and thank you to my most loved flower this season…

The last of the nasturtium flowers in a bouquet of geraniums and parsley.

On the hello side, we said welcome to a bevy of new seedlings as they sprouted up this month. Snapdragons, foxglove, basil, black-eyed Susan vine, cucamelons, bell peppers, spicy peppers, cosmos, dill…

We harvested the orange bell pepper for a stuffed pepper recipe, the first round of collard greens for a sausage, potato, and collard hash, and the arugula for more salads than we can count. The chives, lavender, and tarragon all got haircuts and the Santaka grew five finger-long peppers.

The geraniums are filling out so much they have completely taken over one corner of the greenhouse. Their resilience from frost recovery is pretty remarkable. I can see now why these plants have a shelf-life of 50 years if paid just a little bit of attention. With the colorful nasturtiums gone, they have been such a vibrant choice for the wintertime greenhouse.

After the bell pepper was harvested and after the spider mites came to visit, I did some trimming of the older pepper plant leaves, and pretty much overnight three jalapenos grew. Now each of the three pepper plants are blooming again, Maybe we’ll be lucky and get two summer cycles out of each plant.

This week, the most exuberant grower in the greenhouse has been the mint. At 12″ inches in height now, it’s been the epitome of spring-is-right-around-the-corner joy.

Nineteen days to go. That’s how close the first day of spring is. In anticipation, another round of seed starting begins this week. On the list for March starts are cucumbers, marigolds, squash, tomatoes, okra, collards, sunflowers, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, peas, broccoli, and zinnia. To keep things interesting, Mother Nature also might be sending two to four more inches of snow our way this weekend, just as the daffodils are popping up in the garden beds. Like I said up top, nature waits for no one. And so we carry on. Snow showers and spring flowers aside, this is the perfect time to get the summer garden started.

Cheers to almost-Spring and to figuring out the greenhouse winterization plan just as a new season approaches! Have you been starting your seeds too? If so, what are you growing this year?

The Greenhouse Diaries: Entry #1

Published on December 3, 2022December 3, 2022 by In The Vintage Kitchen9 Comments

Inspired by the writings of Katharine Sergeant Angell White, there’s a new series coming to the blog called The Greenhouse Diaries. A week-by-week account of growing flowers, food and ornamentals in a 4′ x 6′ greenhouse in New England, it’s a work-in-progress series that chronicles our adventures as we build the gardens of 1750 House and grow ingredients for our vintage recipe posts.

If you are unfamiliar with Katharine, she was a longtime editor of The New Yorker magazine, working there from its infancy to the mid-20th century. She was also the wife of E.B. White, who wrote Charlotte’s Web, Stuart Little and other fantastic works that delighted the imaginations of both kids and adults.

Katharine and E.B.’s home in Brooklin, Maine. Image courtesy of maineaneducation.org

In the 1950s, when Katharine and E.B. left their New York City apartment to take up permanent residence in their vacation house in Maine, Katharine embarked on a writing career. After decades of working around some of the best literary talents of her generation including her own husband, you might suppose she would turn to writing things she was accustomed to reading at the magazine – fiction or poetry or short stories or perhaps some reminiscences about life in the publishing world that she had known so well for so long. Not so. Instead, Katharine was inspired by the thing that grew around her in Maine – her garden and all that it entailed. From planning and plotting to cultivating and researching, she fell in love with horticulture from all angles. On index cards, in diary pages, and in letters to friends, for two decades she enthusiastically documented her successes and failures, her insights and observations, the learned histories, and the passed-along advice relating to gardening as hobby, art, and food source.

Katharine’s expertise grew by trial and error, by curiosity, and by a passion that captured her attention year-round despite the cold winds that blew off the Atlantic, the snow that inevitably piled up in winter, and the wild, rugged landscape that made growing anything in Maine both a challenge and a reward. Her published pieces eventually led to a book of collected works on gardening compiled by E.B. after Katharine’s death in 1977. Lauded for her fresh perspective and interesting subject matters (like one essay that reviewed the writers of garden catalogs), she had a unique voice that resonated with other gardening enthusiasts around the country. Even E.B. was surprised at his wife’s candor and affection for her subject matter.

Katharine’s book of collected garden writing published in 1977.

As you might recall from previous posts, we have big plans for the heirloom gardens that will envelop 1750 House just like they would have done one hundred, two hundred or almost three hundred years earlier. Having spent most of the spring, summer and fall building and establishing garden beds and planning out landscaping details for the front and back yards, we will be ready for Phase Two of our landscape design by next spring, which means putting the greenhouse to full use this winter. Just like Katharine approached gardening in Maine with continual curiosity and enthusiasm, I thought it would be fun to share our progress of winter gardening as it unfolds. Since we are new to gardening in New England and also new to greenhouse gardening in general, this weekly diary will be an adventure in unknown outcomes. Nature is rarely predictable. Surprises can be encountered at every turn. It’s my hope that by discussing both challenges and successes, this series will help attract and connect fellow greenhouse gardeners so that we can all learn together by sharing tips and techniques discovered along the way.

So let’s get going and growing. The Greenhouse Diaries await…

First and foremost, a formal introduction to our workspace.

Our greenhouse measures 4’x6′. It has a steel base, aluminum framing, a pea gravel floor, a door with a secure handle, an adjustable roof vent, and clear polycarbonate walls. Inside, there is room enough for two metal shelving units, a wooden stool, 33 pots of varying sizes, one galvanized bucket, two water jugs, a hand soap station, and a portable heater. Tucked in between all that, is a little extra space for standing and potting.

We assembled the greenhouse in the late spring in the sunniest spot in the backyard. During the warm months, it held trays of seed starts and some plants that preferred to be out of the direct path of slugs and cutworms. But once autumn came and the threat of the first frost hovered, we turned it into an experiment station. Curious to see what we could keep alive from the summer garden, we potted our most successful growers and crossed our fingers. So far so good. Everything but the oregano and one pot of marigolds have taken well to the location change.

The nasturtiums in particular really like their new spot. Blooming at a rate of three to four new flowers a day, they keep the greenhouse bright with color and the air sweetly scented like honeyed perfume.

Currently, the greenhouse is uninsulated, an issue that will need to be addressed as the daytime temperatures fall into the 20s and 30s. But for now, we have found success in creating a summer climate using a portable electric heater that was put into service as soon as the outdoor temperatures began to repeatedly fall below 50 degrees.

With just the help of the heater and the sun, the greenhouse right now averages temperatures that are 20-35 degrees above the outdoor temperature. Once we get our insulation plan in place, it should become even warmer. For now though, all the plants seem happy with this cozy climate.

I read once that a single geranium plant can live up to 50 years if properly cared for season by season. That’s my goal for the four pots that are overwintering now.

Accidently overlooked, two of the four geranium pots experienced the first frost in mid-November before they made it into the greenhouse. Wilted and weepy-looking, I cut off all the affected leaves and stalks and brought them into the greenhouse, hoping that the warmth might help them recover and encourage new growth. Yesterday, they started sprouting new leaves…

The other companions that make up this house full of green are…

lavender
tarragon
mint
parsley
rosemary
broccoli
basil
succulents
sage
tomato
peppers
thyme
arugula
zinnia
pincushions
lemon tree
collard greens
chives
aloe
bunny ear cactus
brussels sprouts

The peppers, tomatoes, and broccoli are all sporting fruit these days. I’m not sure how long they will take to grow and ripen but if we could manage a small harvest in the dead of winter that would be exciting.

The winter crops that we are trying out this year – broccoli, arugula, collard greens and Brussels sprouts – hopefully, will reach maturity and harvest time by late February. We run the chance of running out of room if these guys get really big, but a full house is better than none at all, so we’ll take it one week at a time and see what happens.

In one of her essays, Katharine wrote.. “from December through March, there are for many of us three gardens – the garden outdoors, the garden of pots and bowls in the house, and the garden of the mind’s eye.” Gardening in a greenhouse in winter gives us the ability to experience all three – to create, to grow, and to dream during a time of year that the outside world reserves for dormancy and hibernation. Our small structure set in pea gravel with a portable heater and a steel base, aluminum framing, and metal shelves shelters big, colorful dreams – ones both realized and yet to be imagined. We can’t wait to see what blooms.

Cheers to Katharine for inspiring this new series, to the greenhouse for holding all our hopes and to nature for feeding our brains and our bellies.

A Rare Look at a Halloween Sweet Treat from the 1960s

Published on October 31, 2022October 31, 2025 by In The Vintage KitchenLeave a comment

Happy Halloween! In today’s post, we are starting off your holiday with a rare treat – a little something sweet from the files of food history.

In 1960, a bit of marketing magic happened to a specific sector of the food industry that no one ever saw coming. It didn’t burst onto the scene with immediate stardom but it was fresh and fun and set the stage for something much bigger down the road. This initial marketing campaign didn’t debut at Halloween, but it did get caught up in the fervor of the holiday and all the potential that trick or treating offered.

In celebration of this sweet treat day, in today’s post, I thought it would be fun to feature a vintage advertising campaign that centers around a very rare piece of Halloween ephemera that was almost lost to history. This one piece of found paper tells the story of a food, an industry, a holiday, and one group of clever individuals who had an unfailing love for one very specific product.

It all starts with the advertising campaign that began rolling out in 1960. This was a campaign that was not promoting a food or a recipe or a meal that was rare or coveted or exotic. It was actually the opposite. It was spotlighting a food that was quite humble and ordinary and pretty unremarkable in the appearance department. It was one of those foods that lies under the radar. Helpful, necessary, enjoyable, but not exactly glamorous, it wasn’t until a certain advisory board formed that this food’s reputation got a total makeover in the likeability department. Through clever ads, product placement, and innovative promotions, this group grabbed attention and shook things up. Eventually, two decades later the food they promoted would become a pop culture icon known by millions of people around the world. By then, it would be forever linked with a catchy theme song and a field of merchandise that stretched way beyond anything to do with kitchens and cooking. The Smithsonian Museum even took note and acquired it for their collection.

So what is it you ask? What is this magical food that went from simple to superstar over the latter half of the 20th century? Here’s a clue… it’s brown and wrinkly. It comes in petite boxes and big canisters. It’s used in baking and cooking. It’s sweet and small, mini and meaty. Can you guess what it might be?

It’s a raisin.

The group of individuals responsible for bringing the raisin into the limelight was the California Raisin Advisory Board, based in Fresno. Founded in the 1950s, the Board was crazy for raisins and wanted to share their joy of this dehydrated fruit with eaters everywhere. Their enthusiasm was backed by noble intent too. They wanted to help draw attention to the local raisin growers who were struggling to make a profit in mid-20th century California.

Typically, when you hear the words “advisory board” you don’t automatically think of whimsy and fun but the California Raisin Advisory Board (also ironically known as C.R.A.B.) proposed a marketing campaign that was full of joy from beginning to end. Their mission was to produce effective advertisements that targeted the heart of the home – the kitchen – and all the ways in which raisins could become a household favorite and a sustainable staple, cherished enough to support the industry that grew them.

This is still life painted by Clara Peeters in 1615 featuring a bowl of raisins and almonds.

Raisins of course had been an ingredient in cooking and baking since the 1600s, so in the 1960s they were not a new food, but the industry was struggling and the Advisory Board wanted to step in to help. They wanted to take the raisin out of the cabinet of yesteryear, dust off its stodgy patina, and give it some zing. With centuries worth of material to work with there was no shortage of ideas when it came to inspiration, but the Advisory Board wanted to focus on a fresh approach and universal appeal. So where did they start?

With bread. As in raisin bread. A sweet, studded cinnamon-laced loaf often enjoyed at breakfast, this baker’s delight was centuries old too, just like the fruit it featured. But in the 1920s, raisin bread received some new interest when it was deemed a “health food” by dieticians and nutritionists. Sugar aside, raisins hold a lot of vitamins and minerals in their puckered little shape including magnesium, potassium, and fiber. Added to the protein found in bread, the combination formed a magical collaboration of a seemingly decadent eating experience paired with a hearty dose of healthy goodness. That gave the Advisory Board a lot of angles to play with when it came to promotion. Raisin bread was nutritious. It was affordable. It could be store-bought or home-baked. It smelled like heaven when toasted. And it appealed to both kids and adults. Paired with some clever writing and marketing during National Raisin Bread Month (November), the Advisory Board launched a raisin campaign full of plucky personality…

A cookie campaign followed suit…

The Advisory Board was off and running. Throughout the 1960s, the Advisory Board launched a flurry of seasonal promotions that included National Raisin Week in April, summer picnic season in July, back-to-school snack packs in September, and the Raisins for Happy Holidays campaign in December. In-store grocery taste tests, advertisements, sweepstakes and giveaways encouraged repeat buyers and kept the noble raisin front of mind.

The California Raisin Advisory Board also churned out raisin recipes year-round for newspaper columns from their test kitchen. Photo courtesy of the Sacramento Bee, 1970.

When Halloween time rolled around each year, the holiday provided an additional opportunity to remind parents and kids how sweet a treat, a raisin was. Just like traditional Halloween candy, albeit healthier, during the month of October, the Advisory Board promoted the fact that raisins came in small boxes – a handy size for trick-or-treaters. Posters made for grocery stores and food shops hinted at Halloween excitement. This is an example of a very rare original grocery store poster featuring the California Raisins Advisory Board…

Measuring 25″ inches x 14.25″ inches it is a true survivor of history and a real-life example of the Advisory Board’s cute and colorful messaging. Most food store advertising was discarded in the trash promptly after a promotion ended to make way for new advertising in its place. Printed on thin, inexpensive paper these eye-catching advertisements were not made to last more than 60 days let alone six decades. Oftentimes, they were hung in store windows exposed to heat, sun,, humidity, and temperature changes which would cause them to crinkle and fade over time. When I found this one, it was in fragile and brittle shape and was held together only by hope and a dehydrated rubber band. Ripped and torn in so many places it was impossible to unravel it without it completely breaking apart. A quick peek down the interior of its rolled-up shape, yielded the image of a pumpkin face smiling back. How fun! Home to the Kitchen it came for further investigation and repair.

Carefully rolling out the paper, rehydrating it with a warm, ever-so-moist-paper towel, and then gluing it to acid-free archival poster board took a couple days of attention. Each time a ripped section was flattened out and smoothed over it was a small victory in revealing the bigger picture. Little by little, inch by inch, the poster’s overall image went from bits and pieces to one whole poster.

Finally put back together, for a year, the poster sat just like that – attached to the thick archival poster board with a big wide border surrounding it. Waiting to see if it would stay secured, retain its bright colors and not disintegrate, it was wonderful to see that 360 days later the poster looked exactly the same. Removing the excess matting by cutting it down to its original size, a wood frame was built for it using antique wood remnants from the 1750 House. Floating the poster inside the wood frame allows for all the imperfections along the top nad bottom edge of the poster to show – a visual record of its fragile history. The poster, although greatly improved from its original found state, still bears its wounds in Frankensteinish patchwork.

But what I love most about this poster now, is how despite all its rough and tumble elements, it still manages to radiate joy and a sense of enthusiasm. That was the power of the Advisory Board’s campaign. Raisins are fun.

Raisin drying racks. Fresno, CA. 1901. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress

The first raisin farms in Fresno were started by a group of female schoolteachers in 1876. They decided to set aside four acres out of one hundred acres that they purchased so that they could grow grapes for a raisin harvest. Two years later, the first batch (30 boxes) was ready for market and a West Coast industry began.

In the early 1900s, Raisin growers in Fresno would make anywhere from $50-$125.00 per harvested acre.

By the 1960s, the US produced 250,000 tons a year, mostly from farms in the Fresno area. Foreign competition was tough though and the raisin growers were struggling to keep afloat. That’s when the Advisory Board stepped in with their breads and their cookies and their sweet, colorful, clever campaigns declaring raisins raisins raisins a wonderful thing.

As cute as the pumpkin goblin face was on the poster, it was not the imagery that launched the raisins to worldwide fame. That would happen in the mid-1980s when the Advisory Board approved an idea from a Foote, Cone, and Belding advertising executive who pitched an idea about raisins and a band and a signature song.

The California Raisins, singing Marvin Gaye’s 1968 Motown hit, Heard It Through The Grapevine was born. Indicative of the Advisory Board’s continuous efforts to pitch their product in clever ways, the California Raisins soaked into the fabric of mainstream society like no other fruit campaign had done before. This is the first commercial that started the success…

Making up a whole world of claymation figures and storytelling, the California Raisin band was an immediate hit and could be seen everywhere – on tv, in print ads, and on cross-promotional advertising products across grocery store shelves. This was the kind of big-splash notoriety that the Advisory Board was after in the 1960s. With more and more customers buying raisins in the 1980s and 1990s, thanks to the singing sensations, the Advisory Board was fulfilling its mission.

In 1986, the California Raisin became the most popular Halloween costume of the year. The Raisin band members were reproduced in figurine form and Heard it Through the Grapevine reached the top 100 song charts. When the Smithsonian acquired the original California raisin claymation figures in 1991, it firmly sealed the success of the Raisin Advisory Board. Their singularly beloved product was now beloved by all.

Unfortunately, the sweet taste of success didn’t yield the type of monetary compensation that was hoped for when it came to the raisin growers. The Advisory Board disbanded in 1994 after struggling to balance the costs between promoting the raisins and keeping the growers profitable. Creativity can be harsh that way. Sometimes clever doesn’t equal capitalism. But in this case, it sure did produce some fun art and a new way to look at the world, even if it was discovered decades later than intended.

Cheers to joyful advertising, loving what you love completely, and to our little rescued poster whose celebrating its 60th Halloween this year! Hope it added a little something sweet to your holiday. Happy Halloween!

The Colonial Kitchen Garden Then and Now

Published on June 20, 2022 by In The Vintage Kitchen5 Comments

The gardens of Historic Williamsburg Virginia.

Time, nostalgia, and then necessity. In that order. Those were the key factors that determined how gardens in America were grown in the mid-1700s. By that point, the pilgrims had long landed, settlers were four generations into life in the New World, and creating an independent society was on everyone’s minds.

An 18th century painting of New Milford, CT.

Despite the idea of pastoral food plots, of self-sufficiency, of larders full of carefully tended, joyfully grown vegetables, the reality, surprisingly was that many working-class 18th-century families did not have time to waste cultivating the land into mounds of gorgeous gardens.

Even though garden pests were much fewer in those days than they are today, gardening was still a risky endeavor in the mid-18th century. One bug or one beetle or one dry spell could wipe out an entire season or two of manual labor. Time lost during a century when almost everything was handmade and hand-touched could result in cataclysmic results not only for individuals but also for families, communities, and even the burgeoning nation.

In the centuries before Miracle-Gro and sprinkler systems and lawn mowers, before electric clippers and garden hoses, soil amendments, and genetically modified seeds that were practically guaranteed to grow, gardening was a risky business. And not all were willing to gamble. Since the colonial mindset valued efficiencies and effectiveness, one’s time was much better spent building a building, or a family, or the constitution instead of raising food gardens that may or may not result in something edible. And that really wasn’t the point of gardening back then anyway.

Painting by Edward Hicks titled the Home of David Twining, 1787

The mid-18th century diet, most accurately studied by researchers at Colonial Williamsburg, was almost entirely made up of animal proteins. Surprisingly, just 10% of the foods they consumed came from vegetables. When colonists abandoned the idea of growing their own food because of time, space, or temerity, they turned to local farms to purchase what little plant roughage they consumed.

Photo of the gardens at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello by Billy Hathorn

Those farms, with the ability, the space, the manpower, and the elite lifestyle to afford a garden in all its splendors and failures were generally ones of upper-class wealth. For this affluent sector, gardening was a matter of refinement and intellectual interest. They could absorb the costs of failed planting endeavors or reap the financial rewards of a fruitful season either way. They also had access to education for leisurely study and experimentation, something not often afforded to the working class.

One of the best examples of early American gardening on a large-scale level is Thomas Jefferson’s Virginian home, Monticello. With an avid interest in horticulture, 5,000 acres to play with and a net worth equal to $284 million dollars today, Jefferson was able to explore the world of gardening from all angles. He made copious amounts of notes and drawings regarding what, where, why and how his gardens were growing…

While it’s fascinating to go through Thomas Jefferson’s notes in order to understand his thought process, methodology, and relationship to innovations we take for granted today, one of the facts that I found most fascinating while researching colonial gardens is not something that can be linked to a specific concept or a system or even a person. It’s much more individualistic. What I learned is that stylistically, all gardens in America from the very beginning were driven by and inspired by nostalgia. And many people’s nostalgia at that.

Painting of forget-me-nots with goblet by Leon Bonvin, 1863

As new settlers immigrated from other countries and other continents throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, they brought with them memories of their parent’s garden, their grandparent’s garden, and perhaps even their own garden that they left behind. A desire to replicate this specific sense of familiarity meant that gardens were not created in America but in fact, recreated, from replicas of what these settlers once knew before in their home countries. Memories of ancestral orchards, ancient hedgerows, favorite flowers, fruiting vines, and heritage foods all acted as springboards for the first wave of garden preferences when it came to shapes, designs, content, color palettes, and layouts for gardeners in the New World. Those longings for other familiar places and spaces were what founded the very ideas of what a garden should and could look like here in America.

Since maintaining a garden was both a status symbol and a sign of wealth, gardens of the 18th century came in two basic styles… cottage gardens and farm gardens. Cottage gardens were small patches of land grown specifically for vegetables, herbs, and flowers with a purpose. Ornamental flowers were not often grown in these petite patches as they were considered frivolous time wasters.

Farm gardens, on the other hand, were the ones cultivated on bigger stretches of land adorned with numerous outbuildings, an ample number of workers, and dedicated areas for kitchen work, pleasure gardening, dairy operations, and large-scale croplands. Organized, efficient, and tidy, farm gardens leaned towards formal decorative designs inspired by European gardening techniques and aesthetics. Most often they were dotted with topiary tree, ornamental flowers, exotic plants, manicured bushes, and lined with brick or crushed sea shell pathways. Attractive garden structures in all shapes and sizes added the finishing touch to ensure picturesque vantage points. Even in the new days of the New World, history bloomed in the garden from other centuries, other places, other pasts. And from those two garden styles forward we never really varied in what we decided constituted an American garden.

The colonial garden that is beginning to emerge in the front and back yard of our 1750s-era house is one of both history and purpose. In an effort to be as self-sustainable as possible we are growing fruit, vegetables, and herbs for cooking, and flowers for fun. While we are not following the formality of hedged colonial gardens, but instead opting for a more cottage garden approach, I am intent on only growing heirloom varieties for an old-fashioned aesthetic and a pretty dose of historic storytelling from the ground up. Here are a few ways we are incorporating history from three centuries into the garden of our 272-year old house…

Heirloom Seeds

With the exception of one newly invented pepper plant developed by the Chile Pepper Institute in New Mexico, and two flats of marigolds and nasturtiums purchased from our local nursery, in this year’s garden, we are growing everything from seed, using only heirloom varietals of fruit, flowers, and vegetables.

Okra, brandywine tomatoes and bush beans growing up and out!

We were a bit late in seed starting since we didn’t move into our house until April, but so far we have tomatoes, zucchini, peas, beans, carrots, herbs, okra and lettuce growing up in the garden. As of today, the showiest plantings so far are the nasturtiums from the local nursery…

Nasturtiums made a regular appearance in American colonial gardens too by way of seeds carried from England and Holland. Prized then and still now, they were eaten like salad greens… leaves stalks, flowers, and all thanks to their sweet but peppery taste. If you like arugula mixed in with your lettuce, you’ll like nasturtiums too. They also happen to be fantastic pest repellants for squash bugs, aphids, beetles and our daily invader – the pesky slug.

Raised Beds

Colonial gardens in the 18th century were laid out in symmetrical grid styles using raised beds and walkways of crushed seashells in between. Based on the layout of our yard, the lush tree canopy, and the pattern of the sun throughout the day, we also are doing raised beds but not in the same traditional colonial grid format since we have fewer pockets of consistent, direct sunlight throughout the day. Instead, we have built one long raised garden bed that measures 25′ feet (length) x 5.5′ feet (width) x 2.5″ feet (height) in the front yard using rocks gathered from around the property. The rockery aesthetic matches the stone walkway and steps of the front porch.

Newly built and just before we filled it in with all the dirt and compost materials.

Flowers, seedlings and seeds get planted this week, but this is a little sneak peek as to where more nasturiums will be headed.

The tree canopy changes color throughout the day and makes the prettiest shadows in the yard. Two sugar maples live in the front yard. We cant wait to tap this fall for our own maple syrup.

In the backyard, just off the porch, we built a smaller raised bed out of wood that measures 10′ feet (length) x 5.5′ feet by 3′ feet (height). Instead of using just plain untreated boards, my husband experimented wth the Yakisugi method and charred the wood with a propane torch. Yakisugi is an ancient Japanese art form that naturally preserves the wood and gives it a pretty, dark walnut-hued finish.

To add a little softness to the rectangular shape, we built another curved rock wall garden bed on one end where the okra, zinnias, coreopsis, Brussels sprouts, and marigolds are happily growing away.

Rock walls have been a part of the natural historic landscape of New England since the 1800s, and were used as land dividers and fencing following the split rail style fencing that was popular during colonial days. In Connecticut in the 1700s, most of the landscape was covered in trees so everything in that century was made out of wood since it was the most abundant building material. We haven’t yet decided on what kind of fencing we will add to the front yard. It’s a big decision with many possibilities ranging between a picket fence, a rock wall, a split rail fence, or a series of decorative shrubs and grasses.

The Greenhouse

The first greenhouses were built in Europe and the UK in the 1600s, so they’ve been an important garden feature for quite some time. Our greenhouse was found locally on craigslist, just a couple of weeks after we moved in. Still in its original box, it just needed one day of assembly and then it was ready to start growing things.

First day!

So far we are off to a good start. This has been the birthplace of our tomatoes, basil, broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, cilantro, parsley, dill, lettuces, French marigolds, and okra.

It’s also the permanent new home of our three-year-old Southern papaya tree, Pappy, who did not love our move to the Northeast as much as we did and responded to the 9-degree temperatures experienced during our temporary stay in Pennsylvania this past winter by promptly losing all his leaves. Every day from November to April, no matter how much coddling I gave him, Pappy threatened to shrivel up and call it quits. Luckily, the warmth of the greenhouse has him happy once again and back on the road to recovery.

Pappy! Two new leaves grown, a million more to go!

It’s our plan to keep the greenhouse in constant use all year long. With the help of a heater and some neighboring cold frames, I look forward to growing kale, chard, cabbages, and other cool-weather vegetables there this winter.

Rain Barrel

To complete the start of our self-sufficiency model we added a colonial-style rainwater collection barrel to the side of the garage. So far we’ve pumped an entire barrel full of water into the garden as well as accidentally grown a vat of sulfur-smelling bacteria. As it turns out, there’s an art (and a science!) to storing rainwater in a barrel, and there is still so much for us to learn. In an upcoming post, I’ll share the system my husband custom-built to pump the water from the barrel to the garden, which I hope might be helpful for anyone else learning the ropes of the rain barrel watering system.

Future plans for the garden include bee boxes, landscaped garden beds, lighting, and a fire pit, but for now, this is the start of our new yet old colonial-inspired garden. More photos will come as the garden grows up!

In the meantime, while the kitchen is under renovation and we wait for the vegetables to flower and fruit, the grill has been a beehive of action and adventure as we discover and explore some vintage recipes meant for the barbecue days of summer. One of my favorites so far is this grilled potato recipe from 1955. Coming next to the blog, this recipe will add an extra delicious dose of fancy food to your summer soirees. Can’t wait to share it!

Cheers to summer foods, sentimental gardening, and horticultural history! Hope this season is your most beautiful one yet.

Here Comes the Sun(flowers): A Post From the Archives Resurfaces and Brings With It A Poem

Published on June 26, 2021June 26, 2021 by In The Vintage KitchenLeave a comment

Cheers to the official first days of summer! This week, here in the Vintage Kitchen we celebrated our own set of happy firsts too. The first volunteer sunflower of the season bloomed on the balcony just at the very same time that a sunflower re-bloomed on the blog. The balcony blossom was planted courtesy of Paul and Julia, our resident mourning doves.

The blog blossom was plucked by the editor of a Canadian poetry journal who discovered the Vintage Kitchen archives through a 2012 post about growing red sunflowers. That blast from the past featured this particular homegrown delight…

From the archives – a sunflower blog post from 2012.

Both sightings added unexpected sparkle to the week, but the blog blossom brought along an extra something special. It was selected to appear alongside a beautiful poem entitled Black SunFlower written by Redgina Jean-Paul. The two were published in the Juniper Poetry Journal on Tuesday…

Black SunFlower

by Redgina Jean-Paul

I am

going over
every single
little thing
every single—

And I wish I could
turn it off
stop the train
in its—

Track my thoughts,
pull them back,
nocked-arrow’s fletching,
set them—

Free to choose,
I wish…
I want it to
End. I do. I want

perfect pitch
black sun
flower bed
fellow man
made disaster.

— from Juniper Volume 5, Issue 1

With her remarkable way of illustrating longing and need, Redgina’s poem is quite a lovely collection of words. Even though there is always a sense of poetic movement and association when it comes to cooking in the Vintage Kitchen, it is not often that an actual poem comes home to roost among the pots and the pans and the foodstuffs collected on the counter. So it is with great pleasure that I have the opportunity to introduce a real-life poet who added beauty to the week with her turns of phrase.

To highlight the dramatic tone of Redgina’s poem, the editors of the poetry journal added a filter to the 2012 sunflower photograph so that when it was published in Juniper this week, the garden glory looked like this…

Side by side, picture with words, the two tell a little story…

If you are a long-time reader of the blog, you’ll have noticed that sunflowers pop up on a regular occasion around here. Idyllic companions in the kitchen garden, I love them especially for their sunny dispositions and their continuously cheerful color.

Cultivated by indigenous tribes in Arizona and New Mexico long before explorers ever set foot on North American soil, sunflowers have been brightening up our landscape for over four centuries. Not only are they a fantastic food source for bees, birds and people but they also offer lots of possibility for creative gardenscapes too.

A long-time love affair:) This was a garden photo taken in 2014.

Tall enough to offer shade to smaller plants, sturdy enough to act as borders for visual interest, and easy enough to grow in almost any type of soil, sunflowers are equally at home both in the city and the country. In our neighborhood, this city cottage grows them so tall every year they almost reach the roof…

And the birds help spread their seeds in empty city lots. Each summer, it is fun to walk around town and spot their handiwork…

The 20th century Rutgers University gardening professor, Victor Tiedjens believed that sunflowers were such a common sight and essential component in gardens, it was practically impossible to think of them as merely a decorative flower.

Every part of the plant contains additional uses. The stalks, thanks to their fibrous composition, can be used to make a wide variety of useful products like trellises, instruments and utensils. The flower heads can be sauteed or grilled with butter, olive oil, and garlic in their immature stage, where depending on preparation methods, can taste similar to artichokes or corn on the cob. And the seeds can be consumed in their natural state or processed for their oil.

Multi-clustering blooms of the Del Sol sunflower. The more the merrier!

When it comes to the red varieties, it wasn’t until I started doing my own gardening about 20 years ago, that I discovered the dynamic array of shades of the red sunflower varieties. Ranging from rust to almost-black, I became so smitten with them in 2012, that I ordered seed packages of all the red varieties that I could find online and then planted them all over the garden. Two months later a few hundred bloomed! These are some of the photos from that magical summer…

That was back when I lived in another state on a lovely rural farm with cows for neighbors and my favorite camera always in hand. After some time spent in this country setting, we moved to the city and sadly, my camera died an untimely death a couple of years later. Our last big photo adventure together was a trip to Seattle where I was trying to track down my great-grandmother’s doughnut shop (read about that adventure here). But I am happy to still have the sunflower photos and the memories of those colorful patches of red faces dancing on the breeze. They added quite a bit of drama to the garden in 2012, and it’s nice to see that they are now adding a little drama to the field of poetry too.

If you have some extra time this weekend, pop over to Juniper and get lost in some modern poetry. You might just discover some new favorites of your own. And if you like Redgina’s poem as much as we did, please share it with your friends and family. The poets at Juniper do not get paid for their work when it is published, so their efforts are a true labor of love and self-expression. Around here, we think the world definitely needs more poets. And sunflowers too for that matter.

If you are looking to grow your own sunflowers, I recommend seeds from Botanical Interests. They are not a sponsor of the blog or affiliated with the Vintage Kitchen in any way, other than being my most favorite seed company. That is a love affair that has been going for over 10 years now! Their seeds always have a great success rate, they offer many heirloom varieties and the packages are really pretty and informative too. Browse their sunflower collection here.

Cheers to Redgina and to Juniper, to Paul, and to Julia for planting seeds of joy and inspiration. And to the sunflowers who remind us to keep our faces pointed towards the light each and every day. Hope your weekend is a sunny one!

Hungry for Hungary: The Red Carpet That Leads to A Recipe

Published on February 25, 2021February 25, 2021 by In The Vintage Kitchen7 Comments

Today in the Vintage Kitchen we are rolling out the red carpet. Award season starts in three days with the kick-off of the Golden Globes on Sunday (Feb 28th) and from then until the end of April, there is an awards show practically every week in the entertainment industry. The schedule looks like this…

the Critics Choice Awards (March 7th), the Grammy Awards (March 14th), the Screen Actors Guild Awards (April 4th), the BAFTA Awards (April 11th), the Independent Spirit Awards (April 22nd) and the Academy Awards (April 25th) not to mention a smattering more of lesser-known but equally important events that acknowledge artistic contributions made to the performing arts this past year.

Jennifer Lawrence at the 2013 Academy Awards. Credit…Lucy Nicholson/Reuters

Known throughout history as a universal sign of welcome and special treatment, red carpets today are mostly associated with fancy galas and luxury experiences. But here in the Vintage Kitchen, we have our own version of red carpet festivities. Just like those eye-catching ceremonies full of famous people and fancy dresses, the red carpet in the Kitchen this week is a source of inspiration, creativity, style and visual pizzaz. But unlike star-studded versions made for the entertainment industry, our red carpet is not made with yards of thread and fabric. It doesn’t spotlight a zillion famous faces or fancy dresses. Nor is it something that can easily be rolled out, rolled up or walked onto. Instead, our red carpet looks like this..

Grown under the hot summer sun, picked and then pulverized to a fine powder, the red carpet that is unfurling itself this week in the Kitchen is one made of spice. The star of today’s post is paprika and the exciting event we are celebrating in such a colorful way is the kick-off of Part Two of the International Vintage Recipe Tour 2021.

If you are new to the blog, catch up here on the previous 20 countries we visited last year, by way of the kitchen. If you have been following along from the beginning of the Tour, then welcome to Week 21 and to 2021. Throughout this year, we will be covering recipes from the remaining 24 countries featured in the 1971 edition of the New York Times International Cook Book. This recipe tour brought so much unexpected joy last year, I’m excited to dive right in!

We begin the second half of this around-the-world culinary adventure with a country that tempts your taste buds straight away just with the letters in its name…

The red carpets of Hungary may not be star-studded, glamourous, paparazzi-loving experiences like the events are in Hollywood but they are full of celebrity in their own right. The Capsicum annuum fields and the paprika they produce have long been iconic stars of the country, culture, and cuisine for centuries.

You might be surprised to learn that paprika isn’t made from one particular plant, yet instead is made from all types of red peppers. Ranging from sweet to spicy depending on the variety and the region in which it’s grown, different levels of heat can be produced by using different types of peppers. Bell peppers produce sweet paprika, cayenne peppers produce spicy paprika.

Members of the capsicum annum family include all types and sizes of red peppers, although thin-walled peppers make the most ideal candidates for paprika. Illustrations by Marilena Pistoia from The Complete Book of Fruits & Vegetables circa 1976

Originally cultivated in Mexico, pepper plants were first introduced to Spain in the 1500s and then brought to Hungary in 1569 during the reign of the Ottoman Empire. Due to difficulties in importing spicy black pepper, Hungary’s search for an alternative brought red pepper plants into the spotlight and popularized paprika, quickly deeming it an essential spice that was both affordable and easy to grow. To say that a country fell in love would be an understatement. By the 19th century, paprika became synonymous with Hungarian cuisine and agriculture. Today, they export over 5500 tons of the spice each year.

Grow your own with seeds grown from the gourmet source at hungarianpaprika.net

Thanks to the idyllic Hungarian climate with its hot, dry, summer weather, plants mature over the course of a season. The peppers are picked in September when they reach a robust shade of red, and then are dried in the open air before being ground into a fine powder that is then packaged and sent out to cooks and kitchens all over the world.

Air-dried red peppers in Hungary circa 1968. Photo via pinterest.

Throughout this process the peppers retain their orangy-red hues, making paprika an ideal color enhancer for various foods as well as a semi-permanent natural dye for fabrics. Like curry, paprika takes on different flavor notes according to where it is cultivated in the world. Mexico is known for spicier paprika and Spain for smoked paprika but Hungarian paprika is the most sought after for its sweetness.

Most Hungarian foods that contain this colorful spice proudly announce it in their names… Chicken Paprikash, Paprika Pork, Paprikas Szalonna, Stuffed Cabbage with Paprika, Meat Ball Paprikash, Punjena Paprika… but there are other famous beloved heritage dishes like Goulash, Lipatauer Cheese, Fisherman’s Soup and Hungarian Stuffed Crepes that use the spice by the tablespoonfuls too.

Today in the kitchen, we are sticking to the literal side of things and featuring Paprika Shrimp with Sour Cream. I first made this dish last September with the intention of sharing its ideal attribute of being one of those fantastic in-between-seasons recipes that blends so nicely with warm days and cool nights.

Light, thanks to the shrimp, but creamy and comforting thanks to the pretty paprika-colored sauce, I’m reminded again how this recipe now, six months later, is still an ideal candidate for this new time between seasons as we start to transition from winter to spring. Serving it over a bed of steaming rice makes it satisfying for days that may still contain traces of snow and sleet yet the vibrant color of the whole dish brings a burst of bright pastels to the table – a nice change from all the earthy-hued stews and soups we customarily consume over the winter months.

Many Hungarian dishes are prized Sunday dinner-type foods since they often require lengthy amounts of steeping and simmering, but this recipe is quick and easy to make. It requires just a handful of ingredients, pairs nicely with a glass or two of wine, and can be accompanied by a salad for simplicity or a green vegetable for another pop of color. Traditional serving companions in Hungary would include sides of bread and potatoes.

Like any Hungarian cook would tell you – the secret to this recipe is seeking out the best sweet paprika you can find. Then you’ll truly understand and appreciate the impact this unique spice can have on such a simple dish.

Paprika Shrimp with Sour Cream

Serves 4

2 tablespoons butter

24 medium raw shrimp, peeled and deveined

Freshly ground salt & pepper to taste

1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper

1 teaspoon paprika

3 tablespoons finely chopped shallots

1/3 cup heavy cream

2 teaspoons Dijon mustard

1/3 cup sour cream

2-3 cups white rice, cooked

A few extra sprinkles of paprika and finely chopped chives, parsley or scallions for garnish

Prepare your rice, then set aside and keep warm. Next, heat the butter in a large skillet. When it is hot add the shrimp. Sprinkle with salt and pepper (to taste), cayenne pepper and paprika.

Stir and cook just until the shrimp turn pink, then flip each shrimp once to cook the other side. Be careful not to overcook the shrimp.

Sprinkle with the shallots and add the heavy cream. Stir the mustard into the sauce and remove the skillet from the heat.

Stir in sour cream and heat thoroughly without boiling.

Serve over a bed of warm rice. Garnish with an extra sprinkle of paprika and top with whole parsley leaves or finely chopped chives or scallions.

Warm, sweet, and satisfying this dish is full of subtle yet layered flavors. Hungarian cuisine with all its enjoyment of cream and butter and starch will never be considered diet food, but this recipe spread over 4 servings will hardly cause concern for any health-conscious eater. And that’s not the point of it anyway. The Canadian writer Joanne Sasvari wrote in her 2005 memoir, Paprika, that “Hungary is a country where the past always sits down at the dinner table with the present.” I love that sentiment. When you prepare a dish like Paprika Shrimp, you are not only enjoying a flavorful meal but you are also enjoying the historic journey of a spice – one that was ground from a pepper that was grown on a plant that was part of a collection in a field that stretched for miles and years and centuries ultimately coming to define a country’s heritage and its cuisine.

“When a Hungarian cook puts a steaming bowl of food in front of you, they are not only offering nourishment but also comfort, affection, and a safe refuge from the harsh realities of life,” shares Joanne. In other words, they are offering you the red carpet experience. Signs of welcome and special treatment. Signs of dreamy decadence and luxurious dining shared with friends and family. And signs of love and sweetness too. That’s the glamour of a Hungarian kitchen, as it has been in the past and as it will, comfortingly, continue to be in the future.

Cheers to paprika for not only coloring the landscape but also our plates. And cheers to Hungary for giving all eaters the red carpet treatment with each and every meal. Join us next time as we embark on Week 22 of the Recipe Tour with a trip to India via the kitchen and a special giveaway contest that will bring a dose of extra joy to one lucky reader’s kitchen space.