Trenching Celery

Blanched Celery

For the culture of celery we take instruction from the late Royal Attorney General, John Randolph, who has recently boarded ship for England where his true sympathies lie. As Mr. Randolph has observed, “The sun is a great enemy to Celery, when it is very hot, wherefore I would recommend the covering of your plants with brush, at all seasons of their growth, whilst the weather is hot, from 9 in the morning till 6 o’clock in the evening.”

When the plants have reached a sufficient size for blanching, “dig a trench by a line about ten inches wide and 8 or 9 deep, loosening the earth at the bottom and leveling.” The plants are then tied and transplanted to the trench with an adequate root ball. Then, in a dry season, the trenches are filled to the top of the stems being cautious that soil is not allowed fall within the crown of the plant. In ten days or a fortnight, the stems will be well blanched and they may be removed and cleaned.
As the heat of summer progresses celery becomes more difficult to manage so we then allow a few plants to stand for seed as advised by The gardener’s pocket-calendar (1776): “Plenty of Celery-seed is a very great conveniency to have; for either at sea, or in the Summer, when there are no Celery-roots, it is ready to put into soups, after it is a little bruised, and you will find a very strong flavour of the Celery.”

For a further examination of the culture of celery you are invited to inspect Vegetable Gardening the Colonial Williamsburg way, 18th century methods for today’s organic gardeners (Rodale Press)

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Transplanted melons under paper frame

“Zatta” cantaloupe

The sweet melon, prized by gardeners and gourmands, appears to have its origin in the area surrounding the Black Sea and was first imported to Italy in the fifteenth century. Philip Miller described its introduction in The Gardeners Dictionary (1754) “This Sort was brought from Armenia, on the Confines near Persia, where the best Melons in the World grow…[it] has been long cultivated at Cantaleupe, a little District about ten Leagues form Rome.” Cantaleupe, or “house of wolf’ now provides us with the common name for this noblest of kitchen garden fruits.

True cantaloupes are seldom seen at market today as they have largely been replaced by the musk, or netted melon, and by the winter melon, such as the honey dew. Also known as rock melons, for their thick rinds and warted skins, they were the orange fleshed melons our ancestors knew. The oldest varieties of musk melons generally had green flesh. About the time the true cantaloupe disappeared, the orange fleshed musk melon appeared, so we have simply borrowed the name.

For a complete examination of the melons and their kinds you are invited to peruse Vegetable Gardening the Colonial Williamsburg way, 18th century methods for today’s organic gardeners (Rodale Press)

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Colonial Williamsburg’s Gift to the Nation provides teachers with unique resources to engage student citizens in the values that shaped our nation. The Electronic Field Trip Founders or Traitors explores late 1776, “the times that try men’s souls.” Meet the signers of the Declaration of Independence and discover the risks they took.

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separating slips from the potato

setting out slips on ridges

We start sweet potato slips in late March by burying a potato about two inches deep in fine compost on a gentle hotbed. The frame is kept well watered and when the foliage is about six inches tall the slips are harvested by gently pulling them from the potato. These are then planted on ridges in well composted soil and then thoroughly watered in to settle the soil around the roots. Ridges are particularly important if your soil is stiff as the best shaped potatoes are formed in a light, well-drained soil.

For a complete description of the culture of sweet potatoes we invite you to investigate Vegetable Gardening the Colonial Williamsburg way, 18th century methods for today’s organic gardeners (Rodale Press)

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Features of Interest as Archaeologists began a new excavation south of the Armoury.

About 5 weeks ago, at the outset of our spring excavation, we posted the picture above.  It was intended to help readers  see what we saw…areas that piqued our interest as we resumed exploration of a large pit discovered in 2012.   The dotted lines indicate differences in soil color.  The question marks identify those things we did not yet know, but hoped to learn before the end of April.  Now, with the “Sawpit Excavation” behind us, it’s time for some preliminary reporting on what we’ve learned.    

The image below is our “after” picture, illustrating what was found beneath all of those question marks.  As you can see, we called the “shapes” pretty well.  The “large pit” turned out to be smaller than expected:  12’ x 16’ instead of 12’ x 20’ (probing is not always an accurate indicator of a pit’s extent!).  We know that it has a rectangular shape, although you may notice that we left ¼ of the fill for future archaeologists to explore with their improved technology and different questions.    The pit measures about 3.5’ deep. 

Fully excavated features at the end of the project, 5 weeks later. What is it? Read on…

None of these characteristics is inconsistent with our original theory that this is a sawpit- a pit dug into the ground to enable pairs of sawyers (with a pit saw between them) to cut long plank.  Master Carpenter Garland Wood believes that 16’ is long enough to serve the purpose, and that the width of this pit would have accommodated at least 2 pairs of sawyers.  We hypothesize that, under pressure to the Armoury complex quickly, carpenters may have opted to prepare materials on-site.  

Recent excavation showing both pits in relation to the rest of the Armoury yard.

While this interpretation may still make sense, there are some unanswered archaeological questions.  If this is, indeed, a sawpit, where is the evidence for a framework?  At the very least we expected a trestle…represented in the ground by postholes… to support a platform above.  More significantly, where is evidence for a cover? We have learned through cruel experience that a single hard rain can spell collapse for a hole such as this, and yet the sides of the pit are straight and crisp indicating that they were never exposed to the elements.  Did later construction obliterate the posts we were looking for? Admittedly, our confidence in the sawpit interpretation waivered a bit during the course of this project. 

And then we found a second one. 

Just to the west of the first sawpit, the second pit looked (initially) to be a basin-shaped depression.  The upper layers produced large ceramic fragments, principally (and strangely) chamber pots, and below that,  quantities of brick rubble.  As excavation proceeded, the basin became a neat rectangular hole,  straight-sided, flat-bottomed, and with a drain cut through the center to channel rainwater. Unlike the first pit,  it exhibited the expected postholes—two on the east and two on the west—indicating that a trestle was supported over it.  While our 4 man sawpit might remain in question, there is no doubt that the small hole is a 2-man sawpit.  And (of course) there is guilt by association. 

A functioning sawpit.

At present we feel comfortable interpreting both of these features as sawpits, though there are still some details to work out.  We know that they were not there at the same time.  The smaller pit cuts into the larger one, making it more recent. The bottom layers of the larger pit are filled with trash from the Armoury: clinker, gunflints, and half-completed iron objects, suggesting that it had become a handy trash receptacle by the time the Armoury started to function.  That the smaller pit comes later is verified by the fact that there are very few “industrial” artifacts in it.  Instead, the fill consists mostly of household refuse.  It is possible that the brick rubble comprising its fill  represents the demolition of a house shown standing on the Frenchman’s Map (1782) just to the south.      

What else did we find? Although we are still a long way from having a clean and completed inventory of artifacts, we have formed some impressions of what was in the pit.  There were certainly lots of animal remains ….not just the butchered remains of Armoury meals, but the articulated skeletons of a cat, and what appear to be two ducks and three roosters.  Given that they were “whole”, it is unlikely that they were eaten.  Some readers remember that last year’s excavation produced 6 dog burials.  And so begins our next round of “question marks.” 

Here are some other artifacts that we stopped to photographed along the way…..

-Contributed by Meredith Poole, Staff Archaeologist.

Sweet Potato Buns

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straw bells over transplants

cucumber tendrils

The cucumber is, by nature, a climbing plant and nature has equipped them with tendrils for just this purpose. Providing them with a suitable trellis not only allows them to be grown in a fraction of the space required for plants that are allowed to ramble on the ground but the fruit are more uniformly formed and much easier to find.

It is only recently that cucumbers have been admitted to the English salad. In 1616 The Countrey Farme averred: “The use of Cucumbers is altogether hurtfull.” An entry in Samuel Pepys’ diary on Aug. 22, 1663 reads: “Mr. Newburne is dead of eating cowcumbers, of which, the other day, I heard another, I think Sir Nicholas Crisp’s son.” By the end of the century opinions were changing as attested by John Evelyn in 1699: “The Cucumber it self, now so universally eaten, being accounted little better than Poyson, even within our Memory.” Despite Evelyn’s optimism Landon Carter recorded in Virginia on July 24, 1766 his concern for his teenage daughter Judy; “She does bear ungovernable the whole summer through, eating extravagantly and late at night of cucumbers and all sorts of bilious trash.”

For a further explanation of the nature of cucumbers you are invited to examine Vegetable Gardening the Colonial Williamsburg way, 18th century methods for today’s organic gardeners (Rodale Press)