Fordhook is just up the road a few miles, so when I received an email stating that it was hosting an “open house” today and tomorrow, I had to visit. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Fordhook Farm, it’s a 60 acre plot, which was W. Atlee Burpee’s home and farm way back when. Burpee Seeds still does some of its test gardening with perennials and veggies at Fordhook. George Ball hosts these things a few times a year, but we’ve never before attended. George is the chairman and CEO of Burpee, and is a former president of the AHS (American Horticultural Society).
We took the 10:00am tour, led by George himself. He’s originally from Chicago, and retains his Chicago accent. It started off a bit slow, but once George got going, it was so obvious he loves to dig in the dirt, just like the rest of us. I suspect he likes perennials more than veggies, but hey, that’s fine with me.
After the tour was over, we were let loose to roam around the grounds. I was caught by a staff member beside the impressive greenhouse, looking at the lemon verbena. She didn’t have to shoo us away. We met her later in the veggie garden, and started talking to her about the rows of tomatoes and peppers that were labeled “direct sow.” We start our tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants indoors, in March, take them out in May, and let them harden off for a week or two before planting them in our kitchen garden. Apparently, we’re doing nothing wrong for them, or our peas and beans, except that the eggplants probably do need a systemic insecticide, instead of a spray with dilute Murphy’s Oil Soap.
The woman who gave us that advice for the eggplants is the product manager for vegetables. She liked my Murphy’s Oil Soap solution to soft skinned pests; it’s basically a cheap alternative to insecticidal soap, and it works just as well. But, for beetles, we need a systemic — or else sacrifice productivity. I’m cool with that. Mostly, I grow my veggies and herbs organically, because I’m too cheap to buy pesticides. But if I need one to get my eggplants going, hell yes, I’ll get one, and use it judiciously.
C’mon, I use Round Up to kill wild roses, thistle, poison ivy, and a whole bunch of other invasive stuff. Yeah, I’ll pull out the big guns when necessary.
Aside from the few plants we bought at a huge discount, I was impressed with the lumpiness of their lawn. Seriously, I thought it was just ours that was lumpy. Um, no, apparently this is normal for our piece of god’s little green earth. And, this is why our tractor mower takes a beating each season.
This was a perfect day trip!
I love this sort of thing, and enjoy gardening very much, mainly because it sparks my nostalgia and I think about the days when I’d stay with my grandmother over the summers. She was a homesteader, so I learned a lot at her knee.
Summertime to me is gardening, yard sales and antiquing, BBQ, and lazy days outdoors. I think your trip sounded divine!
It was fun. Friday wasn’t quite as sizzling as Wednesday and Thursday, but it was still in the mid-90s. We went through a couple of bottles of water each in the three hours we were there.
We visited my parents today for a belated Father’s Day lunch (they had some party to attend last Sunday). I found a white coneflower (Echinacea) growing underneath their sun porch in the crawl space. Dad let me liberate it and bring it home with us. 😀
Hopefully the deer will leave it alone. Normally, they prefer other things, like my old garden roses, but will eat coneflowers if they’re desperate enough, so I probably should go sprinkle a handful or two of Deer Scram around its base. This one’s just now starting to bloom, probably because it was growing in the shade. I was tempted to swipe a seed head from one of their clematises which has almost finished blooming, but I’ve never had any luck growing them.