monticello gardeners in plant curators talk about how thomas jefferson planted his gardens and how they recreate those gardens now. they also provide demonstrations of various steps in the gardening process thomas, jefferson's monticello hosted this event and provided the video. welcome to our monticello live stream with curator of plants peggy cornett and manager and curator of historic gardens. jason young today. we are discussing monticello's gardens during both jefferson's time as well as spring planting and plant production at monticello today, please post your questions in the comments and let us know from where you are joining us. so jason and peggy, can you each introduce yourself and tell us a bit about your role in the stewardship of monticello's gardens? well, i'm peggy cornett, and i'm curator of plants at monticello. basically, i'm the plant

historian here and i do a lot of work with educational programs. so guides working with. public garden programs that we have throughout the year and of course lectures and that sort of thing research and i consult a great deal with the garden staff on the appropriate plants and both here at in the gardens and also at the center for historic plants. and i'm jason young. i'm the manager and curator of historic gardens and i manage the team that takes care of all of the areas from the visitor center up as well as adjacent areas on the thomas jefferson foundation properties. so overall we have about 2,500 acres and we take care of all of it. so starting with the historical side of the monticello gardens. how do you know what was planted in the gardens during jefferson's time? well the best thing that we have is that jefferson was really good about documenting and he

kept a garden journal if you will that was about 60 pages long and in that garden journal he documented what he was planting where he was planting it and it contained tons of information for us. and then a uva botanist by the name of edwin batts took that information and a lot of letters that jefferson wrote and other materials and compiled it into almost a 700 page book that we use extensively. i think peggy's gone through quite a few copies i have here that's right minor really warning. and of course as you said, he wrote a lot of letters correspondence that tell us about the gardens he sent memoranda to his overseers and letters to his daughter and granddaughters about the gardens. he was also ordering seeds and plants from people such as bernard mcmahon out of philadelphia and and he was

receiving seeds from a friend of his in france the director of the botanical garden there named andre tuan and paris who was sending annual collections of seeds jefferson, so he was receiving lots of plants. material and speeds from people all over and that's and we combined a lot of that material, but we're always still doing research and looking for for more information about jefferson's gardens. we will be discussing the stories of enslaved gardeners in detail later in the month, but could you tell about some of the enslaved people who worked and labored in the gardens in jefferson's time? sure. well, we know a great deal about some of the enslaved gardeners here the gardener we know most about is as a man named wormley hughes who was actually a trained gardener. he had been trained by a scottish gardener who lived here for a time. and he worked really interfaced with a family a great deal

helping to well when jefferson was laying out these flower beds, for example, he was said to be side by side with jefferson doing the manual labor with the spayed and hoe, we know that he did a lot of work in the vegetable garden as far as preparing the beds bring holly manure to the plantation, but there were other gardeners as well. we know that george granger senior was an overseer actually an enslaved overseer at monticello. so he was overseeing not only the labor that was going on in the gardens, but also on the in the farm fields and there were other gardeners here who we know a little bit about but certainly they were involved with not only planting. saving and caring for the crops and harvesting of course, so the whole story of monticello really is involves both the jefferson household and those who who labored here for for the household.

let's move up to present time. what do you plant in the gardens at monticello today? here at the gardens of monticello we do our best to plant what jefferson planted we use. direct species of plants that he would have plant which means that they have not been bred and selected as modern cultivars that are sold in home centers we do our best to research bernard mcmahon, which peggy mentioned left a wonderful document called the american gardeners calendar, which was a book that he wrote and it has a lot of information jefferson owned this book and we can look into it and find not only plants that jefferson documented. but also what he would have been reading about. that's right, and we always try to especially in the vegetable garden. it's it's we look to a lot of historic sites as well as seed savers and people who are really

involved with preserving historic plant varieties to help us and you know, there's a great community i think in this in this in america today of of garden historic gardens where we're preserving historic plants and and sharing with each other and making them available, of course to the public. but so this is something that we're that's been ongoing for years here at monticello. now here's a video of our gardeners walking us through the steps of planting it monticello beginning with seed harvesting. hello, i'm debbie donley. i'm the flower gardener at monticello and we are at monticello now, and this is our greenhouse facility where we do our plant production for planting out into the gardens. i would like to show you the different phases of the seed production we do sell our seed at the shop and then also for

online, so we do harvest a lot of our seed and then dry it and clean it and package it. we have different types of flower seed here different plants have different techniques of trying to get their seed out into the world. this seed is money plant, which is really interesting. this is an outer covering that protects the seed and then once it's dry and ready to be put in the ground this covering comes off in nature and the seeds just drop out and you see it looks kind of like a silver dollar which is where it gets its name of money plant other types of seed are more of a capsule type and when you're looking for seed in the garden to harvest you want to make sure that it is fully mature and ripened a lot of times. i look to see if the seed pod is starting to open that means the capsule is ready to shoot at

seed out if it's tightly closed and green. it's still immature. i also look to make sure see if the stems are starting to brown at least this is a zinnia. and so you'll see a lot of plants do have a lot of extra material or chaff. and that's what you want to get rid of when you're cleaning your seeds so that that doesn't stay in your dried seed because it can harbor moisture. it can be a place for insects to hang out and devour your seed when you're not looking so these are our seeds that we've harvested you'll note i have them in a waterproof sealed container and that will keep the moisture out. water is a seeds worst enemy because while you're saving your seed you don't want the water to be reacting with it and seed thinking it's time to start growing. so always think cool dry dark

places for storing your seed and keeping it. all right, so i'm going to put i'll just use this. and i'm going to pour my seed into the sieve. this is holding the chaff. so that it's not getting into your seed. okay, you can just dump that out. all right, you'll see there's still some chaff in there that we want to get rid of because even though it doesn't look like much there could be insects living in that so we would want to remove that. so there's several ways you can do that. one way that used to be very common is to let the wind. be your helper. we have a bit of a breeze today, so it should work pretty good the weight of the seed will fall right onto the plate whereas the lighter shaft will be blowing away. now this is a job. that would have been done by the

enslaved workers. of course, they wouldn't have nice graduated sieves like us, but they could have baskets and various pieces of equipment to save their seeds with. another way is you can shake the seed. and the heavy weight of the seed makes the seeds sink to the bottom and then you can blow the chaff off. always want to label your seed. you want to put the year you've collected it where you collected it numerous seeds have very similar characteristics. so always label every step of the way. we use plastic bags for storage reasons. you can use plastic containers glass jars if it's stored properly, which is a cool dry dark place. like i said, it can last numerous years certain seeds are better than others at staying

viable. thanks, debbie. that was such an interesting video. can you tell us more about seed saving at monticello up monticello? i'm monticello. we leave plants in the garden long after they're done flowering so they would develop seeds just like it would have been in jefferson's time in order to keep these cultivars going and produce for next year. they really must stay in the garden and go to seed and sometimes it is the longer phase than flowering, but it is really neat to see the structures that form and some of those things that debbie was talking about with the money plant and different structures that they develop can be quite interesting. oh, yeah, and of course sometimes when we're allowing specially vegetables to go to seed that can cause a lot of distress with our guests when you see a lettuce plant going to see it. it's not a pretty side for a while. anyway, it's got an awkward

stage and then it but it's in the dandelion family or the aster family. so it'll make a yellow flower and and seed after that. but so i think that the hardest part is allowing some of the vegetables go to see that people are are concerned about because they want us to harvest those vegetables, but it's it's part of our interpretation and really part of our our mission to really explain to people why we're doing this and so it's really nice to do it in the ground not in some garden off site is to show people what seed saving was all about not only today but also in jefferson's day. so once they sew the seeds there's still more work to do before the plants go out into the garden and here we have another video this one showing us some of the next steps in this process. so i wanted to show you how to sew seed once you have your seed cleaned. this is minionette. this is actually one that jefferson recorded having in his garden in 1811.

it's a very fragrant plant so it's used more for fragrant. slowly texture for underneath a planting of other flowers again, you'll see i've labeled it so that we know the date that it's sown. we know the common name and the latin name. okay, you can see i've put some seed in an envelope or you can use heavy paper. this makes it a lot easier for sewing a particularly if you have particularly fine seed like the flowering tobacco or something, but you can just use a creased paper and i'm going to put several in a pet in a cell that way if some of these seeds aren't viable. you'll still have others that will come up. passion. okay. so here's our flat of minionette that we've sewn. it's ready to be soaked in the water. so you want to put it down in the water. so it absorbs water from the

base if i were to spray this and water from the top the seed might fly out all over the place. so it's important to give it a gentle beginning. i also have a cover this will help create more of a moist environment so that the seeds will stay moist. it's very important that they stay moist while they're trying to germinate. so this helps keep it from drying out. and we'll leave that in place until at least 75% of the seeds of germinated. okay, our seeds of soaked. you can tell because there is a sheen to the surface where you can actually see the water on the top of the surface of the soil and being a production greenhouse. we do have heat mats, which aids in the germination so we'll put it on the mat.

i will keep this cover on until at least 50 75% of the seeds of germinated. okay, at least 50% however, our minionette has germinated. so this is ready ready to come off the mat. and go to another bench. they will sit here and take some time to grow before they're ready to be repotted and transplanted into a growing medium. once they get two sets of true leaves, that's when you know, it's time to move them out of the soil and into the growing medium the first set of leaves. are catalina and and that is not the true leaves that's just the seed has split and that's the first ones to come up. the true leaves are the next set. and so you want to make sure there's two sets of the true leaves before it's really ready to transplant. so this is the minionette the same seed we sewed.

this was actually sewn six weeks earlier many seeds that you want to sew them six to eight weeks before you're ready to plant out in the garden it varies with different plants. so that's something you need to check before you start sewing so they don't get tall and leggy. so this is coming along nicely. what i might do is look for ones where there's multiples in each pack you can see this one is a nicer bigger plant than this one. i'm going to snip that off. so i just they want to have some space and to really have room for their roots. so these are all set ready to transplant. the process seems to be a lot of work how many staff members do we have here at monticello that work on the gardens? thanks, carrie. and in the team that i manage and work with there's 12 of us. and that involves everything

from the grass blades mowing and to trim and trees and plant the flowers that you all see and we're talking about. and we also have other departments here for gardens and grounds that involves the center for historic plans, which is doing a lot of the seed saving and cleaning and packaging that we go on to sell at monticello.org if you want to buy some we also have the monticello saunders monticello trail, which is a great community asset. it is worked on by three people and taken care of and chp. sorry has five employees. so overall we have about 20 and we have a lot of work to do. you're correct. we all have a lot of volunteers that are helping and some of them will you know work half a day once a once a week, but not only here in the gardens at monticello, but also at center historic plants there helping to pack a seed doing some weeding and never-ending process there. so we do have a lot of people involved with the gardens and we appreciate every one of them.

absolutely. so the last step in the process is the transplanting of the plants into the garden. so let's watch michael as he does is excuse me as he goes through the steps of garden transplanting. hello, my name is michael tricomi and i'm the vegetable gardener here at thomas jefferson's monticello. and today i'm here to show you the next steps in the transplanting process. we have here some summer savory which is an herb that jefferson would have had grown in his garden. and we're going to be potting up each of these plants. into a two inch pot so that the roots have more room to grow and to develop. so first what we want to do is we'll take our tool here. and each cell in this flat has a hole in the bottom to allow for drainage and for moisture to soak through so we'll use this tool to poke through and to push out the cell.

and we poke through the bottom. and we pull out. the cell so what we want to do is if your cell has multiple seedlings in it you want to thin them out very gently. so we'll pull them apart. and after we have them thinned we'll grab our pot. fill it with some soil. and place the seedling inside the pot. just to where the first set of leaves meets the soil level. and what we'll do is we'll fill it in. just below the brim of the pot. to allow for water to soak into

the soil and there you have it you have a transplanted summer savory seedling. and here we have our summer savory seedlings these seeds we sowed in january and it's been about eight weeks or so that they've been inside the greenhouse. so now we're going to acclimate them to the nighttime temperatures. so what we'll do is we'll place our flat of established plants into our cold frame so that they get acclimated to the weather outside before we shift them out to the garden to be planted. place them in here. different vegetables require different periods of time to grow these summer savory will be planted later than say a brassica like a cabbage or a broccoli. so we are constantly working throughout the year in the

winter months seeding all throughout the summer to get ready for planting into the garden. today we're going to be demonstrating seating some brown dutch lettuce of popular variety that jefferson had grown in his garden. jefferson instructed growing a thimble full of lettuce each week from february 1st through september 1st, and it's now march. so we're going to start sewing our lettuce here in this square. jefferson's garden was divided up into 24 individual squares or garden plots and his garden runs about 1,000 feet long. so i have here our brown dutch lettuce. brown dutch was the most frequently planted lettuce variety that jefferson would have had his enslaved laborers plant for him. we're going to be selling it here in this square and as he instructed we will be using a

thimble's full of lettuce her row. because about one thimble will be enough to sow an entire row of lettuce seed in one of his garden squares. so now after we've sewed our row of lettuce seed we have to cover it back up and what we like to do is we like to use the reverse side of our rake. and just lightly tap the trench because the seed only needs about a quarter of an inch worth of soil to cover it. and you just continue down the line again, just very lightly. covering your row and now after you've covered your seed. what you want to do if it's very hot and dry is to water your row so that the seeds can germinate. we're actually expecting rain and the next day or so, so that will take care of the watering

for us. um and then in about a week to two weeks, it could expect to see seedlings up in your row. and since it's march right now, we should expect to harvest this lettuce seed by midsummer. it's really fascinating to see how much goes into gardening at monticello. once the garden is harvested. what do we do with the produce from the vegetable garden? the vegetable garden produce goes to many different directions one thing we've talked about the most and really probably the largest portion of our produce goes to seed saving the insides of a squash is the reason for that fruit is to continue on that squash further on down the road animals are humans would eat it and then utilize those seeds to reproduce more squash, but we also have donated to various community partners to try to do to get it

out into the community. we also have the farm table cafe, right? yes and the farm table cafe is right down in the visitor center is a wonderful location when you're visiting here at monticello to try some chef inspired creations from the garden and from tuft and farm, which is attached to the center for historic plants. so the produce from the garden goes many many different directions. so peggy and jason we have some questions from our viewers. and the first one is from barbara. she is curious if you ever have problems with like deer or rabbits eating the plants. well, we're doing yeah again one of the best things that we got recently is a 10 foot tall deer fence that surrounds the mountains out in the woods. this was installed last year and it has been a complete game

changer for the gardens. until that point we deployed everything from electric fence as we would put up every night to the sprays that everybody has tried to use that no and love deer eating their gardens, right the terrible smells that those bring out really don't work with a guest. yes location. yeah. but really for the vegetable garden rabbits don't seem to be that much problem. i don't think that here. yeah, they do have a problem at tufton with rabbits, but sometimes groundhogs show up and that can be a problem. but you know that most the biggest problem was were the deer and i think having this fence is really resolved a lot of that issue that we use that we had to deal with for so many years. yeah. thanks. carla wants to know what was jefferson's favorite thing to grow. and is there anything that he wanted to grow in the garden, but just it never succeeded i can take the first go ahead.

i think it's easy right because one of the things jefferson had and grew the most were i think that's the classic answer is peace. um jefferson grew i think 38 different varieties of peas. he had a competition with his neighbor to bring first piece to table which meant he would try to plant it as early in the spring as possible and harvest them first and he most the time lost one year he won but even said, whatever it came time to claim victory, he said might as well keep quiet and let him think that he's never lost. so he's i think was the simple one. but yeah there will he loved peaches and in the orchard and so those were one of his favorite fruits he once wrote that we abound in the luxury that luxury of the peach. he loved tulips which mean we're sitting next to some beautiful tulips here and we try to grow a lot of the historic varieties the one we're looking at today is one called keizer screwing which is days to 1750s. um, so i think it depended on you know, i think it was just

kind of love plants of all all types and trees trees. of course, i'd say little poplar in the white oak where the on jupiter of our groves he wants road and he would walk people around in his groves and they would talk about them being his jefferson's pet trees and so like the people that work in the gardens. he was very much a plant lover and a gardener at heart. i think there's a plant nut is what we could say. well, that's right. clancy he didn't succeed with well, i mean we were just saying that we feel like jefferson was a garden and plant ambassador. he was trying to and promote a lot of especially economic crops. that would make us more self-sufficient. and so even if it didn't succeed here at monticello or in this climate, he was trying to get people like in south carolina and and further south to grow up and rice and he was promoting olives, which did not thrive here in monticello sugar maple.

he tried planting a grove of sugar had a global sugar maples planted here to tap for syrup. which didn't succeed for person, but we know today that maple festivals still take place in western, virginia and highland county. so there are many things that were successful for other people and and i think jefferson was always trying to promote they said the greatest service that can be rendered in any country is to add a useful plant to its cultures. so it was a patriotic effort. i think of jefferson's as well. yeah. so i have your last question. it's a two-parter in what ways was jefferson's vegetable garden experimental and where did he get his less commonly grown plants. well, we know he was trying a lot of different crops that were sort of alluding to the fact that a lot of them weren't successful, but he was trying to see if they would thrive a lot of times. he was growing many different

varieties of beans to see which one was a did well in the garden and you know, he was growing a rick or a bean that was brought back baby lewis and clark and it's a very important historically for us an important being but he went through it for you few years and decided it was not as good as the ones he was already growing, but there are other other crops in the garden that he was cultivating that i think we're kind of experimental in nature that um, for example, he was growing melons next to each other to see if they would and cross-pollinate and come up with new new varieties. so that was kind of an experiment for jefferson really before reading was really a science day. um, so orac, yeah see and a few plans very relational vegetables for us today really aren't not anything that we get or act really wilts very quickly. it's not friendly to the grocery

store and so things that really have gone by the wayside of kind of our consumer culture. he was able to grow in his garden because the beauty of home gardening at ckl was another one that's very usual for us today and kind of complicated to grow. it's a perennial kale that has to be blanched to keep the leaves sweet, but he had quite a few sequel plants in the garden and even the pots were made to to blanch them as one of the most commonly asked questions besides who eats the vegetable is is what are those pots in the garden in there blanching pots, which are really cool. so yeah. great. well, thank you so much everyone for watching and especially thank you to peggy cornett and jason young and all of the staff who works on the gardens here at monticello. i'm carrie soubra signing off from the mountaintop. from george washington to george w bush every sunday at 8pm at midnight eastern we feature the presidency our weekly series exploring the presidents their

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