OMG you are so right! But finding those people is hard. Many people grew their own food here in Pinellas County - but how on earth did they keep it alive in the dry season? And what did they use for fertilizer? Cow poo? There were plenty of cows. And how did they keep the bugs off? My father in law suggested wood ash - same as for mosquitoes. I just want to find someone who can tell me!

I would guess that they got a bucket of water from the pond/creek/well and carried it over to the plants to water them. They used compost and manure for fertilizer. I have no idea what they did for the bugs.

My father passed down a lot of his handed down methods and they work well. He kept tomatoes going in North Florida well into the cold months and we had fresh sliced tomatoes on Christmas day. I learned a lot of valuable information from him and one of the ways he fertilized the garden was by placing the carcass of fish we cleaned and also the bait fish that were left over which is what the Indians did before us. He was an Irish man and boy could he grow sweet potatoes, tomatoes, beans, field peas, greens, etc. He knew what he was doing and he did it well. I am grateful for what he passed along to me and I am in the process of writing down what he taught. Linda

My grandad's garden many years ago, which his family survived from, was very big. I can't imagine anyone could carry enough water for that type of garden! But Amber you are probably right, they did what they had to do and I am just too big a city-girl wus to imagine it!

Linda I sure want those notes when you finish! I've heard the fish tip before. but I am afraid to draw wildlife to the garden and my neighbors might not like the results or smells.

My father in law told me they use wood ash in India for insect control. That's a good fertilizer too. But I am a little low on firewood. :)

Years ago when I was still considered 'young', we fished a lot, and every fish we caught that wasn't eaten, went right into the garden.... it didn't smell and did not draw 'critters', we dug a hole and buried it.... no different from burying kitchen scraps and cow/horse manure and/or anything we could get our hands on that would decompose..... my son always sat in the bow of the boat and always caught the biggest fish, one year he caught a 6 foor hammerhead and it went into the garden, you shoulda seen the explosion of green stuff , everything near it grew fantastically!! sally

A shark in the garden? Love your story sally :)

I think what you people are forgetting is we did have horse- drawn wagons to carry the wooden water barrels in. The wood ashes from the stove also went into the garden too, along with the fish & animal poop and the compost we made in huge piles.

Lou

Oh, yeah - the compost - when the hen house was cleaned out, it all went onto whatever piece of land was fallow that season. And of course, the horse's stall provided a goodly amount of manure during the war years when gas was rationed. And anything left after harvest was plowed under and allowed to decompose over the (Ohio) winter. Wood and coal ash was added all through the winter. The after supper summer chore was to walk between rows of potatoes or tomatoes with a tin can containing a quarter inch of kerosene,scooping the bad bugs into the can.
I don't recall my grandparents burying the fish heads/guts, but my husband always did. His roses were outstanding.
cora

As far as tomatoes and lettuce go, I'm very lucky to have my neighbor. He is in his mid seventies at least and is from Italy. His home is wrapped with tomatoes and lettuce in season and has given me the same tips.. Just stick them in the ground and let em go. I tried his method last year and it didn't work for me lol. But he shared a ton of tomatoes for my efforts. We're sharing knowledge now though, as he has never been successful with beans and peas. And I'm teaching him about the stuff to cut down on weeds. He is the one I have to thank for the land my little plot is on this year. He watches it as much as I do, waiting to see what my new world techniques will produce.

The best has to be when we get together so he can teach me some canning skills. We share cappuccinos and his homemade wine. I've discovered his secret on how he stays so active for his age. He eschews sugar in favor of sambuca and man does that wine have some kick!

Chrissy

My dad grew up on a cotton farm in Arkansas where he tended his mother's vegetable garden. When he retired, he transformed our back yard into a vegetable garden but our home was on top of a hill and the soil was full of rocks. Knowing such was not suitable for growing vegetables, he first dug the rocks out, one by one, and wore a couple inches off of a pickaxe as well as the bottom out of more than one rock carrying bucket. When that task was finished, he hauled in several pickup truck loads of horse poop. Then he drove around the neighborhood every winter picking up bags of leaves that he shredded and tilled into the garden in early spring. He weighed everything he harvested and kept records of production. Dad died several years ago, but the last full year he was able to work in his garden he harvested more than 3,000 pounds of vegetables from his suburban back yard. Now that I'm retired, I too have started a vegetable garden in our back yard. There are no rocks in our Florida soil but I realize that it needs huge quantities of organic matter which I'm working on now. I know it will take time and hard work on my part, but I'm trying to apply lessons I learned from dad and I dream of the day when I can boast of harvesting more vegetables than we can consume -- just like dad did.

Jerry

Any fishermen out there? I need some fish guts.

You know, I loved gardening to so much that at age 30 I went to college to study horticulture. My green thumb died when I found out I was doing everything wrong, according to the experts. It came back when I discovered that sometimes you shouldn't listen to experts. My grandmother was like that. I've seen her stick dead pieces of wood in the ground and grow trees! I learned so much from her. She used to say "If God wants it to grow, it will grow. If He doesn't, you can't save it."

Amen, ditygardener! That's the truth.

My greatgrandfather who died before I was born was an actual farmer in Ohio. He grew wheat to sell to the government and many other things. He had his own orchard with cherry trees, apple trees, etc... He also had a mine on the property. I so wish I had met him. The only picture I have of him is of him plowing the field. I'm sure there were all kinds of family heirloom veggies that are lost now. His family lived and farmed in the township since 1812 and got the original land grant from the government.

I also have a g-grandfather born on a farm in Ohio. Another was born on a farm in SC, and a g-grandmother born on a farm in GA. Another g-grandmother born and raised on a farm that is now Philadelphia International Airport. In fact, every G-grandparent except one was born on a farm. And every one came to florida, and every one quit raising food. Co-incidence?

One thing to remember is all these histories are outside of Florida, in other states and countries, in climates and soils very different from most of Florida's. It might pay to do some real research about the source of the foodstuffs for the early english-speaking and spanish-speaking colonists of Florida. Of course people had gardens, and fruit, and livestock. Certainly a portion of their calories and probably most fresh food was locally produced, but I propose that the bulk of the calories were imported from outside the region and that very few colonists ever subsisted entirely or even largely on local production for years at a time.

now that is just depressing.

Compost is the one constant I can think of for successful gardening in any location or time period. Wasn't surprised to read many similar statements.

I propose that the bulk of the calories were imported from outside the region and that very few colonists ever subsisted entirely or even largely on local production for years at a time.

What? How do you propose this food would have been transported? And from where? And if it wasn't fresh food being imported, what were they bringing in? What packaged foods?

Most people lived primarily self-sufficiently on farms, until the 1920 census found a nation that was 51 percent urban, giving 1920 as much symbolic meaning for American history as the supposed closing of the frontier in 1890. If you wanted to eat it, somebody real nearby better be growing it or raising it. Didn't matter what state you were in. You can't think of what people did in past centuries by basing your assumptions on how people live and what they eat now. Dandelions are here because the "colonists" wanted to eat them.

The first significant non-Spanish influx of new (non-native) people was a settlement of escaped slaves near St. Augustine. The Spaniards, mostly concentrated in St. Augustine, traded FL to the British in 1763 for Cuba, where the Spaniards went, taking with them most of the indigenous people from the area. In 1783, the Treaty of Paris ended the Revolutionary War and returned all of Florida to Spanish control, but without specifying the boundaries. The Spanish wanted an expanded boundary, while the new United States demanded the old boundary at the 31st parallel north. In the Treaty of San Lorenzo of 1795, Spain recognized the 31st parallel as the boundary. Madrid ceded the territory to the United States through the Adams-Onís Treaty, which took effect in 1821. FL was finally considered an official territory in 1822, long after the Declaration of Independence and revolutionary war changed colonists to citizens of a new country. Until A/C was invented, the primary reason for coming to FL was that you were an escaped slave or for agriculture. So, basically, people came here TO GROW/RAISE FOOD (if not just escaping being enslaved, in which case I doubt you would have had access to imported foodstuffs.)

Valuable "old world knowledge" for FL seems to me like it would best come from the indigenous people who were here before the Spanish or Europeans. To be certain, there were no ships arriving to replenish their supplies. I think information about companion planting and pest control methods would be most valuable. Those termed colonists were not known for their skill in adapting to the indigenous foodstuffs or agricultural practices in most of the places they went, so they should be an unlikely group on which to base a discussion about the value and details of old world knowledge. Regardless, in any time frame context, grandparent generation, colonist era, indigenous people,...

My maternal relatives arrived in Madison FL in the early 1800's. From South Carolina. They were farmers in S. Carolina and farmers in Florida. They all had a bunch of property and a bunch of kids. They lived off the land. Grew it, raised it, hunted it or foraged it. And returned everything to the land. Remember too, 1800's or so was when a lot of deforestation went on. Cut down trees and burn them. Burn the stumps. Chickens, hogs, goats, cows and horses all poop alot. So do humans. Ash and poop and swamp muck. Plus all the bones and uneaten stuff from fish, birds and animals. Oh, and wildlife in Florida is/was pretty plentiful considering the population scarcity. Couple of squirrels make a fine protein source in a soup.

~dianne

Purple, my statements are specifically about Florida, and right now I will specify that I am talking about the time when the settlers began to push down from the historic regions of West and East florida, into peninsular florida. The panhandle is a very different geography and climate, as I'm sure you know. East and west has generally much superior soils and had a well developed plantation economy. That region would have been largely food sufficient right away.

Perhaps you are unfamiliar with late 19th century economics? Foodstuffs were widely produced and transported from the grain baskets. Cornmeal was a very commonly transported commodity as well as wheat flour. Both of those were certainly imported to florida in large quantities, along with many other staples. How? by ship and boat, or by rail and then boat, into jacksonville and the st john's river; Tampa bay; key west and much later Miami and other ports in south florida. Only those few settlers living very far from such places had to be entirely self-sufficient and few did because of the difficulty and health threats. Malaria and mineral deficiencies were huge problems.

Family lore does not necessarily include all of the reality, in fact more likely it dis-includes it. Stories about trekking to the trading post to get meal and sugar and coffee and so forth are not so exciting, but that certainly was reality. Few people were willing to subsist on only game, hogs and vegetables though no doubt some did. Not to mention that game gets hunted scarce quickly, and there are always bad years for crops. No imports would have surely meant a death sentence for most sooner or later.

Well, long before the white-man came, the Indians lived here and lived quite well, the Seminoles were down in the Everglades and I doubt they 'imported' much of anything, let alone corn-meal or wheat... there were early settlers lived down there, out in the Glades, and learned from the natives how to subsist.... also the early Spanish after 1500 had to forage to live. there are lots of stories abt. native plants, as well as seafood, and critters, that were served for supper..... my BIL in Ky. says squirrel is delish. and he goes out and 'gets 'em.....my DH knew how to hunt and set snares for small game, I can testify as to the taste of rabbit, I LOVE it... dandelion greens are full of nutrition, there are loads of wild plants out there are good for you......even today, we don't need to get everything at Publix.... sally

I haven't been here in a while .. Health issues have put the kabosh on my gardening :( But, I really enjoyed reading all the of posts about old world Gardening..I always learn something new ..

I so wish I had more time just now to chime in on this conversation... but unfortunately I'm smack in the middle of classes and slammed with homework.

That probably saves you all from a seriously long dissertation on Florida history and agricultural practices though. However, I will toss this in to the pot.

There have been artifacts found as far north as Tennessee belonging to South Florida native cultures, indicating that foodstuffs were traded that far north - and that's in the Pre-Columbian days! Keep in mind that those fertile lands are far under water now as climate change has resulted in the reduction of the coast line by at least 150 miles in SFL. They also supplemented their diets by hunting large game that we only see in prehistoric museums.

Fast forward about 4,000 years and you have the Calusa in my SWFL area, who built sophisticated canal systems and fashioned lightweight canoes that could be carried overland as needed in order to trade their fish for the agriculture produced by the Tequesta on the East Coast, in the Everglades and around Okeechobee. Because those fertile lands had disappeared and they could not farm.

Fast forward another 1,200 years and the massive shell mounds left by the Calusa in my area over centuries improved the soil so much that the early Spanish settlers, Seminoles and other outlaws seeking refuge on the final frontier of SWFL were able to farm right on those shell mounds. The Chokoluskee and Ten Thousand Islands area supplied much of the produce to the Keys in those days shipped by sailboat.

Fast forward to the 1890's and Governor Bonaparte Broward's drainage schemes - thinking my area was useless swamp - and all of those vital nutrients were channeled and eventually washed away, combined with massive clear cutting that has returned SWFL to the point of having to fish and import food or implement modern farming practices (pesticides, altered seed, raised beds, etc...) in order to grow our own.

I'm seriously considering the topic of Florida Agriculture for my master's thesis :)

I enjoyed that Chrissy! Every time I dig my garden, I secretly hope to find an arrowhead or piece of pottery. Tom found a lot of arrowheads in these parts before it was covered over in houses. What about the pioneer veggie gardens? How did they fertilize (we are guessing fish) and irrigate and protect from insects? (especially chilli thrips - the little bastards.)

I'm seriously considering the topic of historical>Florida Agriculture for my master's thesis.

Do it!

No mention of the Timucua or Ais? You know there must have been some inter-mingling....

Tom

Tom found a lot of arrowheads in these parts before it was covered over in houses.

That was easy for me, must be my 5th generation Florida/Cherokee blood ;-)

Chrissy
i just recently found a translation of the diary of Hernando
Fontenada A shipwrecked spanish sailor who lived with the Caloosa for 17 years beginning in 1549 he seems to be the originator of the myth of the "fountain of youth" Found it interesting that the very word Caloosa was actually a corruption of the spanish name Carlos and was probably not the actual tribal name they seem to have come from "Creek" stock. he gives more info than all the other explorers combined.Anyway makes interesting reading. Can be found in Wikipedia" by googling Fontenada. gary

Do it!
I think I will. No other subject has sparked my interest as much as our agriculture here. Thanks for the - historical - add there. I saw I forgot that, after I posted off course.

... Timucua or Ais?
Most definitely. The trade networks were very impressive.

...Pioneer veggie gardens?
I've only been able to really dig into my area thus far - SW Coastal plain. But the way I understand it was they would move from mound to mound in order to prevent complete nutrient reduction. So they had a sort of crop rotation going. And the shell mounds worked similarly to organic methods - the theory that if the soil is good, then you don't need to add extras. As for fertilizer (ongoing soil improvement), the hurricanes would both harm and help. The storm surge would wash over the mounds and kill anything that was growing and make the land too salty to grow on. But after a few seasons, they'd be able to come back to that spot. The deposits left by the storm once the water receded would have improved the soil again. As for bugs, I've not come across anything specific, yet. But I haven't been able to really sink my teeth into long term research, which I am positively itching to do. There's a lot of talk in the early records I've been able to read concerning burning. They'd do a lot of that. Lots used piles to keep mosquito populations away and to clear the vegetation back (also a form of fertilizer). I have to wonder if all that smoke, flooding and rotation did the trick. I'll definitely be posing those questions when I'm let loose to research my little heart out.

Garyfla,
I did an in depth paper a year back on the three primary pre-columbian cultures here in the South and I ran across Fontaneda then. Absolutely fascinating! The Spanish had that tucked into their archives for years and has only recently been found and translated - well recently is a relative term for me - think within the past 40 years. I'm taking a course next semester called "Narratives of the Spanish Explorers." if you liked Fontaneda, I'll definitely post some of the titles we'll be studying in the course for your reading pleasure. The Internet has made incredible advances in historical research possible. All of a sudden we can access archives and other scholars' research from around the world and make connections previously only possible for a select few who could travel and knew multiple languages. The accumulation and interpretation of all this newly combined data has been explosive for historical research. It's such an awesome time to be a historian. It's put a lot of people up in arms over it, because a lot of folks don't like finding out what we believed was true for hundreds of years - well, wasn't really "true" at all.

I also found it interesting that modern day Tampa was not the original Tampa - the island region off of Port Charlotte, the Pine Island to Marco area was actually Tampa for the early Calusa and was their main site with several ancillary sites spread for hundreds of miles in all directions.

I bet de Soto was cursing Fontaneda for all that Fountain of Youth talk! And of course all the gold from the treasure wrecks. Those two little bits of info sparked his massacre trek up the coast. I know de Soto is supposed to be someone we're thankful for opening the area to us, but I couldn't help but cheer when he got his what for!

I know what you mean..explorers could be pretty ruthless people

Keep us updated Chrissy!

Chrissy .Know of any other first hand accounts before 1549?. I've read translations of the log of Columbus voyage of 1496. But I not only can;t read Latin ,Genoese,Spanish, I can't even read 16th century English so i'm forced to believ the translations.lol
I suspect severe editing of the Fontaneda accountlol
For being only 13 years of age at the time certainly had a great grasp of world politics lol. Of course from the stat I didn't understand how he could be going to school in Salamanca Spain and end up off the coast of Florida. That school had serious "field trips don't you think?? lol gary

Gary,

I think Fontaneda is the earliest thus far for Florida. I'll know more in another few weeks when my teacher posts the books we'll need for the upcoming course. All of those are supposed to be translated.
I'm lucky that I can read Spanish. It takes me forever and I usually still need the help of translation aids, but I can slog through them. If you are interested in general exploration and not tied to Florida, then I'd recommend "An Account of Discoveries in the West Until 1519 and of Voyages to and Along the Atlantic Coast of North America, From 1520-1573," by Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdes, translated by Conway Robinson, published 1848. Vespucci is another one to keep an eye out for. I think some of his works are in the translation process now. He was on Columbus' ship and swears he deserves a lot of the "discovery" credit, but Columbus was having none of that. Vespucci jumped ship and started doing his own explorations with other Captains in the Caribbean.

Fontaneda wrote his tale some years after he finally made it to Spain, so I'm with you on the liberal aspect of the document. Spain was still pretty harsh if you spoke negatively about their activities, and they were still in the grip of "God, Gold, and Glory at all costs" mentality, so I'm sure he needed to severely censor what he was writing. I believe he was actually on his way to Salmanca, accompanied by a sister and brother, via a returning treasure ship when it was severely blown off course and wrecked during a hurricane. So he never ended up making it to school and was lucky Carlos' daughter took a fancy to him or he'd have been toast. The Spanish were regularly performing raids in South Florida in order to enslave natives in the Caribbean mines and the Calusa were a warrior people who didn't take to kindly to that.

I'll post back up when I have more titles in English to offer :)
Chrissy

Ha! Burying the fish reminded me of a neigbor who used to do that for his roses back in the 1960s. Our dog used to run over to his house, dig up the fish carcasses, and ROLL in them!!! OMG, talk about stinky!

I also know that people used to make a tobacco tea and spray their plants for bugs back in the day.

Chrissy
Thanks for that. Several words troubled me in the Fonteneda account. Since he was the soul survivoe no cross reference is possible But he related the deaths of his party to "sacrifice" yet offers no explanation Supposedly he learned 7 native languages but offer no explaination as to how since none of these have an alphabet.
reference from the jounal of Jonathan Dickinson of 1696
he mentions only Jaega and Ais natives who either spoke
Muskogean Or real shocker Arawak. Quote
"God alone saved us from the Devouring jaws of the inhumane "Canibals of Florida.
Now "Sacrifice" and' Canaibal"have VERY specific meanings at least in modern english!!
First contact ever by Columbus. .He describes the natives as "monkeys" as brown as berries and as naked as the day they were born" Yet he still asked these "monkies " how to get to Japan lol and even more amazing they gave him directions lol Of course the most famous quote "At last we have reached India probably some outer islands so therefor these are "Indians" Would LOVE to have been there!!! Big difference between the words Monkey and Indian. according to Nat Geo. these were either Arawak or Taino natives probably shrimp fishing.
Oh well it's obvious there will never be a serious history of the western hemisphere told from the native perspective ??
i suspect there is a mountain of history that we know nothing about particularly for N. America
Oh well a lot of fun making my own conclusions lol. gary

Gary,
I have a theory that the natives of South Florida weren't actually all from N. America. I think that the early Creek were actually members of the Arawak, Carib and Caquetios from S. America and the Caribbean who fled Spanish enslavement. There are archaeological records that show they were amazing sailors and would go great distances around S. America and the Caribbean islands, so I think, why not? Why couldn't they have figured out those tides that shoot you right up to the Florida Coast. And a lot of the Seminole and Creek words are derivatives of Arawak and Caquetio words. This theory was actually what made me expand my concentration beyond just Florida. I feel I need to study the Caribbean and all of the Americas in order to get the full scope of what was happening here.

As to cannibals, well there are reports of the Maya and Aztecs who believed that blood spilled was needed to appease the gods in order to make the sun shine each day so that they could sustain themselves. They sacrificed many a POW. The Maya even had a ball game where the winner was sacrificed, because by winning, he was considered the best specimen they had. And the winner willingly honorably went to his death, for the perceived continuation of his people. So in some respects, the modern words do apply. But not always accurately. The Spanish seemed to start a lot of rumors IMO. If they dropped some missionaries off on a desolate shore with some natives, left for a few years, returned and no one was left - they concluded the natives must have ate them. No account for disease or the fact they dropped those folks off in a region they had no clue how to live or survive in. And then there's a whole other aspect - mosquitoes lol. They were also referred to as canibals. So yes, context and cross-referencing are always needed to try to figure out exactly what the authors meant.

As for Columbus, he was an interesting guy. He refused to believe that he did not find India and killed crew members who tried to say otherwise. Now I have to be a bit lenient on him for this. He sold a big bag of goods to the Spanish Crown in order to fund his travels. If he was wrong, well off with the head may have been an easy sentence. Another interesting aspect was that he was a sailor at heart, not a "full" explorer. He rarely got off his boat. He'd stop at a new place, kick off some crew into the wild, name it for Spain and sail on to the next new place. He'd have crew go into the wild, grab some natives and drag them back to the boat, and torture them until he got something out of them. So yeah, he got directions all right, they had to give him something if they wanted to live.

Oh well it's obvious there will never be a serious history of the western hemisphere told from the native perspective ??
We (historians, archaeologists, anthropologists, sociologists, ethnologists) are trying. But it comes back to what I said earlier - people are uncomfortable finding out the history they thought they knew was not exactly as they learned it. There are scholars dedicated to revisionism, but there are a whole line of others who fight it and say history should be left as it was. But history has almost always been written from the victor's perspective and the natives were rarely on the winning side. This sort of argument extends to our school systems right now - the folks in Texas don't want to hear an alternate history so, ethnic studies has been eliminated from their curriculum. I wonder how they'll teach about WWII and leave off the holocaust, or teach about early American history and leave off the @25 million natives that died or even slavery for that matter - all ethnic studies. So, I'll close by saying that I am trying to bring the voices of the forgotten to the surface :)
Chrissy

Chrissy, what you said is fascinating and is quite logical. It is definitely also scary and baffling what gets put into history books. Don't know what year it was written, but I remember reading the single paragraph about the Vietnam war in my history book. It was devoid of any actual facts, no mention of the death toll from either side, and served no purpose except to insinuate that "we won."

I feel I need to study the Caribbean... Me too! ...Although my goal is more in the area of personal amusement (Vacation!) rather than official scientific study. Best of luck in your studies and endeavors!

Chrissy, you make an excellent point about fertile lands being lost to sea-rise since the end of the last glacial maximum. Those lowest lands would have contained nutrient drainage from such a vast area over the many thousands of years of the glacial period. Even though the climate was much drier then still it represents a huge amount of fertility. And also you remind me that south florida, especially south-west, benefits from organic matter leaching from points northward, to at least a small extent.

I have been working my way very slowly through "Spanish Pathways in Florida" which is printed in both spanish and english. While some cultural habits are similar between spanish and english speaking settlers in florida, I don't think much comparison at all can be made between the europeans and the original Amerindians in terms of subsistence.

Speaking of fertile lands...interesting to see how Global Warming is causing the permafrost in Canada to recede, thus opening up the possibility of huge and vast amounts of highly fertile and arable land; especially with the huge abundance of Pot Ash in Canada already (which is another "gold-rush" indicator). Huge potential for a new role as global feeder. Signs are showing in some Science journals that the permafrost is actually expanding in places like Siberia as a result as well, possibly creating greater demand. It's a shame we slept on the recent sale of one of Canada's large Pot Ash mining outlets, with China scooping up its acquisition.

I would think that drainage will be an issue in those recently-thawed, or more accurately, still-thawing, soils. Shifting the grain belt to the high tundra is no simple thing: where are the roads, the rail lines, the grain elevators, and the skilled people to do the work?

Hi
Well as i feared the posts have gotten far too politcal.
I'm sure the original intent of the post was for Farming practices not geopolitical view points .
So will shut up lol. gary