Saturday, June 23, 2012

Fordhook Farm Open House

Today I took a short drive to visit Burpee Seed Company's open house at their historic test garden: Fordhook Farm. The gardens are open to tour only 3 days of the year.


W. Atlee Burpee and his family used the cottage on the farm as a weekend residence. The farm also served as the company's test garden for plants. Many plant varieties and hybrids were developed on the farm. You can read more about the site here.


The building to the left in the above picture is the seed house, the building on the right is the farmhouse.
There are several gardens on the property for both perennials and vegetables.







While walking through the kitchen garden I tried to take note of the various trellises that they were using for plants.
They used these red cages for almost all of their tomatoes:



The only exception I saw were these teepee type cages:


I like how they built teepee's for the sweet peas and then covered them with netting to better allow the vines to climb up the structure.





The next open house is in August and they will have tomato samples to taste test! 

7 comments:

  1. I got the invitation to it but thought it was too far to drive. However in August I'm very tempted to go for tomato taste :)

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    1. It was about a 25 minute drive for me, I'm also tempted to go back and taste those tomatoes!

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  2. Do you believe that I used to live just a couple of miles from there and have never visited?? Maybe we should all meet there in August! That would be fun!

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    1. it's 2.5 hrs drive for me but I would be game for it :)

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    2. Ladies,
      show is this weekend if you'd like to meet in there. I'm planning to drive there and should be in place by Noon (it's a very long drive) so if you're up for it let me know.

      Regards,
      Jenny.

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    3. Jenny, Arg! How did I forget about this! I have to drive to AC for a concert tomorrow. I'm so disappointed I won't get to meet you this time :( Let me know how those tomatoes taste! (maybe you can save some seeds lol) ....drat!

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