Jefferson: the Scientist and Gardener Thomas Jefferson was an
astute observer of the natural world. The daily activities of
sowing seeds, manuring asparagus, and harvesting peas between
1809 and 1826 are precisely recorded in his "Garden Kalendar," a
part of his famous Garden Book. Jefferson was often the detached
scientist in the Kalendar as he recorded that his Hotspur peas
were "killed by frost Oct. 23," or that his yellow squash "came
to nothing" in 1809. He could also record remarkable detail as
in 1811 when he noted of his Asparagus beans that "2/3 pint sow
a large square, rows 2 1/2 feet apart and 1 f. and 18 I. apart
in the row, one half at each distance." For Jefferson, the
vegetable garden was a kind of laboratory where he could
experiment with imported squashes and broccoli from Italy, beans
and salsify collected by the Lewis and Clark expedition, figs
from France, and peppers from Mexico. Although he would grow as
many as twenty varieties of bean and fifteen types of English
pea, his use of the sc