A Vintage Crop

An ornate crest on the front of the rusty iron gate leading into our garden says “The Stewart Iron Works, Cincinnati, Ohio.” My guess is that it dates from the 1890s, because I found a drawing of one in an old catalog from that lavish period.

Our gate is one type of garden antique, hard to find and pricey when you do, but also usable in the garden as ornament or accessory. The fact that it is worn and rusted only helps it blend with the organic, settled and slightly seedy look of our garden.

There are also old garden goodies that may no longer be usable but are fun to collect or might have little tales to tell. They’re not so much garden antiques as they are garden collectibles. They won’t land you a spot on “Chubb’s Antiques Roadshow,” but they have their charm, don’t cost much and may even be found next door at your neighbor’s garage sale.

I confess to being an accumulator of such gardening objects. If it’s older than I am and if it had anything to do with gardening in California, I can’t pass it up. Determining that it was made in California, or at least used here, makes it more interesting to me and also helps put limits on my collecting. (I can walk away from an old seed catalog from Ohio, no matter how pretty it is.)

I like things made in California because the garden climate here has always been quite different. I like things made between the late 1800s and the 1930s because I am entranced and beguiled by their colors and construction. They have a patina that can’t be found on anything remotely recent. I confess to having a few things that are more current, such as a simply wonderful brushed aluminum lawn sprinkler from the 1950s that’s shaped like an old Sputnik satellite. It must have looked very tech for its time, sitting in the middle of someone’s front lawn.

Although only a few of these collectibles can actually be used out in the garden, one might decorate a tool shed or back porch with some of them. I suppose you could hang the small orange “Sunset Garden Handbook” (published in 1936) over the workbench. There’s even a little hole punched in the upper left corner for that purpose.

Pest Control

You could put the never-been-opened bottle of the “Double Acting Concentrated Insect Spray” named Pyrote--still in its original orange, green and blue box--on a shelf in the toolshed. The drawing on the box is certainly charming, showing a 1920s-coiffed lass merrily spraying the garden while her dog stands by her side, breathing it all in.

Pyrote contained the naturally occurring chemicals rotenone and pyrethrum. Similar products can still be found, although the new formulations no longer claim to kill as many kinds of bugs as this one did.

There’s a valuable lesson here--that bugs eventually build up a tolerance to even natural chemicals until the poisons are no longer effective.

For me, that’s part of the fun of collecting old garden stuff, to see what tales they can tell or what garden lesson can be learned.

In this case, the lesson is that physical controls, like horticultural oils that smother rather than poison, remain effective because bugs can’t build up resistance to physical controls. A hundred years later they still work, long after the chemicals have been banned or gone out of favor.

One old-time smothering oil spray was made by defunct Destruxol Products of Pasadena. It’s listed on a faded “Destruxol Spray Chart” I found at a garage sale. I was astounded at the company’s name. Can you imagine naming anything “Destruxol” in this environmentally sensitive era, other than perhaps a video game?

Another fascinating old device is an early, ceramic ant stake with “Calpro Ant System, Los Angeles, Cal” embossed on the front. One added a poison syrup (Destruxol made one!) through the uncorked top and the ants crawled inside through little holes in the sides. I wonder if it worked better than today’s stakes. Whether it did or not, it’s a thing of beauty, finished in a lovely art-pottery green and made by celebrated ceramist Metlox Pottery in the 1920s. It even says so on the bottom like it was a piece of Fiesta ware.

Early pest sprays often weren’t sprays at all, but dusts, like Bordeaux or sulfur, applied with special dusters. One of my really exciting finds was a duster that uses a leather bellows and an ornate canning jar from the turn of the century. A paper label says “Betti-Lew Duster,” and it was made in San Jose and obviously by hand. I found it in the town of Chowchilla.

Tools

A few tools were made in California (a few still are). I have a pair of solid, cast-iron hedge shears made by Easy Hedge Clipper Co. of Los Angeles. It is the most uncomfortable tool I have ever used, without so much as wood handles to cushion the clanging of the shears. I can’t imagine trimming a 50-foot hedge with them.

Of course, the shears are indestructible, because they are solid forged steel. It says so on the handle: “Drop-forged by Arcturus Mfg.”

All of my old, one-piece forged tools, whether they be rakes, shovels, trowels or shears, are nearly as good as new. Some I still use. I’m still turning soil with my grandfather’s spading fork.

Tools in my holdings that were welded or riveted haven’t fared so well. One gimmicky, riveted, three-in-one tool no longer has the trowel attached, even though the remaining part looks like it was hardly used. When you set out to buy a new tool, keep this lesson from the past in mind--one-piece forged construction will last the longest. I have one solid, forged cultivator where the steel is actually worn down several inches, but it’s still unbroken after prying out countless dandelions. Stay away from rivets and welds if you plan to abuse your garden tools and still expect them to last.

Old sprinklers are also fun to collect but are getting nearly impossible to find, especially since they were featured in “Martha Stewart Living” (March 1998). My oldest is dated 1896 and has the name “Cactus” cast onto it, but my favorite is in the shape of a frog. Another favorite--one with infinitely adjustable jets and dated 1920--was found at a garage sale on my block.

I’ve hooked up all of the sprinklers to a hose at one time or another to watch them work, and this 1920 number was one of the more interesting. The frog was a flop, but the old National Walking Lawn Sprinkler, which looks and crawls like a tractor, was as fun to watch as a parade. It’s currently on loan to tool people at Denman & Co. in Orange who are also fascinated with good old tools (and reproduce some).

Pots

Old pots are another collectible that in some cases becomes a genuine antique and soars right out of my price range. For instance, there were some elegant terra-cotta pots made by art-pottery manufacturer Bauer Pottery of Los Angeles. The name is stamped clearly on the bottom of each pot. Among other things, Bauer made a series of different-sized hanging pots, which, in my garden, hold the lovely new hanging cymbidiums with their drooping flower spikes. At one time, I had quite a few of these but couldn’t resist selling them (to finance other acquisitions, of course) when they actually became worth something.

I have been unable to acquire the most famous of Los Angeles pots, those made by Italian Terra Cotta. These are unusually handsome pots in a light-colored clay with a circular stamp inside each that clearly reads “Italian Terra Cotta, Los Angeles.” I’ve seen many but have never been able to talk anyone out of one. The lesson that can be learned from terra-cotta pots is that they were and are the best containers to keep plants in for long periods because they can breath, which also keeps the roots cool. Good quality terra cotta can also last a very long time.

In my modest collection, the cutest pots are only about an inch across and were used to germinate cymbidium seeds. I covet the shallow, foot-square seedling trays made of clay that a friend found. One favorite pot, discovered at a swap meet, has really complex designs that look like the front of the Mayan Theatre in downtown Los Angeles. I can tell you something else about antique terra-cotta pots--in my garden they’re in better shape than most of the new pots.

After saying that terra cotta makes the best pots, I confess that some of my favorites are plain, rough, concrete pots from the 1940s. The grayish concrete looks great with black Mondo grass growing in it.

Printed Matter

Obviously, old books on gardening in California can teach a lot (see a starter list in my June 24 column), but so can little pamphlets like the Care and Preservation of Cut Flowers, a 1940 number from the San Francisco Garden Club.

There are also newsletters such as the Santa Barbara Gardener, from the ‘20s and ‘30s, with surprisingly current topics like “When Is a Lawn Not Grass?” or “The Compact Garden.” Vintage issues of the California Horticultural Journal are a treasure trove of solid information.

Local seed catalogs, giveaways and other garden advertising sometimes contain valuable tips. I have a planting chart, “Compliments of Theodore Payne”--whose nursery was on 345 S. Main St. in downtown Los Angeles in 1929--that is as usable now as it was then. Payne eventually became enamored of California natives, and the native plant foundation in Sun Valley is named after him.

My oldest seed catalog came from the Germain Fruit Co. in 1891, and it lists an astounding variety of plants, including more eucalyptus than you could probably find today. It also teases with 20 varieties of pansies, including one named ‘King of the Blacks,’ plus no less than 18 varieties of portulaca.

Germain’s produced many wonderful catalogs and was the premier nursery of its day. A 1924 catalog featured the new ‘Los Angeles Market’ lettuce, which was to become the forebear of iceberg lettuce. I even managed to find an old seed package of this historic variety.

There were many nurseries producing catalogs in the L.A. area, and it’s surprising to see what was grown at the time and to read the cultural tips often included in old catalogs. They show that while things change in gardening, they more often stay the same, and what worked then probably still does. Comforting thoughts for a rapidly changing world, again at a turn of the century.

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In the Garden is published Thursdays. Write to Robert Smaus, SoCal Living, Los Angeles Times, Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles, CA 90053; fax to (213) 237-4712; or e-mail robert.smaus@latimes.com.