A Fun Connection Between Two Seed Companies

This easygoing couple is happy to see a 250 pound Livingston's Perfection tomato balanced on the their bed's footboard, even before their first coffee!

The Livingston tomatoes were famous for being the best of the new hybrids. Their seeds were sold by many companies.  The Perfection was introduced in 1880.  Livingston had developed it to fill the need for a "good shipper".

Jerome B. Rice & Company is my favorites for goofy vegetable people trade cards. I'll be exploring his company and his advertising more in the future.

 Why would the artist make a grumpy pea couple?    And the cucumber man looks totally disillusioned.  The celery lady at least dully interested in something to the right!

Marrow/Zucchini Seed Humor, plus Pongo the Pup

I forgot to compose a post for today!  (Ah, summer...) But this is seed related :-)

Enjoy this postcard from WW I, and if you have the time, check out the Pongo the Pup 1924 animation link.  

If you remember early animation, the surreal qualities that pop in around the 2:14 mark won't be a shocker.  If you are a youngster, know this mixture of realities was not uncommon back then.

Gardening humor during WW I by Dudley Buxton.  

Dudley Buxton (c.1885-1951) was a British comic artist involved in some of the first British animated films, including working with Anson Dyer and the Kine Komedy Kartoons in the 1910s. In 1924 and 1925 he wrote and directed the "Pongo the Pup" series as an answer to the American "Felix the Cat" of 1922.  

1891 - Proud Daddy Livingston!!...?

These little tomato faces MUST be Livingston children!

The boy in the barrel is a goofy little soul.  This catalog is very good humored...I wonder 

what was going on in the family!  

 Speaking of pride, the names of two of these vegies use the word.  Pride of Ireland potato and The Pride of Newtown bean.

Livingston's History, Plus Phlox Drummondi and Pansies for 1910

It is such a nice day outside here in Connecticut I could not just post text heavy history at the top of the page  ...interesting as it may be to you or me.  

(I have even placed a huge version of this flower litho at the end so you can wallow in the flowers!)  

The article below from a 1910 issue of American Florist magazine is of interest because it mentions the acreage acquired over time...plus has good photos of the Livingstons.  

A larger version of the next article for easier reading is at the end.

1892 - Asparagus Troops

Asparagus Engraving, A. W. Livingston's Sons

This asparagus engraving is great looking.  Can't be beat.  So sez me.

Wish it was in focus...

1906 - Livingston Seed Co.: Be Still My Heart

Summer! 

 This is a 1906 Livingston's Seeds catalog.

This sweet pepper is the vegetable equivalent of a Henry Miller novel.

You wouldn't know that inside, by this time, dull photo illustrations had almost replaced the sprightly engravings inside the catalog.  

I just love this green.

!

This is rather overstating the matter as applied to seed catalogs, but I do look for that special life affirming page within them :-)

"I believe that today more than ever a book should be sought after even if it has only one great page in it: we must search for fragments, splinters, toenails, anything that has ore in it, anything that is capable of resuscitating the body and soul. It may be that we are doomed, that there is no hope for us, any of us, but if that is so then let us set up a last agonizing, bloodcurdling howl, a screech of defiance, a war whoop! Away with lamentation! Away with elegies and dirges! Away with biographies and histories, and libraries and museums! Let the dead eat the dead. Let us living ones dance about the rim of the crater, a last expiring dance. But a dance!"

                      Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer, 1934

1893 - Telephone Peas?!

Telephone Peas!     

The 1893 analog of 1969's Jet Star tomato?  Seedsmen know the value of naming their vegies, in these two cases after something really new and exciting.

The Livingston's Sons catalog page describing Telephone Peas is below this Heroine Pea engraving.

(Can you tell I love vegetable engravings?)

Actually, it was the Heroine Pea that first got my attention. This is the sort of engraving that makes my heart go pitter-pat! 

And in a tip of the hat to my cantaloupe loving husband, below is the colorful back cover featuring a Nutmeg melon variety.


Cantaloupes, I read somewhere, became popular after the Civil War even though they had been around since the 1700s.   I think it must be due to more extensive and illustrated catalogs.  Can you think of another reason?


Yummy looking illustration! And I don't like cantaloupe.



I know when they are ripe when the house smells like garbage...something about the taste and smell pushes negative reaction smell buttons in my nose.