Kitchen Garden Forum

Many old gardening manuals are now available on-line from various sources. Though the texts are lengthy, they give a good insight into past growing techniques. In some places they are remarkably similar to modern practices.

The first is John Evelyn's Acetaria. A discourse of sallets published in 1699. It has some great ideas on raw salads CLICK HERE

A little later comes Richard Bradley's New Improvements of Planting and Gardening from 1717 CLICK HERE

And thirdly, my favourite winter read, Vilmorin-Andrieux's comprehensive The Vegetable Garden first published in an English edition by W Robinson (editor of "The Garden") in 1885 CLICK HERE

Morning Alan, just the job if i'm going to lose some time off work due to the snow, thank you.

I do love old gardening books.

How interesting, Alan. A pity I don't have the time to sit reading all this at present. Maybe a few minutes here and there. It would be fascinating to compare 300-year-old recomendations, before the advent of pesticides and fertilisers, with modern ones.

Some more here, including "Dig for Victory" - we could be doing that again before long when our credit runs out.

http://www.earthlypursuits.com/

Hi Geoff,
In his text he says the only complete set of these pamphlets. Well I have the 12 copies in pristine condition in my library of gardening and horticultural books.
They offer the perfect information for beginners and although some of the terminology may be a bit old fashioned, to some, they really are very good.
JB.

Congratulations, JB. Keep them. They should have considerable intrinsic value, the more so as a complete set.