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  • From: "Lynn Wigglesworth" <lynnw1366 AT hotmail.com>
  • To: <homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Homestead] book
  • Date: Tue, 16 Jun 2009 12:42:54 -0400

A friend gave me a set of DVDs from a British show called The Victorian Kitchen Garden (the companion book, which I don't have, is: http://www.amazon.com/Victorian-Kitchen-Garden-Jennifer-Davies/dp/039302539X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1245168410&sr=8-1 )

It's a wonderful show; they recreate a Victorian walled garden at a large estate. The glasshouses and walls were there, but needed a lot of repair before they started. Each show is a month in the garden. They have 'glasshouses' (greenhouses) and hot and cold frames. Everything was done the way it would have been over a hundred years ago, and the goal was to have something to send up to "the big house" year-round.. Lots of hard work, double-digging, hauling manure, opening and closing glasshouses and frames...they didn't show the weeding, but the beds were weed-free, so someone was weeding (they only had the head gardener and one helper, except for a couple of heavy work days when they brought in more help). Raising fruit 'under glass' was interesting...they had a 'fig house', 'peach house', 'melon house', and various flower houses. They also grew lots of big pots of potatoes in the glass houses so the 'big house' would have new potatoes year round....knock the potatoes out of a pot to send up for dinner, and start a new potato plant in the pot. They had a forcing pit for chicory, rhubarb, asparagus, etc., and forced things like sea kale in place with huge clay forcing pots. They had a large glass cloche that was completely filled with mache (corn salad) in early spring....they showed him putting together salad ingredients from early/forced crops.

The head gardener had a great knowledge of plants and different ways to grow them. Maybe you have to have a love of things British to really appreciate it. It was so interesting, and got me interested in more root crops, hotframes, and forcing. They showed the head gardener building up the hotframe, then putting potted strawberry plants in it to force. They grew a LOT of root vegetables, including things like skerrit, and showed how they store them with a little sand between the layers. Nice to actually SEE this stuff being done.

Lynn Wigglesworth
Tioga Co. PA
----- Original Message ----- From: "EarthNSky" <erthnsky AT bellsouth.net>
To: "Homestead List" <homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Monday, June 15, 2009 10:54 PM
Subject: [Homestead] book


This seems to be a good book to peruse if you are feeling like a
traditional Southern woman.

http://books.google.com/books?id=2uLomrNTJTEC

--
"Never expect magic from no where" Baringo (Kenyan) working motto
EarthNSky Farm, NW Georgia, USA
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