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["Lynn Wigglesworth" <lynnw1366 AT hotmail.com>]

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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