Don’t you just love old books that are still relevant today?
Here’s one for the gardener of the family: Home Vegetable Gardening: A Complete and Practical Guide to the Planting and Care of All Vegetables, Fruits and Berries Worth Growing For Home Use by F. F. Rockwell. This book is about a hundred years old, but is still useful to anyone who wants to try their hand at raising their own produce. Quite a few of Rockwell’s favorite plant varieties are even in existence after all these years!
Rockwell takes the prospective gardener through the whole growing season from start to finish, covering key topics such as choosing an ideal location, selecting the proper tools, starting the seedlings, and storing the harvest. Along the way he shares his experience with the particular needs of a variety of different garden crops, both common and uncommon. Advice is also included on various pests and diseases.
Even more delightful is Rockwell’s enthusiasm for gardening:
It is the cheapest, healthiest, keenest pleasure there is. Give me a sunny garden patch in the golden springtime, when the trees are picking out their new gowns, in all the various self-colored delicate grays and greens—strange how beautiful they are, in the same old unchanging styles, isn’t it?—give me seeds to watch as they find the light, plants to tend as they take hold in the fine, loose, rich soil, and you may have the other sports.
With a mentor like this, who could resist the urge to get out there and plant something? And all along the way, gardeners will be guided by Rockwell’s valuable years of experience.
Home Vegetable Gardening is available for free download.
Homestead on the Range 