A Gardening Library for the Ages

If you like vegetable gardening, and you appreciate history, you’ll enjoy getting lost in the Biodiversity Heritage Library.

Every year anew crop of horticulture bookshits the shelves . Many of the titles prognosticate unexampled gardening information , but how much is really new ?

There ’s an interesting agency to find the answer . only peruse the digitalize collection of antique vegetable gardening resources provided by theBiodiversity Heritage Library(BHL ) .

The BHL is a pool of instinctive history and botanic libraries with the lofty mission to “ work collaboratively to make biodiversity literature openly useable to the universe as part of a global multifariousness community of interests . ”

For gardeners like me who appreciate old record , the online library is a hoarded wealth treasure trove of book , clause , images and so much more . The BHL has digitized billion of pages , stage tens of yard of title and over 100,000 volumes .

Just let that sink in for a moment .

Available to any nurseryman with Internet accession is a wealthiness of knowledge about our natural earth .

seek for the term “ vegetable horticulture ” and colligate to 100 honest-to-god Quran and journals appear . Each of these books can be viewed online in its entirety . Many of the older volumes are no longer under copyright and can be downloaded to add together to your personal library .

These gardening Holy Scripture , many from the early 1900s , are attractively illustrated with line draft and old images . They may be written in fuddled antediluvian voice communication , but they provide a vivid picture of how much horticulture has changed - and how much has remained the same - over the year .

In 1917 when W.M. Teal wrote“Back Yard and City Lot Gardening : A Practical Book by a Practical Man,”he was astounded that a nurseryman could arise 573 pounds of vegetables , $ 32 worth , on his small attribute .

“ Around the Year in the Garden,”by Frederick Frye Rockwell , was also written in 1917 . Rockwell ’s book was “ design for the interfering Isle of Man or woman whose spare time available is special , and who , therefore , is interested in employ every hour to the upright aim . ”

His book is a week - by - workweek schedule of garden tasks . For the third week in December , he advised how to take attention of gift plants after Christmas and recommended cull shrubs for winter beauty . Next week : set forth plant for next class ’s summer garden .

The quondam vegetable gardening record book on the list seems to be“The chronicle of Propagation & Improvement of Vegetables,”written in 1660 . This one is especially interesting because the source includes propagate by seed ; by off - bent ; by stalk , thinning and slips ; by place ; graft ; and “ whether any vegetable may be set so as to grow in the air . ”

Now that inhuman weather condition is upon us , getting lose among the stacks of the Biodiversity Heritage Library is a stark way of life to spend a winter ’s day associate with gardeners from the past .

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“The History of the Propagation & Improvement of Vegetables” was written in 1660, but it still offers insights for today’s vegetable gardeners.Photo/Illustration: The Biodiversity Heritage Library

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