A Medieval Home Companion Old Garden Lore

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lupinelover Grove City, OH(Zone 6a) Aug 06, 2003

I love to read. Especially history and gardening, so reading an old book about gardening is the best! This book was written by a Frenchman in 1393 to his young bride. It includes lots of wisdom, such as:

- Soil fertilized with cow and sheep dung is better than that fertilized with horse manure.

- Parsley that is sown on the eve of the feast of the Annunciation (March 24) comes up in 9 days. No word about how long it takes if sown any other day.

- If there are many ants in the garden, throw sawdust of oak boards on the ant hill, and they will die.

- When it rains in July, plant cabbages.

- If caterpillars eat the cabbages, spread cinders under the cabbages when it rains and they will die.

- If you want to have grapes without seeds, split the stock in half along its length and remove the pith. Trim, cover and bind it with black thread. Plant it and fill the hole with earth up to the node.

- Graft a grapevine through a cherry tree. (why?)

- Graft a cherry tree onto a grapevine. (why not just leave both on their own roots?)

Anyone else got some really old garden lore? Or household lore?

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cristina Temuco, Chile(Zone 9b) Aug 06, 2003

Wow .... to be able to find a book that old, is so great!

Make you wonder and if I find some ants I will try the saw dust. Plenty oak wood around here.

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lupinelover Grove City, OH(Zone 6a) Aug 07, 2003

Not all of them are that sensible. How about:

- Spread unfinished cloth all around your room and all the fleas will jump on it and stick and die.

- Take little bunches of fern, and hang them up. All the flies will lodge there in the evening, then take them down and throw them away.

- In the evening close up your room so there is only a little hole in the wall. As soon as dawn breaks, all the flies will go out through the hole.

- Flies will not settle in a place where there is nothing for them to settle on. So if a room is well dampened, closed, sealed and nothing is left lying, no fly will settle there. (Don't try this! Guarantee you will get millions of maggots. Happens in garbage cans regularly!)

- Peas beans or other stews won't stick to the bottom of the pan if burning wood doesn't touch the base of the pot. (He needs to come scour some of my pans!)

- To mortify capons and hens, you must bleed them by the throat. In this way you will make them in one day as gamey as if they had been dead for two. (Why would anyone want gamey meat???)

- To make white wine red: in summer, take the red flowers, dry to a powder. Secretly throw them into a glass with the wine and it will turn red. (Wouldn't it be easier to open a bottle of red wine to begin with?)

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