Abstract
AN interesting historical review of progress in the production of early vegetables by methods of intensive cultivation has recently been issued by R. J. G. Hopp (J. Hoy. Hort. Soc., 64, Pt. 2; Nov. 1939). The first record of forcing plants appears to be in the time of the emperor Tiberius, when cucumbers were grown in boxes of dung and sheltered during cold days with thin plates of Lapis specularia. Lettuee is mentioned by Charlemagne, and in the time of Albertus Magnus (1193–1280) it was grown throughout the year. From the Norman invasion of England until the middle of the sixteenth century, gardening appears to have been very greatly subordinated by the political unrest. Its development in the seventeenth century was closely bound with the herbalists Gerard and Parkinson. The initiation of French gardening, involving the protection of early plants with glass cloches, appears to have been due to Jean de la Quintinye in the second half of the seventeenth century, and crops were then brought to maturity upon hotbeds. John Evelyn, John Wool-ridge and Prof. Bradley added their quota of horticultural development in the succeeding hundred years, to be followed by J. C. Loudon. French gardening declined in the later half of the nineteenth century, however, only to give place to the more workable and convenient methods of glasshouse culture which provide our present supplies of extra-seasonal vegetables.
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History of Intensive Cultivation. Nature 144, 1086–1087 (1939). https://doi.org/10.1038/1441086d0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/1441086d0