The Roman Book of Gardening

John Henderson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2004
• ISBN:
  9781134346110
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: History

This is the first book on Roman gardening, how the Romans looked after their gardens - digging, hoeing, planting and weeding - all other books are on the gardens themselves Includes a huge variety of different sources, both verse and prose, from an outburst of hothouse poetry to informative manuals in prose Henderson has written new translations of Latin texts, never before brought together to showcase Roman horticulture The author is very well known in the field of Latin Literature, especially as co-author of Classics, A Very Short Introduction (OUP, 1995).

1
FROM COLUMELLA ELEVEN

Produce in prose

WORLD OF THE COUNTRYSIDE: BOOK 11

(1) Preface (11.1.1–2)

Claudius, priest of imperial cult, is one of nature’s gentlemen.¹ Equally, the young man is highly cultured. Stimulated by discussions with more than a few expert enthusiasts, particularly with farmers, he pounded me into agreeing to draw up a systematic Horticulture in Latin prose. His success in this did not indeed escape me when I was wrapping the aforesaid topic in the code of poetic law.

But you, Woody Esq., ² were persistently requesting a taste of my verse-writing, and I didn’t manage to say no. If you felt like me about it, I was at once going to do what I am presently moving on to, a postscript on How to Run a Farm: the Job of Farm Manager, attached by way of supplement: Garden Care³.

True, I felt I had already to a certain extent gone through this in Columella, On the Countryside, Book One.⁴ But my imperial priest lobbied for it, over and over, and came on just as strong. So I have overrun the tally of Books that I was just on the point of completing, and I now put into the public domain this Manual of Country Life: Eleven.

(2) The chapter on gardens (11.3)

Now that we have reviewed the Work Assignments of a Farm Manager, what must get done, at their specific times through the year, I shall honour my promise and append a supplement: On Horticulture. Garden Care will be just as much of an obligation for the Farm Manager, objective (1) being to lighten the cost of feeding himself, while objective (2) is to offer the owner, any time he comes, what the Poet calls a country ‘feast that cost nowt’.⁵

§ In the book he entitled The Georgics, Democritus reckons that people who build garden walls are being shortsighted, since a stone wall made of brick can’t last for ever, as it normally gets attacked by rain and storm, and on the other hand the outlay rules out stone, way over the top in terms of relative importance. ‘Should anyone want to enclose a decent-size area, they need to come into a fortune.’⁶ Very well, then, I shall point out a method which lets us wall off a garden, from trespass by people or live stock, without major input.

§ The earliest authorities preferred a living hedge to anything built, because it not only wants smaller outlay, but also lasts much longer through measureless time. That’s why they handed down the following method of making a thicket by sowing thorns.

Take the spot you have decided to hedge. Immediately after the autumn equinox, as soon as the ground is wet with rain, the perimeter must be trenched right round with two furrows three feet apart. Maximum depth of trench: two feet is plenty.

Now, though, we’ll leave them empty through the winter, first preparing seed to sow them with. The seeds are those of the giant thorns, above all bramble, Christ’s thorn, and the one the Greeks call ‘kunosbatos’, and we call Dog’s Briar.

These bramble seeds must pick as ripe as possible. Mix with milled vetch flour. A sprinkling of water, and it is smeared on old sea-going cables or else any other ropes you like. Then the lines are dried, and stored in the loft. Not for long. Once midwinter is done, forty days intervene, then around when the swallow arrives and the west wind starts to get up, after the Ides of February, ⁷ any water that was settled in the furrows through the winter is drawn off, and the loose earth that was dug out in autumn is put back to half the depth of the furrow. Fetch the aforesaid lines from the loft, and roll out. Stretch them lengthways along both furrows. Then bury them. Only, see that the thorn seed sticking to bulges in those lines is not heaped over with too much soil. They must be able to grow up through it. As a rule, they poke out before thirty days are out. Once they have started to develop a bit, they must be trained to lean in towards the available space in between the furrows.

A hedge of twigs will need setting to plug the gaps. The briars of both furrows can spread out over this, and it can be some thing they can rest on, from time to time, as a sort of prop until they are sturdy. This thicket obviously cannot be destroyed short of digging it up, roots and all. Otherwise, it’s beyond a doubt, it grows back after fire damage, improved. And so this is the very method of garden enclosure that won most approval from people of old.

§ Choice of site will work out, the lie of the land permitting, beside the villa. Preferably rich in soil, a site with the possibility of irrigation, whether from a stream abutting, or if there is no running water, from a well source. For a well to win credence for year round supply, it must be dug out at the precise moment when the sun occupies the last segment of Virgo, i.e. September before the autumn equinox. This on the basis that the resources of springs are most fully checked out when the soil lacks rain water, after the lengthy dry period of summer.

NB A precaution: a garden must not lie below a threshing-floor. The wind must be in no position to carry bits of chaff and dust to it, in the course of threshing. Both are no friends to veg.

§ Next topic: preparation and digging over of soil. There are two seasons, because there are two sowings. Most seeds are sown in both autumn and spring.

Better in spring for well-watered spots, since the new-born year’s gentleness welcomes the emerging seeds. Also, summer thirst is doused by water from the spring.

But where the nature of the site allows no water to be fetched in by hand, nor on the other hand to be served up on its own account, there is no other recourse than winter rains.

All the same, even at the most drought-ridden spots, the work can be shepherded by digging over the ground extra deep. Digging out a three-foot fall is plenty (what was dug out raises the overall depth to four). But where there is plenty of water for irrigation, it will be enough for the fallow land to be turned with a shallow trenching tool, i.e. a spade with a blade under two feet long. Now we shall take care that the land which must be sown in spring is turned over in autumn, around the first of November. Land we mean to start up in autumn, we shall turn in May. That way the clods will loosen through winter cold or else summer sun, and the grass roots will be killed.

We shall need to muckspread not much earlier: in fact, when sowing time draws near, four days to go, the site must be stripped of grass and spread with muck, then the digging gone over again, so scrupulously that soil and shit blend. The best dung for this purpose is the ass’s, because it breeds least grass. Second best are either cowflops, or sheep’s heaps if soaked for a year. The stuff humans do may well be regarded as the finest of all, but all the same there is no need to put it to work – except for bare gravel, or for the very loosest grade sand, completely devoid of vigour, in which case, to be sure, more power-packed nutrition is wanted.

So then the soil which we marked down for spring sowing we shall after autumn dig up and let lie, for parching by midwinter cold and hoar frost. In a mirror process, the force of cold cooks the earth just like the heat of summer, and loosens it by fermentation.

So now that midwinter is quite over, at long last the slurry will be tipped on, and around the Ides of January the soil is dug a second time round and split into beds.

NB The pattern of these, though, must ensure that the weeders’ hands easily reach halfway across their width, so when they follow up weeds they won’t have to tread on the seeds. Instead, they can walk along paths, and weed half beds turn and turn about.

§ So far has all been things to get done before sowing: enough. Now for instructions on what needs cultivating and/or seeding, season by season.

§ First up for discussion are species which can be sown at two seasons, i.e. autumn and spring. These seeds are: cabbages and lettuces; artichoke, rocket, cress, coriander, chervil, dill, parsnip, rampion, poppy. Sowing around 1 September, or better in February before 1 March.

NB On arid or warm spots, such as the coasts of Calabria and Apulia, they can be trusted to the earth around the Ides of January.

§ Going back to seeds due for sowing only in autumn, on the condition, that is, that we live in coastal or sunny country, they are pretty well as follows: garlic, small-top onions, ‘Punic garlic’, mustard.

§ But now let me switch to sorting on a month by month basis what is normally suited by which season for entrusting to earth:

So now, after 1 January, get busy, peeler pepperwort will be right to set in.

In February, rue, in either seedling or seed form, and asparagus; likewise onion seed and leek seed. Same goes, if you’re after spring plus autumn cropping, you will bury seeds of Syrian radish, turnip, navew. Garlic and Punic garlic are the last setting of this season.

Now around 1 March, leek can shift to a sunny spot, once it fills out big. Likewise all-heal, in the last bit of March.

Then around 1 April, same for leek, elecampane, the late-late variety of rue. Likewise, to get them to take earlier, sow cucumber, gourd, caper. Beet seed, now, is best sown just when Punic pomegranate is in bloom.

Leek top still puts up with being moved on around the Ides of May.

After that, nothing should be buried in the ground as summer approaches, except parsley seed. Provided you’ll water it, though: that way, it comes on just perfect through the summer.

For the rest, in August, around Feast of Vulcan time, ⁸ there is the third sowing. That is best for radish and turnip seed, ditto navew and rampion, not to forget black alexanders.

§ Such are the seasons for sowing. Now to tell of the individual species which want some special care.

NB Everything I leave aside will have to be understood as calling for no service except for the weeder’s. Of the latter, this can be said once for all: at every moment in time, plan to get rid of weeds.

§ The garlic that some call ‘Punic’, but the Greeks name ‘aphroskorodon’, develops to a much greater size than common garlic. Around 1 October, before it is put in, it will split from one head into quite a few cloves. For it has, like garlic, quite a few clumped spikes, and when they are split, they should be sown on ‘ridges’, so that they are cushioned on a raised growing position and suffer less damage from all the water in winter. The ‘ridge’ is like the ‘bar’ made by countryfolk in sowing their lands in order to avoid waterlogging. But the one in the garden has to be smaller scale, and along its highest bit, i.e. its back, there must be spaced and planted, at intervals of a palm’s width, the spikes of Punic garlic – or of common garlic, which is also sown just this same way. The ridges’ furrows must be half a foot apart. Then, once the spikes have put out three sheathing leaves, hoe them. The more often this is done, the larger the seeds can develop. Then, before they make a stalk, twisting all the green showing above ground and flattening it onto the earth will help enlarge giant crowns.

NB In regions which get hoar frost, neither of these two should be sown th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• Note on the Text
• Preface: Preparing the ground
• Introduction: Virgil: Reserving a plot from Virgil
• 1. Produce in prose: from Columella 11
• 2. Flowery verse: Columella 10
• 3. Nature’s miracles in Pliny’s Encyclopaedia
• 4. A year in the garden with Palladius
• Notes: Tying up loose ends
• Further Reading: Where next
• Date Chart: As and when
• Indexes: Names And Varieties