History of growing fruit and veg

Seddonjoel1 · August 2018

What was fruit and veg like way before we used chemicals, like in ancient times?

[Deleted User] · August 2018

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Hostafan1 · August 2018

cheaper than it is now? but maybe less variety?

Buttercupdays · August 2018

Depends where you look and lived. The Romans loved their food and fine dining, they grew all kinds of fruit and veg, had water laid on, even fish farms, and plenty of slaves to keep everything tidy! Their trading empire meant they could get their hands on all sorts of exotica, but not anything from the New World. They would have loved tomatoes!

Iron Age Britain was probably rather more basic and they were dependent on oats and other cereal crops that could cope with our climate - no potatoes till Sir Walter Raleigh! They still grew root vegetables, cabbages and beans and would have foraged for other seasonal foods.

raisingirl · August 2018

pansyface said:

Plenty of people don’t use chemicals.

It’s called organic gardening.

I suspect the difference between even a hundred years ago and now is not so much in the 'chemicals' - which as pf points out is not universally a difference - as in the availability and variety of seed. It's possible now to buy seed for almost any type of plant from anywhere in the world. If we didn't have seed catalogues, and had to rely on saving seed from last year for this year's crop, we'd all have much less choice. Though having said that, the diversity within any one species would be far greater overall. You'd have your own runner bean, possibly the one your Dad or your neighbour grows too and that would be it for you. But the runner bean 'stock' in the country would be massively more variable than it is now, with every small community developing it's own local strain suited to local soil and climate. Many of these 'micro-varieties' have long since been lost. There are a few people campaigning for more of us to save seed and grow from our own crops in order to promote better resilience in our staple foods.

tessagardenbarmy · August 2018

Contact Garden Organic at Ryton near Coventry they have a heritage seed collection. I'm growing a heritage bean variety this year very heavy cropper.

cornelly · August 2018

Maybe I was lucky as a youngster, we had a large garden and grew fruit and vegetables, without chemicals, and manured with night soil from the outside toilet, the runner bean trench had the previous years tins of whatever empty with the tops off, the following year all that was left of the tins were the thick rings top and bottom, and the roots of the beans down in them, and all the garden hand dug, there were chickens and pigs and goats too, we were well supplied with food.

Dovefromabove · August 2018

I'm in my sixties now . ... growing up in what seemed like idyllic and very natural rural surroundings .. I remember helping Ma apply DDT powder to brassicas to kill caterpillars .... must've been in the early 60s.

Lyn · August 2018

Dove, did your dad have one of those Flit Guns, I can see him pumping the handle and us choking.

Dovefromabove · August 2018

Yes Hosta, we had two ... both made of brass, one was big and the other was smaller ... I was allowed to use it but my brother wasn't because of his asthma rolleyes

Hostafan1 · August 2018

Lyn said:

Dove, did your dad have one of those Flit Guns, I can see him pumping the handle and us choking.

Dovefromabove said:

Yes Hosta, we had two ... both made of brass, one was big and the other was smaller ... I was allowed to use it but my brother wasn't because of his asthma

Not me Guv.

History of growing fruit and veg

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