X 



PREFACE 



owners to have things sent in their tenderest and best condition 

 for the table. 



All who have gardens should fight against the deterioration 

 of some of our best vegetables through the mania for size. 



Although the flavour of vegetables may not be so 

 Qual^y^before Qj^yjQ^g Qf fruit, it is often their essential quality. 



A change in size, by adding to the watery tissue 

 of the plant, may destroy the flavour, and doubling or trebling 

 the size of the article itself, as has been done in the case of the 

 Brussels Sprout, which is no longer the same little rosette of green, 

 but a coarse Cabbage sprout. Bad, too, is the raising of new 

 varieties lacking in flavour, and abolishing old kinds, from sup- 

 posed deficiency in size. There has been, for example, for the 

 last few years a French Bean in our markets, very large, but 

 without any of the good flavour of the smaller kinds, but its 

 huge mawkish pod has become popular with the market-gardener. 

 Here is a delicate vegetable, the value of which depends entirely 

 upon its flavour, and whether we get six beans or one bean 

 matters little if the object of growing the vegetable is lost sight 

 of. Sometimes a flavour may be too rich : many good cooks 

 in London prefer the little long Turnip of the Paris market, 

 which has a truer Turnip flavour, to some of the sweet kinds. 

 We may lose much of what makes a garden worth having by 

 not controlling the harmful efforts for size unaccompanied by 

 other and more desirable qualities. Often Potatoes and Tomatoes 

 and other things are raised and praised much, which in flavour 

 are wholly inferior to the older kinds. 



Loss and confusion arise from the practice now common 

 among seedsmen of naming almost every good vegetable after 



themselves. England has almost a monopoly of 

 ^to^NamL^^ ^^^^ practice, which is not carried out in France. 



Honourable houses may do it for self-protection 

 with us, but it is nevertheless a loss to the public, and scarcely 

 less so to the trade. To be able to secure pure stocks of long- 

 tried standard vegetables is not easy for the public while the 

 seedsman affixes a new name and the name of his house to 

 almost everything he sells. One cause of failure is too many 

 kinds — too many experimental plantings, instead of the garden 

 being devoted to the things we know and like. This is a common 

 error owing to the chaotic state of the names of vegetables. 



