{"id":9772,"date":"2017-01-16T12:01:57","date_gmt":"2017-01-16T11:01:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.edimentals.com\/blog\/?p=9772"},"modified":"2017-01-16T12:01:57","modified_gmt":"2017-01-16T11:01:57","slug":"directions-for-the-culture-of-sea-kale-from-1799","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.edimentals.com\/blog\/?p=9772","title":{"rendered":"Directions for the culture of sea kale from 1799!"},"content":{"rendered":"

In my book, I wrote the following in my account about Sea Kale (Crambe maritima<\/em>):
\n\u201cDomestication of sea kale (in the UK) seems largely to have been due to the efforts of the\u00a0<\/em>botanist William Curtis, who was Praefectus Horti at the Chelsea Physic Garden\u00a0<\/em>in London in the 1770s. It is still grown there (see photo 7). He wrote a pamphlet,\u00a0<\/em>\u2018Directions for the culture of the Crambe maritima or Sea Kale, for the use of the\u00a0<\/em>Table\u2019 in 1799 to bolster his efforts in introducing it as a market vegetable\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve now finally managed to get a copy of it thanks to a coincidental meeting with Sheila John of the Curtis museum in Alton, Hampshire who attended a talk I gave at the Sir Harold Hillier Gardens in May 2015 (see http:\/\/www.edimentals.com\/blog\/?page_id=1281<\/a>). We kept in touch and I will actually be giving a talk at the Curtis Museum on 27th<\/sup> April!\u00a0 The museum kindly purchased a copy of the pamphlet on Sea Kale from the Natural History Museum in London and sent me the pdf copy which you can download below!<\/p>\n

A great little historical docment, here are a few quotes which I found interesting:<\/p>\n

\u201cBrassica dobrica: kale found at Dover (Dover Cole)\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em>\u201c\u2026\u2026.in some grounds a troublesome weed\u201d !<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em>\u201cAuthors describe a variety with jagged leaves, such we have not seen\u2026.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em>\u201cAs an article of food, Crambe maritima appears to be better known here than in any other part of Europe.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201d..on many parts of the sea-coast, especially of Devonshire, Dorsetshire and Sussex, the inhabitants for time immemorial, have been in the practice of procuring it for their tables, preferring it to all other greens\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThe more curious, desirous of having it\u00a0 near at hand\u2026..have now in many of the maritime counties introduced it to their gardens, and in Devonshire particularly, almost every gentleman has a plantation of it\u2026.we have been informed it has for many years been cultivated for sale in the neighbourhood of Bath\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cMy friend Mr. Wm.Jones of Chelsea tells me he saw bundles of it in a cultivated state exposed for sale in Chichester market, in the year 1753\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0[gview file=”http:\/\/www.edimentals.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/EX17720_item_1.pdf”]<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In my book, I wrote the following in my account about Sea Kale (Crambe maritima): \u201cDomestication of sea kale (in the UK) seems largely to have been due […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1355],"tags":[67,958,959,2120,957],"class_list":["post-9772","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-perennial-vegetables","tag-alton","tag-crambe-maritima","tag-curtis-museum","tag-dover-cole","tag-sea-kale"],"views":4490,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edimentals.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9772","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edimentals.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edimentals.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edimentals.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edimentals.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9772"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.edimentals.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9772\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9774,"href":"https:\/\/www.edimentals.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9772\/revisions\/9774"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edimentals.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9772"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edimentals.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9772"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edimentals.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9772"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}