Five Hundred Pointes of Good Husbandrie, 1573

by Thomas Tusser

In January, for example, the housewife should be busy planting peas and beans and setting young rose roots.

During March and April she will work ‘from morning to night, sowing and setting her garden or plot’, to produce the crops of parsnips, beans, and melons which will ‘winnest the heart of a laboring man' for her later in the year.

Her strawberry plants will be obtained from the best roots which she has gathered from the woods, and these are to be set in a plot in the garden. Berries from these plants will be harvested later the same year, perhaps a useful back-up if the parsnips have failed to win the man of her dreams.

July will see the good wife ‘cut off ...ripe bean with a knife’ as well as harvesting the hemp and flax which it will be her responsibility to spin later in the year.


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Thomas Tusser
Thomas Tusser

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