Horticulture areas

Qualitymark

Where would be the biggest areas for horticulture in Ireland, and for what crops? Used to be north Dublin, but is that gone?

And a side question: why can rapeseed only be grown one year in four? http://www.independent.ie/business/farming/tillage-area-restricts-capacity-for-rapeseed-crop-26396498.html And is it easy to separate the kind of oil used for fuel and the kind used for edible oil - the fuel kind having something that damages the heart muscle?

micraX

Qualitymark wrote: »

Where would be the biggest areas for horticulture in Ireland, and for what crops? Used to be north Dublin, but is that gone?

And a side question: why can rapeseed only be grown one year in four? http://www.independent.ie/business/farming/tillage-area-restricts-capacity-for-rapeseed-crop-26396498.html And is it easy to separate the kind of oil used for fuel and the kind used for edible oil - the fuel kind having something that damages the heart muscle?

Nope north county Dublin is still the horticultural capital. From the airport to Drogheda roughly, with the high concentration around Rush and lusk. Wexford has some horticulture and so does kilkenny. But the main area would be north county Dublin.

The soil can get tired of growing brassicas and they get club root. Rotation is key.

Qualitymark

Ah, thanks micraX. Looking at the area on Apple Maps (just 'Maps' if you're using a Mac - different from Google Maps; better in some ways (for instance look at the superb magnification on archaeological sites and the use of 3D), worse in others (terrible lack of placenames and not great searches outside cities). Lots of fields, but a lot of them ploughed or fallow; perhaps it's due to the time of year Apple took the shots.

This was the area where Cromwell settled his wounded or semi-disabled soldiers - within the protection of the Pale, near the Dublin market for their produce. Good farmers, them and their descendants.

Incidentally, I read that the Irish farming method at the time was to leave fields fallow for several seasons, simply moving fencing to a new place for pasturage or horticulture, while fertilising the fields they'd left - we're talking, of course, of a country with a pre-Plantation population of 750,000. (England had not many more, just a million in AD 1500.) The English regarded this as bad management, saying that land should be under some sort of cultivation at all times; probably a debate that still goes on.

micraX

Qualitymark wrote: »

Ah, thanks micraX. Looking at the area on Apple Maps (just 'Maps' if you're using a Mac - different from Google Maps; better in some ways (for instance look at the superb magnification on archaeological sites and the use of 3D), worse in others (terrible lack of placenames and not great searches outside cities). Lots of fields, but a lot of them ploughed or fallow; perhaps it's due to the time of year Apple took the shots.

This was the area where Cromwell settled his wounded or semi-disabled soldiers - within the protection of the Pale, near the Dublin market for their produce. Good farmers, them and their descendants.

Incidentally, I read that the Irish farming method at the time was to leave fields fallow for several seasons, simply moving fencing to a new place for pasturage or horticulture, while fertilising the fields they'd left - we're talking, of course, of a country with a pre-Plantation population of 750,000. (England had not many more, just a million in AD 1500.) The English regarded this as bad management, saying that land should be under some sort of cultivation at all times; probably a debate that still goes on.

Well as you say it depends on the time of year. But also the year it was taken, because a lot of land was bought by builders and left for a few years idel .most of it being farmed again now thank fully. Thats very interesting, any links to what you where reading?

Qualitymark

All kinds of contemporary stuff, micraX, including Edmund Spenser's A View to the Present State of Ireland and Captain Thomas Lee's The Discovery and Recovery of Ireland, and Connellan's translation of The Annals of the Four Masters, with superb notes - these and much more are available for free download from archive.org - avoid the Google-PDF'd versions, they're a horror - but for a start try Nicholas Canny's Making Ireland British http://www.amazon.co.uk/Making-Ireland-British-1580-1650-Nicholas/dp/0199259054 - force your library to buy a copy and make it available for real readers, not just reference, if you can.

Academic publishers have a horrible custom of selling their books for enormous prices - €50 upwards is the norm - which they can get away with, I suppose, because they have a captive audience of students. But this means that Canny's extraordinary book and David Edwards' book on the Ormonds of Kilkenny - both of them chock-a-block with facts and figures on the life of the time - are not available for the open discussion of people other than historians.

This doesn't just rob you and me of their wisdom; it also robs the historians. A discussion of Canny's and Edwards' books that included farmers, for instance, would enrich the historians' knowledge of their subject - farmers would be able to explain customs that might baffle an academic.

God bless the internet, which can give us access to so much - I recently downloaded a 19th-century cookery book with recipes for black pudding, pickled oysters and other treats - The Virginia Housewife.

Here's a snippet from Apple Maps of part of north Dublin. Farmers will be able to read the landscape in a moment…

Whoops, looks like I can't add pictures in this forum, didn't realise.