Market Garden - History

History

Traditionally, "market garden" was used to describe farms devoted to raising vegetables and berries, a specialized type of farming, in contrast to the larger branches of grain, dairy and orchard fruit farming. Agricultural historians continue to use the term in this way. Such operations were not necessarily small-scale. Indeed, many were very large commercial farms. They were called "gardens" not because of size, but because English-speaking farmers traditionally referred to their vegetable plots as "gardens". Indeed, in English whether in common parlance or in anthropological or historical scholarship, it is customary to call husbandry done by the hoe as "gardening" and husbandry done by the plough as "farming" regardless of the scale of either. A "market garden" was simply a vegetable plot intended by the farmer for sale as opposed to a vegetable plot intended to feed the farmer's family. Market gardens are necessarily close to the markets, i.e. cities, that they serve.