The most popular thing anyone has ever said about our work on forgotten vegetables was not a compliment. It was a list.
Somebody wrote down the seven plant names, in order, and posted them — no explanation attached. It became the most-liked comment under the video. Under the next film, a viewer posted the ten names with timestamps.
That is an audience trying to build a reference book out of a video. So we built it properly.
The films give you the names. This gives you what to do with them.
Twenty entries, each on the same fixed structure.
What you eat and which part. How to grow or gather it. How far it spreads. What it could be confused with. And where to get the seed, because it is not in the ordinary catalogues.
- SkirretA cluster of sweet roots off one crown. Sugar root, in German.
- Good King HenryLeaf like spinach, shoot like asparagus, seed like quinoa.
- AgrettiBurned for glass-making soda until a chemist ended the trade.
- Ground ElderThe only entry in the book that says never plant this.
- Garlic MustardDinner in Europe. A listed invasive in North America.
- ChicoryForce the root in the dark and it makes a chicon in a month.
Six of the twenty — the full contents are in the preview below.
Fifteen methods, in the order a household built them.
The living wall first, then the soil, then the planting, then the tricks against the calendar, and last the harvest that had to keep until spring.
- The Laid HedgeA fence that repairs itself
- The Hot BedThe furnace hiding on every farm
- The ClampWinter storage that runs on nothing
- Saving SeedEvery garden was a breeding programme
- The Bee SkepThe pollinator on the payroll
Five of the fifteen.
The chapter most books like this leave out.
Most identification mistakes cost you a bad taste. A few cost more. Young yarrow and young hemlock both make low ferny rosettes in spring, and one of them kills adults at a few hundred milligrams.
Every guide mentions this. Almost none give a test that works at the stage where the confusion actually happens — telling you that hemlock has a purple-blotched stem is useless in March, when it has no stem.
So this book does it differently. Rub a leaf. Yarrow is downy — you can feel the hairs — and smells sweetly herbal. Hemlock is completely hairless and smells musty. That works on a rosette, in March, with nothing but your fingers.
Eight pages, as they are.
From checkout to your first sowing.
- The file arrives immediately. A PDF, by email, the moment the payment clears. No account, no app, no waiting.
- Print the calendar. One page, twelve months, what to sow and what to gather. It is made to pin to a shed door.
- Read the last chapter first. Before you dig anything, the confusions and the invasive list. It takes ten minutes.
- Start with one plant. Not twenty. Sorrel or orach if you have a bed, nettle or chickweed if you have a hedge.
Before you buy.
Is this a foraging guide or a gardening book?
Both, and it says which is which. Seven are kitchen-garden vegetables you sow. Ten are wild plants you find. Three were added because the garden asks for them. Every entry says whether you plant it, gather it, or — in one case — never plant it at all.
Will these plants grow where I live?
The timings are northern European and will be wrong by weeks elsewhere; the calendar page says so. More important: three of these plants are unremarkable in Europe and invasive in North America. That is a whole chapter, and it tells you to check your own list before you sow anything.
How do I know the identification is right?
Every plate was published before 1900 and checked one by one — work, year, licence, and whether the plate actually shows the species named. No AI images. And the tests are written to work at the stage where the confusion happens: telling you hemlock has a purple-blotched stem is useless in March, when it has no stem.
Does it cover medicinal use?
As history only. What people believed, what is documented, and where the line runs — no dose, no preparation, no indication. The final chapter explains why, and names the plant that made that decision necessary.
What do I actually get?
A PDF of eighty-nine pages. Twenty plant profiles, each opening on its own page with its plate. Fifteen garden methods. A chapter on where it stops. A printable year calendar. And a plate-credit list, so every image can be checked.
Is there a print edition?
Yes, coming to Amazon. The PDF is the one that arrives instantly.
Twenty plants, fifteen methods, one payment.
A digital PDF, delivered the moment the payment clears. It opens on anything, prints cleanly, and it is yours — no subscription, no membership, nothing recurring.
Three medieval breads, free.
The rye starter, a maslin loaf and the six-hour pumpernickel — three complete chapters out of Practical Recipes, not summaries.
The rest of the shelf.
The garden is where the food starts. These are what happens to it next.
Ten medieval loaves with exact weights and temperatures, the rye starter built from nothing but flour and water, and the guide to finding real grain.
How a household ate through winter without a refrigerator. Salting, smoking, drying, fermenting, burying — each method with the science under it, and the safety margins written out rather than glossed over.
Heat, light, water, storage and repair, the way households managed them before the meter. What each method saved then, what it saves now, and which of them still hold up in a modern house.
Medieval Way: The Complete Library
All four shelves in one download — six PDFs in total. The bread, the larder, the household accounts, and the garden. Everything Medieval Way has written down, and nothing left to buy later.