Subscribe Apple | Google | Spotify | Stitcher | iHeart   Support The Daily Gardener Buy Me A Coffee    Connect for FREE! The Friday Newsletter |  Daily Gardener Community   Historical Events 1726 Birth of John Berkenhout, English physician, naturalist, and writer. While studying at Edinburgh, John published a botanical lexicon reference. In it, he wrote, Those who wish to remain ignorant of the Latin language have no business with the study of Botany.   1822 On this day, Caroline Herschel wrote in her diary about her brother, William Herschel, the German-English astronomer and composer. Caroline Herschel assisted her brother in his astronomical work, and she became an accomplished astronomer and comet discoverer in her own right. She's remembered as a comet hunter. Two centuries ago, on this day, Caroline wrote, I had a dawn of hope that my brother might regain once more a little strength; for I have a [note] in my almanac of his walking with a firmer step than usual -- above three or four times the distance from the... house to his library in his garden, for the purpose [of gathering and eating] Raspberries with me; but I never saw the like again.   William Herschel died about six weeks later, at the age of eighty-four. This year is the 200th anniversary of his death. Forty-one years earlier, on the night of 13 March 1781, William, with his homemade 6.2-inch reflecting telescope, discovered a new planet: Uranus. He initially thought it was "either a Nebulous star or perhaps a comet," and he named it George - Georgium Sidus (the Georgian Planet) - in honor of his patron, King George III. But surprisingly, the name did not stick, and George was renamed Uranus after the Greek god of the sky. Uranus is the first and only planet (thus far) discovered from a backyard garden. Today William and Caroline's Georgian townhouse and garden at 19 New King Street in Bath is the home of the lovely Herschel Museum. You can stand in the beautiful garden where William and Caroline spent so much time together gazing at the stars. William's son, John, became an accomplished astronomer and a polymath. He was involved in many other sciences, including botany.    1912 On this day, Mrs. F. E. Griggs of Raymond, Nebraska, began selling her surplus tomatoes. She shared the story of her garden with nurseryman Henry Field for publication in his book, The Book of a Thousand Gardens. Mrs. Griggs, who sold over $50 worth of tomatoes from 135 plants, wrote,  I had worked very hard for four months, and my garden was a very nice one and I couldn't see it die, so I started in to carry water (a long distance up a 30-foot creek bank). But it did not rain until fall. ...[and] the fall rains washed the fertilier down and they again set the largest crop I ever saw.  I pruned my vines severely and also pinched off all tomatoes that would be gnarled or poor shape, as soon as could see them, and it paid well in the nice crop of smooth ones I got.  The first were ripe July 4th, and on July 8th we were already oversupplied and began selling the surplus to people who had no gardens at all this year. They were 15c per lb. at first, and people said, "Too dear to eat", so my first ones went at 3c.  Later, as they acquired a taste for them, I got 5c, then 7½c and 10c [per pound], but always 3c to 5c under the town retail price, although I had to deliver them. On Aug. 26th they dropped to 5c, as people were just getting a few scattered ones of their own, and up to that date I had sold $50.00 worth. They were then coming so fast that I had to go on the jump almost to dispose of them, and in my haste one foot slipped from the buggy step and I fell, breaking and badly crushing [my leg] just above the ankle.  So that ended my garden. Not entirely [though], for my heart was [in the garden] and the following week with this fractured limb in plaster cast, I crawled down to [the garden] and gathered [tomatoes] ... I am still unable to walk much.  I then had to give the patch away,