Thomas Tusser, Five hundreth points of good husbandry
The 32nd entry in“The Table,” placed near the beginning of Tusser’s Five hundreth points, is “Marches abstract, at the end thereof, the names of the seedes herbes, flowers & rootes than to be sowen or set, unles the time be otherwise noted by expresse wordes” (A2v). Tusser’s text was an immediate success, published seven times in as many years and indeed almost regularly or annually as an almanac would have been. Yet unlike a traditional almanacs, which predicted conditions for a given year (say, 1578) in what was often a near-prophetic mode, Tusser’s Five hundreth points articulates practices organized around persistent, prospective calendar. Rather than a momentary—if prophetic—mode, Tusser’s text models agricultural practices for indefinite future use.