During his life there, he brought out a pioneering manual on crop rotation and elaborated an innovative system of pomology which included more than 600 cultivars of apple and pear.

Together with Nikolay Novikov, he edited the journals The Village Resident (1778–79) and The Magazine of Economics (1780–89), which brought him the income of 400 roubles a year, a very considerable sum for the time.

Thomas Newlin wrote of him:Andrey Timofeevich Bolotov stands out as the most prolific writer that Russia has ever produced, penning, by one estimate, the equivalent of some 350 volumes of written material—memoirs, diaries, letters, poems, plays, criticism, and translations, as well as a vast array of other works of literary, philosophical, religious, didactic, scientific, agricultural, and historical natures—over the course of his long and quietly astonishing career.

During his lifetime Bolotov achieved a modest measure of recognition as a writer on agricultural and horticultural issues; he is best known today, however, for his massive [memoirs].

Because only a relatively small portion of what he wrote found its way into print[...] Bolotov, despite his phenomenal productivity and his considerable originality as a writer, ended up having virtually no influence on the development of Russian belle-lettres.