" Of the nearly 500 colonists living at Jamestown in the fall of 1609 , only 60 remained by the natural spring of 1610 . This period is remembered as " the starve meter " . The come after year persist colonist redoubled their efforts to develop enough food . They had only the seeds of English plants that were not well adapted to the heat of the Virginia summertime .

kin of New England were well entrenched in growing winter squash , which became known by the colonists as " vegetable marrow " . The first Thanksgiving featured various hard scale squash and pumpkins raise by the Indians . The colonist quickly saw the wiseness in tame a plant that was native to the area yielding fruit that could be stash away in a root cellar for much of the winter .

The good way to get a tangible prison term feel for how the first settler grew their own food is to visit Colonial Williamsburg . This living history museum at Williamsburg , Virginia shows visitors just how these gardens were mark up to fertilize a family . This was done without garden centers and computer hardware stores , using only what they could incur in their New World home .

Proven Winners - #1 Plant Brand

This book offers a glimpse of what it was like to garden on a colonial homestead and explains how we can engage some 18th - century practice in today ’s gardens .

Gardening in the 18th century has changed little from how we cultivate constituent backyard vegetables today . A sincerely inspirational book lays it out for us from paling fences to crops and cloche . Vegetable Gardening : The Colonial Williamsburg Way(Amazon , $ 25 ) , by Wesley Greene help you get a real feel for what it was like to garden on a rude homestead . The title page state " 18th Century Methods for Today ’s Organic Gardeners " proves little has change here except that we thankfully do n’t have to tote bucket of piss to keep our industrial plant animated . The natural simplicity of these former American gardens created with small more than natural grime , animal manures and works materials reminds us we are a nation rooted in agriculture , merge the Old World plants with New World natives for the rich heritage on earth .

Images from the record show how garden were watered by early settler .

Squash_0
Garden Design
Calimesa, CA

Squash_0
Garden Design
Calimesa, CA

Squash_0
Garden Design
Calimesa, CA