GOOD SEEDS PRODUCED GREAT HERBS, VEGGIES & FLOWERS

Imagine what your garden might look like if you couldn’t go to the store for packets of seeds, or flip through a catalog filled with seeds from across the globe. Imagine the only things you could plant were whatever you managed to save last year, or what your neighbor had shared with you. Now, imagine if that garden, planted with whatever seeds you could get, was your main source of food for the year.

It might have contained two kinds of beans, one string bean and one for shelling dried beans – or maybe only one kind for both. You may have been able to raise two peppers, one hot and one sweet – as long as the seeds your cousin Back East sent sprouted for you. You could plant plenty of red-kernel Indian corn that came from the Native village a day’s hike away. That would cover roasting ears, cornmeal, and chicken scratch, and maybe some fodder for the milk cow. Forget about tomatoes, though, because they might be poisonous, so it would be better not to risk it. That left cabbage, turnips, onions, and possibly potatoes – one variety, or maybe two, of each.

That was the state of most colonial and frontier gardens. The list of plants grown would also change from place to place. One