Many masters allowed their slaves to work a garden patch near their dwellings for personal consumption, to supplement limited rations, or to sell surplus produce to acquire "luxury" items like fish hooks or farm tools. Slaves cultivated gardens when not laboring for their masters, often by moonlight or on rare days off. They grew vegetables such as beans, peas, greens, squash, yams, corn, melons and potatoes, co-mingled with gourds for use as dippers and containers. Fences protected garden plots from free-roaming pigs, chickens, and cattle. The fence around this slave garden is made with split oak palings. In the Southeast, other types of garden fences included, brush, wattle, post and board, post and rail, hedges and split rail.
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