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Article: Gardening
- Article from:
- Dictionary of American History
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2003 The Gale Group Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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GARDENING
GARDENING.
By a.d. 1000, native peoples on the American continent had developed a system of planting corn, beans, and squash together. Beans enriched the soil with nitrogen, corn provided a trellis for the bean to climb, and squash vines grew to cover the ground and discourage weeds. The effectiveness of this method was not surpassed until state agricultural stations were established in the last decades of the nineteenth century. Indigenous peoples also sowed wild rice, and cultivated sun-flowers, roses, cotton, tobacco, and potatoes. The survival of many pioneering Europeans owed much to Native Americans who shared their harvests and their agricultural knowledge.
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