After the Revolutionary War, large fields of row crops became more common. Crops such as cotton and tobacco produced a great deal of wealth for plantation owners. Enslaved Africans often had to grow their own food and utilized many plants that were little known to Europeans until later. Crops such as peanuts and sweet potatoes originated in South America. They were either brought to the Carolinas or discovered there by African populations and then adopted, in part, because of their similarity to native African crops including yams (similar to sweet potatoes) and bambara nut (similar to peanuts).
Plants in this section may include:
Dill
Anethum graveolens
Dill is an herb that was originally native to the Mediterranean, but which slowly made its way around the word with colonists as a spice and medicinal plant. As a medicinal plant dill’s most noteworthy property is its ability to settle troubled stomachs. Dill was probably introduced to the colonies with some of its earliest settlers. Though never a major crop in the Carolinas, it is regularly grown in backyard gardens and is known to be a wonderful companion crop because of its ability to attract parasitic and predatory insects which feed on crop pests.
Mulberry
Morus rubra and Morus alba
The two species of mulberry commonly found in the United States include the white mulberry, Morus alba, which was introduced from Asia and the native red mulberry, Morus rubra. There are also hybrids between these two species such as the famous ‘Hicks’ mulberry. Though not currently a common fruit in the United States, both species of mulberry and ‘Hicks’ in particular were popular fruits in the early 19th century.
Mulberries are self fertile and, although they prefer to be planted with other mulberries, a single tree will produce a crop without other mulberries around. They are easy to grow, but are considered quite messy by most people because of the large amount of fruit which they will drop at the end of the fruiting season.
Besides their value as fruiting trees, mulberries also have a second economic function that few people are aware of. Mulberry (both white and red) foliage is the primary food source for silkworms. Over the course of the past 400 years or so individuals have repeatedly tried to grow silkworms in the Carolinas, most famously at the close of the Civil War, freed slaves attempted to revitalize the silk industry in Fairfield County near the center of South Carolina. Unfortunately this venture fell through.
Mulberries are sweet and tasty and are best eaten fresh or made into jams and jellies. These fruits also lend themselves to use in muffins and pies. This is truly one of the best underutilized fruits out there.
Tobacco
Nicotiana tabacum
Tobacco is a member of the Nightshade family (along with potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, eggplants and others) and is cultivated to harvest the leaves, which are then cured and processed into cigarettes, cigars, or chewing tobacco. It is an annual plant, which can grow between 3 and 10 feet tall, with leaves that can reach a length of over 1 foot.
Early uses of tobacco by Native tribes were considered sacred. It was often chewed for medicinal purposes, as a stimulant, and as a means to allow people to connect with the spiritual world. As English colonists discovered its powerful properties, high demand for tobacco in Britain and the fertile soils of the new lands made it an important driver of English settlement, and eventually the Atlantic slave trade in the North American colonies in the late 16th century. The earliest species of tobacco exported to Britain was Nicotiana rustica, but after the Spanish shared the milder Nicotiana tabacum seeds with colonists, a new era of the cash crop was born.
The tobacco plantations of the 1600’s first relied on indentured servitude for labor to meet European demands, but as the practice diminished, the colonists began participating in the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, enslaving Africans and also Native Americans. This new form of labor was critical to fueling the colonial economy, making tobacco the most lucrative cash crop for decades.
While cotton and rice plantations were the dominant agriculture of the Deep South where heat and humidity were best suited for those crops, tobacco was largely grown in Virginia and North Carolina for their warm, drier climates. It was primarily used as snuff or pipe tobacco until the 19th century when the cigarette rose in popularity. Small farms in the region depended on the demand. Cigarette use by soldiers in the Civil War created a national demand.
The development of an automatic cigarette rolling machine in 1884 revolutionized the industry and guaranteed profits for farmers as manufacturers, mostly in North Carolina, built larger facilities to accommodate demand. By 1911, 5 major companies dominated the market for decades until the mid-1960’s when the Surgeon General warned of potential health risks of tobacco use and demand began to decline.
Upland Cotton, Sea Island Cotton
Gossypium hirsutum
Though there are many different types of cotton which originate from Asia, Africa and South America. Mexican Cotton, Gossypium hirsutum is the most widely planted variety of cotton in the world today and supplies more than 90% of the demand for this fabric. The earliest evidence of humans using this native species can be traced to Mexico and the West Indies around 3,500 BCE. Today, this species is grown most prominently in the American South and Southwest.
In addition to using the fibers for textile production, the high-protein cotton-seed oil is pressed from the seeds and widely used in margarine, cooking oils, and other food products.
The plant, which grows shrub-like to nearly 5 feet, is generally grown as an annual. Each plant produces two kinds of branches. The fertile branch produces large yellow or white cup-shaped flowers and yields the cotton boll fruit, which contains the fibers and seeds. The vegetative branches do not produce flowers or fruit. It tolerates a range of well-drained soils and thrives in the full sun of the hot American South.
Once known as “King Cotton” in the 1700 and 1800s, its production as a cash crop across the American Deep South was a driver of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. As cotton plantations grew and global demand for this finer variety of cotton increased, the need for manual laborers grew in proportion. Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin, a machine which extracts seeds from cotton fiber, in 1793. Though history indicates that his primary goal was increasing productivity, he also hoped that this invention would help to stamp out slavery by reducing the need for manual labor. In a cruel twist of fate, Whitney’s invention had exactly the opposite effect.
Watermelon
Citrullus lanatus
The sweet melon is native to southwest Africa, but remains found more than 5000 years ago suggest that it may have been first domesticated in northeastern Africa and Egypt. It is technically in the Cucurbitaceae, or squash, family, but its distinct leaves and flower formation set it apart from its relatives. It is easily cultivated from seed and its hairy, vining stems can grow up to 10’, winding along the ground. The flowers are largely monoecious, meaning both male and female flowers occurring on the same plant, and are naturally self- and cross-pollinated by bees. During the intense heat of summer, the flowers give way to spherical or oval, often striped, fruits that can weigh between 6 and 50 pounds, depending on the cultivar. Each melon has a tough outer rind and a sweet, juicy edible flesh.
As with many foods that are synonymous with an American South heritage, watermelon was brought to North America through the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Because of their ability to thrive in poor soil and a hot climate, watermelons were often planted by the enslaved in their gardens along with field peas, sweet potato, and sesame. The melon rinds could be preserved in syrup, pickled, and sometimes added with apples to pies.
In the late 1800s and 1900s watermelons were bred for thicker rinds so that they could be more easily shipped. Prior to that watermelons were selected for their sweetness. One of the best known of these thin skinned but super sweet melons was the ‘Bradford’.
Wheat
Triticum aestivum
Wheat was an introduction to the New World from Europe. Settlers expected wheat to take off all across North America, but it really only flourished in milder temperatures. Because of this, in the Carolinas wheat is usually planted in the fall, and is harvested in the early spring. Despite its failure to flourish in the South, wheat was considered an important crop because of the desire of those with a great deal of wealth to have their bread made out of wheat flour. It was a mark of affluence. Today most wheat that is grown in the Carolinas is grown for animal consumption.
Wheat is actually a type of grass which is wind pollinated. Its seeds are called kernels, and these are what is ground into flour. One million kernels of wheat make up a bushel, which weighs about 60 pounds and produces about 90 loaves of whole wheat bread.
Next: Civil War to WWI
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