Many masters allowed enslaved people to work garden patches near their dwellings for personal consumption, to supplement limited rations, or to sell surplus produce to acquire luxury items such as fish hooks or farm tools. Enslaved people cultivated these gardens when not laboring for their masters, often by moonlight or on rare days off. They grew vegetables including beans, peas, greens, squash, yams, corn, melons, and potatoes, mixed with gourds used as dippers and containers. Fences protected the plots from free-roaming pigs, chickens, and cattle, and in the Southeast garden fences included split oak palings, brush, wattle, post and board, post and rail, hedges, and split rail.