The medieval vegetable patch was very rich with root crops, leafy greens, and fruit trees as well as beans and different types of grass plants. It was important to find the oldest botanical species or varieties of vegetables so as to propose what people really ate in the past. The most common pumpkin was bottle-shaped (Lagenaria siceraria) and the most widespread bean was the black-eyed pea (Vigna unguiculata) or the hyacinth bean (Dolichos Lablab), but also melons and watermelons played a key role in veggie patches. The most common were root vegetables, including the earthnut (Bunium bulbocastanum), the salsify (Tragopogon porrifolius), and leafy greens like arugula (Eruca sativa), calendula (Calendula officinalis), and purslane (Portulaca oleracea), easy to find even growing wildly. An entire section of the garden was devoted to crop rotation with beans and grains occupying the majority of fields in the countryside; these grains included oat (Avena sativa), barley (Oryza sativa), and rye (Secale cereale), and beans included lupins (Lupinus albus), wild peas (Lathyrus sativus), and broad beans (Vicia faba).
