Some aspects of Minoan civilization feel very modern: big cities with paved roads, aqueducts, and enclosed sewer systems. But there were no supermarkets back in the Bronze Age, no international shipping of out-of-season produce.

I've written before about Minoan cooking methods and typical foods. I've even shared a grocery list of sorts, a compilation of all the foods we have evidence for - foods the Minoans cooked and ate.

Where did the Minoans get these different kinds of foods? They grew them! City dwellers probably didn't have extensive gardens, though they may have grown herbs and flowers (more on the herbs next time!). Instead, they bought their ingredients at local markets, just like urbanites do today. In contrast, people who lived outside the cities, on small homesteads or large farms, would have grown their own.

What did they grow?

Let's start with what most households and small farmsteads probably didn't grow: grain. Even back in the Bronze Age, grain was a specialist crop. There would have been large farms that grew fields of emmer and einkorn wheat, barley, and rye. Grain - whole, not ground into flour - would have been for sale in the marketplace of every village, town, and city.

You would buy your grain then take it home and grind it into flour as you needed it to make bread. People probably also ground it coarsely to make porridge. For those who could afford it, there would also have been ready-made bread available from bakers in the cities and towns.

But what about garden vegetables? People grew those, just like a lot of folx still do today. No potatoes, though, because those are native to South America and wouldn't make their way to Europe until many centuries after the end of Minoan civilization.

The same goes for tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant - vegetables we think of today as common in Mediterranean cuisine and that a lot of folx like to grow in home gardens today. But they're native to the Americas [Edit: Eggplant is native to India, Africa, or southeast Asia - there is still argument about this] and were unavailable in Europe back in the Bronze Age.

So what did the Minoans grow, if their gardens weren't full of tomatoes and peppers?

A typical Minoan garden would probably include some staples like chickpeas, lentils, and fava beans. These provide protein and nutrients, and because they're legumes, they also fix nitrogen in the soil, helping to support other crops and improve the soil. Along with grain, they were the basic plant foods of the ancient Mediterranean.

Onions and garlic would have been high on the priority list. They're pantry staples and the base of many delicious dishes. Onions were so important around the Mediterranean, people painted them in tombs down in Egypt. It's likely the Minoans ate them roasted, as a separate vegetable, as well as putting them in other dishes like stews.

Some other possibilities include bulb fennel (finocchio), greens like chicory and endive, radishes, purslane, and even okra. Grape hyacinth bulbs are still a popular food on Crete, often served pickled, so people probably grew them in gardens as well as gathering them from the hillsides.

So if you're looking to recreate a Minoan kitchen garden, there are lots of possibilities, most of them easy to grow in any temperate climate. Happy gardening!