What Did Jamestown Grow and How They Farmed It

Jamestown colonists grew corn (maize), beans, squash, peas, tobacco, and European cereals like wheat and oats. Corn was the most important survival crop from day one, beans and squash were close behind, and tobacco eventually became the cash crop that defined the colony's economy. If you are wondering what the southern colonies grow in general, Jamestown's experience is a useful nearby comparison point, since tobacco and other warm-climate crops mattered as the economy shifted. That is the short answer. The longer answer explains why those specific crops, how the colonists actually grew them, and how the whole agricultural picture shifted dramatically between 1607 and the 1620s.

The crops Jamestown actually grew

Archaeological and documentary evidence from James Fort points to a consistent set of crops. Archaeobotanical analysis of feature fill from three James Fort periods identified maize (Zea mays), common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris), and wheat or oats (Triticum/Avena) directly in the soil record. Analysis of the 1611 well at the fort also turned up maize cob fragments, squash fragments, and common bean remains, plus a single tobacco seed. That physical evidence lines up well with what the written sources describe.

• Corn (maize): the primary staple, present from the first planting season in 1607 and confirmed by both pollen and whole cobs recovered from the fort site
• Beans (common bean, Phaseolus vulgaris): grown alongside corn, with cotyledons recovered from early fort contexts
• Squash: fragments found in the 1611 well, consistent with its role in Native American polyculture alongside corn and beans
• Peas: referenced in the NPS historical record as one of the 'Indian crops of peas, corn, and beans' that matured and helped relieve early subsistence pressure
• Wheat and oats: European cereals the colonists attempted to grow; identified in archaeobotanical analysis, though they were far less reliable in the Virginia climate than Native crops
• Tobacco: experimentally grown by John Rolfe by 1612, spreading beyond the fort by 1617 and rapidly becoming the dominant commercial crop

Two distinct types of corn have been identified at the James Fort site: Eastern eight-row flint corn and Southern Dent (also called Gourdseed or Shoepeg) corn. Both were varieties already known to Virginia Indians before English contact, which tells you something important about where the colonists got their seed and their growing knowledge.

How they actually grew those crops

The colonists did not arrive with a ready-made farming operation. George Percy's 1607 account records that the settlers sowed most of their corn on two 'Mountaines' (elevated ground near the fort) shortly after completing the fort in June 1607. That timing is late by any standard, and the first harvests reflected it. Archaeologists have also found planting furrow evidence inside and around the fort area, physical proof that ground preparation was happening in the earliest years and that it aligns with the documentary record.

The cultivation methods drew heavily on what the Powhatan Confederacy was already doing. Native corn varieties were planted in hills, not rows, often intercropped with beans and squash in the 'Three Sisters' style. Beans fix nitrogen and benefit the corn; squash shades the ground and reduces weeds. The colonists, most of whom had no farming background at all, learned this approach by necessity. European plowing techniques were less suited to Virginia's soil and climate than Native mound-hill methods, at least in the early years.

Labor was the constant problem. Many of the original settlers were gentlemen or craftsmen, not farmers. The Virginia Company's response was strict governance. Between 1609 and 1612, leaders imposed martial law under the 'Lawes Divine, Morall and Martiall,' which compelled colonists to work specified tasks. Ralph Hamor later credited the restoration of that discipline with preventing the colony's total ruin. Governor Thomas Dale also introduced a system of semi-private land grants around 1615, giving individual colonists small plots and a personal stake in their own harvests, which improved productivity meaningfully.

Seasons, soil, and what fit Virginia's conditions

Jamestown sits at roughly 37 degrees north latitude in the tidewater region of Virginia, with hot, humid summers, mild winters, and a growing season of roughly 200 days. That climate is well-suited to corn, beans, squash, and tobacco, all of which thrive with heat and adequate moisture. It is not particularly well-suited to European small grains like wheat, which prefer cooler, drier conditions during grain fill. That mismatch explains why wheat and oats show up in the archaeological record but never became reliable staples at Jamestown the way they were in England.

Corn planting in Virginia follows a spring window, typically after the last frost in late March to mid-April, with harvest in late summer to early fall. Because the colonists arrived and built their fort through the spring and early summer of 1607, the June planting Percy describes was already pushing the seasonal limits, which hurt those first yields. Later years saw more organized spring planting aligned with the actual growing window. Tobacco, once Rolfe refined his hybrid using Caribbean seed around 1612, fit the Virginia summer beautifully, maturing in approximately 90 to 120 days and cured through the fall.

Why those crops and not others

Survival drove the early crop choices. Corn and beans were already growing across the region, and the Powhatan had refined varieties adapted to local soils and rainfall over generations. The colonists could obtain seed, observe cultivation methods, and trade for food when harvests failed. Trying to start entirely from scratch with European crops in an unfamiliar environment would have been far more dangerous, and the record shows they leaned on Native crops precisely because European cereals underperformed.

Tobacco's rise was about trade and profit, not food security. John Rolfe is credited with crossing Caribbean tobacco varieties with local Nicotiana rustica to produce a milder, more commercially viable leaf. Virginia's clay-loam tidewater soils, combined with the long hot growing season and adequate rainfall, turned out to be nearly ideal for tobacco curing quality. By 1617, a contemporary account described the colonists dispersed about and 'planting tobacco' across the wider region, not just within the fort. That geographic spread signaled the shift from survival farming to commercial agriculture.

Where the farming happened inside and around the settlement

Early planting happened on elevated ground close to the original triangular fort, where the colonists could work while remaining close to their defensive perimeter. Percy's reference to planting on 'two Mountaines' points to cleared upland spots near the fort that offered better drainage than the low marsh ground surrounding much of Jamestown Island. The furrow evidence found archaeologically inside and adjacent to the fort supports this picture of small, closely held garden plots in the earliest years.

As the population grew and governance stabilized, farming expanded outward. Dale's semi-private land grants around 1615 pushed cultivation beyond the immediate fort area onto individual household plots. By the late 1610s, tobacco cultivation had spread well beyond Jamestown Island itself, with planters claiming land along the James River and its tributaries wherever cleared, well-drained soil was available. The settlement shifted from a defended compound with a kitchen garden to an agricultural colony radiating outward along waterways.

How Jamestown farming changed from 1607 to the 1620s

The shift from subsistence to commercial agriculture happened faster than most people expect. Within ten years of the 1607 founding, tobacco had moved from a single experimenter's plot to a colony-wide preoccupation. The food crop infrastructure, particularly corn and beans, did not disappear, but it increasingly played a supporting role rather than the starring one. That same tobacco-driven expansion created growing land and labor pressures that defined Virginia agriculture for the next two centuries.

Misconceptions worth clearing up

The biggest misconception is projecting the later Virginia plantation model backwards onto early Jamestown. The image of vast tobacco fields worked by enslaved labor belongs to a later period. In 1607 to 1615, Jamestown was a struggling fort where people were mostly trying not to starve. Tobacco did not dominate until the 1610s, and the large-scale enslaved labor system did not take hold in Virginia until the second half of the 1600s. Early Jamestown farming was small, desperate, and heavily dependent on Native crops and knowledge.

A second misconception is that European crops like wheat were central to Jamestown's food supply. They were tried, and archaeobotanical analysis does confirm their presence, but they were unreliable. The crops that actually kept people alive were the Native staples: corn, beans, squash, and peas. These Native staples were also the core crops grown by the Delaware colony. To answer what the New England colonies grew, look at which crops could reliably handle local winters and soil across the region corn, beans, squash, and peas. These were the main crops that also shaped farming across the middle colonies during the colonial era. European cereals mattered more once agriculture and infrastructure matured later in the 1600s.

A third issue is treating what was 'attempted' as equivalent to what was 'reliably produced.' Colonists tried many things that failed. The archaeological record and the survival accounts together show which crops actually made it into the food supply consistently. Cross-checking documentary sources like Percy's 1607 observations, the NPS historical handbook, and the archaeobotanical feature analysis from Historic Jamestowne gives you three different lines of evidence pointing to the same short crop list.

How to verify this for your own research

1. Start with Historic Jamestowne's online collections, particularly the archaeobotanical analysis reports, which document plant remains from specific dated contexts and give you physical evidence rather than just narrative accounts
2. Read George Percy's 1607 account ('Observations by Master George Percy') as a primary source for what colonists planted and when in that first year
3. Use the NPS Historical Handbook for Jamestown for a solid overview that connects agricultural history to governance and labor changes
4. Cross-reference the Encyclopedia Virginia entry on the 'Lawes Divine, Morall and Martiall' to understand how labor organization shaped who was farming and under what conditions
5. For tobacco specifically, the NPS Historic Jamestowne tobacco history page traces Rolfe's work from 1612 forward and is well-sourced
6. If you are mapping crop patterns by region and period, compare Jamestown's profile against what other colonial settlements were growing: the Southern Colonies more broadly, the Middle Colonies, and the New England Colonies all show distinctly different crop mixes driven by climate and soil differences

For students writing history papers, the key is to anchor your claims to either primary accounts (Percy, Hamor, Rolfe's letters) or to the archaeobotanical reports, which are peer-reviewed and physically grounded. For gardeners or historical reenactors trying to recreate a Jamestown-era planting, focus on Eastern flint corn, common beans, squash, and peas. Those four crops, grown in the Native hill-planting style, are the closest thing to what actually fed the colony in its first decade.