Before the abolition of slavery in the Americas, most often slave owners distributed a niggardly amount of rations as a way of reducing their labor cost. Enslaved people kept subsistence gardens to obtain food needed for good nutrition and herbal medicines. Esteban Montejo (1860-1973) says it was those small gardens “that saved many slaves” from starvation “providing them real nourishment” thus most had a garden plot that they maintained when they had the space to do so. They raised food for their tables and sold what they raised on Sunday market days when they did not have to work for their masters.