Men acquainted with the building of flood gates, or "trunks," as they are called, and dams, built and put these in to protect the openings of the ditches from the incoming tides.
Through their committees each man was instructed to split out palings from the fallen timber and fence in a large garden, so that it should be secure from his chickens and pigs. Nails and tools were likewise furnished for this work, frows, crosscut saws, axes, hatchets, hammers, etc.
As the season advanced, in February, the planting time, seedmen of New York and Philadelphia, as well as other cities, hearing of the success of these amateur gardeners through the winter season, sent generously from their stores, and the Congressmen of several districts joined them in directing the seeds in the Agricultural Department apportioned for their distribution to be sent direct to the Red Cross for the Sea Islanders. Again these committeemen, as formerly, were called and instructed in the manner of preparing the ground and planting _each kind_ of seed, with instructions to communicate what he had learned to his neighbors, as before. As these people had never before made gardens, even the leading business men and merchants laughed at the idea of attempting to "make truck gardeners out of these people." Notwithstanding this, Miss Barton bought nine hundred bushels of Early Rose potatoes. Women were set at work carefully cutting these into one or two eyes each for planting. This provision also removed any possible temptation, with their scant provisions, to use them at once for food.
The seed corn, like everything else in all this vicinity, had been destroyed by the storm. Again Miss Barton sent to the Ohio valley for two carloads of seed corn. This was distributed over the entire storm-swept section, and many of these people at harvest time said that if the storm had brought them nothing but this new variety of seed corn, it would have been a blessing, for their crop was double what it had ever been before.
In order to preserve the quality of the famed "sea island cotton," which is a special variety, with long, silky fibre, used for making thread, the furnishing of this seed was given to the care of the local cotton merchants, who were directly interested in preserving its high standard and market value.