These committeemen were carefully instructed and directed how to prepare the ground and plant the various kinds of new seeds which were put up in packages for families, which he would take home and in turn instruct his people what to do with them; in this way lettuce, onions, and garden peas were planted, and in a few weeks these plantings began to supply them with a vegetable food to go along with their grits and meat. From among those who could handle tools, building committees were formed whose duty it was to repair and rebuild the houses, first, of widows and the infirm, and afterward, their own. These committees were furnished with nails, lumber, and the necessary hardware; tools were purchased, marked with the insignia, and loaned until their work should be finished, when they would be returned and another committee would take these same tools and begin work on another plantation. At the same time a foreman for ditching would be elected from a plantation, who would select his force of men, clean out the wells and ditch the lands of his plantation, working jointly with adjoining plantations, so that the ditching of one piece of land should not flood his neighbor. Spades, shovels, axes, hoes, mattocks, were furnished these men, who, when their work was finished, would return the tools to headquarters for others to take and work with in the same way. 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.