One of the difficult questions that I thought of while sitting through cookery classes at Gulf Wars, was

Has anybody made a visual summary (a MAP) of who ate what, and where?

I still want an answer to this.  Particularly because I want to take advantage of millennia of human agricultural experience in solving the gastronomic and color questions – I want to know what to plant in my garden.

As I’m still on a "How to Be A Gardener" high, and the Meyer lemons have finally set on my particular tree, I want more progress in the garden.  I know what I’m planting now – but how shall I tweak the list?

My garden is at 30dN latitude.  That’s like Cairo.  Fortunately, I’m on a treed street, and the ambient humidity is fairly high.  However, the summer sun is harsh, and the soil tends to alkaline and is quite sandy, with few nutrients.  Rosemary is native here, as is prickly pear.  I have to nurse mint along.  We get a handful of freezes in the winter – but snow will never last long nor stick.

I have discovered, through trial and error, that the labels on the plants err in the direction of too much sun.  "Full sun" here is six hours.  Morning sun only.  I finally got tomatoes to live when I put them in 5 gallon buckets on the north side of my house, directly under the watering system.

So I’m thinking – I can’t possibly be the first veg gardener or dye gardener in existence to deal with this climate.  Who did what before me, and who wrote about it, so I can stand on their shoulders, please?  I’ve posted to the SCA-Herbalist Yahoo!Group, and hopefully I’ll get some good guidance.

UPDATE: I did!  Check this out:  Sturtevant’s Edible Plants , all 775 pages available on the web –

"I am collecting the material for writing a Flora Dietica, or a history of food plants, with
especial reference to the distribution and variation of cultivated plants.  My inquiries thus far embrace 1,185 genera, and (including probably some synonyms) 3,087 species of food plants." … "Geographical botany, acclimatization through variations, the increase of varieties with the increase of knowledge and the spread of civilization, what man has
done and what man can hope to do in modifying vegetable growth to his use and support—is a subject of great interest as well as importance…"

I’ve also been referred to Brother Cadfaels Herb Garden, and to The Little Herb Encyclopedia  by Jack Ritchason.