Vegetables did not rank highly on the menu and therefore people made no great efforts to cultivate vegetables. Women raised them in the farm gardens. They cultivated mostly carrots, radishes, celery, peas, beans, onions, tomatoes and garlic. Lettuce and white cabbage for personal use was also planted, rarely red cabbage.
Each vegetable garden had licorice and horseradish plants. People also raised pumpkins, and the regular pumpkins were fed to cows and pigs. Kabatschki pumpkins were the only ones raised for pies. Sunflowers were not grown in the vegetable gardens but in the cornfields, with the corn.

In spite of the large growing areas, 1,000 to 2,000 square meters per farm, vegetables rarely exceeded the amount used at home.

Vegetable areas in the field were called Baschtan or Bastan and they produced mostly watermelons, which ripened in August and September. Yields were sometimes considerable and farmers brought home large loads.

Image 54: Wagon full of watermelons

Some people also planted sugar cane in their Bastans. Items not grown there were bought at vegetable gardens.

Vegetable gardens were professional operations and Krasna had two of them. There, vegetables were grown on a large scale, especially ones that required lots of water which were not home grown by the farmers, such as white cabbage, paprika, called Pefferschode, aubergines, tomatoes, onions and others. Water from the Kogälnik was used versus a complicated watering system connected to all the fields.

Note: Mostly Bulgarians raised the vegetables. They were expert vegetable farmers, who leased their land and sold their vegetables in the village and surrounding marketplaces.
See also 3.3, The Kogälnik, for location and watering system for the vegetable gardens.