If you're growing all of your own food, early spring is the hungry time, when your stores are running low and you're craving fresh vegetables.  Over the three and a half years that we've been farming our land, we've slowly learned that sun exposure is the most important factor in early spring gardens, and early American colonists came to the same conclusion.  Whenever possible, they planted their gardens on south-facing slopes to jumpstart the gardening season, and hilled up soil on the north sides of rows to trap even more heat and block the wind.

Modern organic growers put down black plastic around their strawberries to heat the ground and promote earlier crops.  Once again, the early colonists were way ahead of us.  They saved charcoal dust from their fires and spread it on the soil around early crops to absorb the sun's heat.

New England's growing season is short, so it was especially important to start some seedlings inside.  Instead of the modern plastic growing trays, colonists dug sod in the fall, stored the clods of earth and grass in their cellars over the winter, then planted their seedlings in the inverted sod clumps the next spring.  This worked especially well for crops that didn't like to be transplanted --- the colonists could simply bury the entire hunk of sod into the garden where it merged with the soil and protected the seedling's roots.

Pest control was pretty minimal at the time.  One technique I'd like to try is placing fresh onion skins on cucumber hills to control squash bugs.  Another of the settlers' methods --- scattering ashes on plants to control flea beetles and other insects --- is still common today.  If you're having a problem with slugs or snails, why not do as the Plymouth colonists did and scatter cabbage leaves between your plants, then collect the sluggy leaves in the early morning and burn them?

My ebook about Appalachian ecology can be read online for free, or bought in a print-friendly version.