Native vs Introduced Garden Fruits and Vegetables in the US

A huge number of tomatoes are grown in home gardens in the US every year. Thousands of tons are grown commercially and many of these are actually exported. And yet, tomatoes are not native to the US. They originally grew in South America. Wild tomatoes still grow in South America, but the fruits are tiny and usually smaller than those of cherry tomatoes.

Lettuce is very common in US gardens, but it isn't native. Lettuce was first purposely grown by the Egyptians, long before the birth of Jesus. I wrote an article about prickly lettuce or wild lettuce, which is the plant that lettuce comes from and which isn't native but has become naturalized in the US.

Both hot peppers like chili peppers and mild ones are also South American imports. There are a lot more varieties than there initially were, but peppers are still not native to the US.

Potatoes originally came from South America, too. The indigenous people in South America ate potatoes and fed them to their animals. However, they didn't become popular in the US until they were taken from South America to Europe and the popularity in Europe grew. In particular, the Irish grew a lot of potatoes and the huge influx of Irish immigrants, ironically partly due to the Irish potato famine, cemented the popularity of potatoes in the US.

Both beets and chard are exactly the same species of plant and neither is native to the US. Both came from a plant called the sea beet. They were purposely grown first in the Mediterranean area. We commonly call chard "Swiss chard", but chard was grown long before the use spread through Europe and Switzerland.

Although we don't know who the first people were who grew radishes, they aren't native to the US. We do know that they were being grown and eaten in Europe before the time of the Romans. In the US, radishes are normally only eaten raw.

Carrots that are grown and eaten today were originally wild carrots of southwest Asia. Both domesticated and wild carrots (Queen Anne's Lace) grow in the US now, but neither are native. Queen Anne's Lace is an invasive and noxious weed in many places in the US now.

Corn comes from maize and in fact, in many places, corn is actually called maize. Maize isn't native to the US, though. It was originally grown in South America and some areas of southern Mexico. Today, most of the corn grown in the US is either made into ethanol or fed to livestock.

There are many species of beans, but none of them are native to the US. Some species are native to Asia and Europe and some are native to South America. 

Peas are native to the area around the Mediterranean and again aren't native to the US. Wild peas still grow in the countries around the Med. It is sort of interesting to note that the US commercially produces about 500 million pounds of peas yearly and North Dakota leads the nation in pea production, followed by Washington and Montana.