Gardens for workers?

I dedicated Slave Labor in the Capital to "Leslie's vegetables." I wrote much of the final manuscript in our cabin in the woods and while I wrote, she tended the gardens nearby. I had fresh lettuce, peas, green beans, beet greens, and lima beans and tomatoes as summer wore on. Despite working in an expanse of fertile land, the hired slaves and other workers subsisted on what amounted to sea rations, salted meats and Indian meal.

I think as they worked from dawn to dusk, as much as freedom the hired slaves yearned for garden vegetables. Freedom was an impossibility but not vegetables. The overseer of labors who got the same meals as the slaves protested http://capitalslaves.blogspot.com/2014/11/overseer-smallwood-complains-about-meals.html

But he could ask for higher wages and could buy vegetables. Slaves had no spending money. In his 1792 description of the labor force and its needs, L'Enfant recognized the need for workers gardens even as he planned for more varied rations.

In 1794 with the prospect of the supposed wealthy speculators Greenleaf, Morris and Nicholson promising annuals payments and loans to the commissioners, the commissioners looked to expand their operations but were still mindful of trying to control their labor costs. As Greenleaf prepared to go to Holland to package loans for the syndicate and the commissioners, the commissioners asked him to get indentured stone cutters for the city as well as common labors. Then they sent another letter with a second thought. Stone cutters might want to bring their families in which case the commissioners thought they and the syndicate should designate a portion of the thousands of undeveloped lots as an area for "garden grounds"  northeast of Massachusetts Avenue. Nothing came of this, no indentured stone cutters came and as the letter suggests no sooner did the commissioners think it proper to accommodate families, then they suggested to Greenleaf that they really preferred single men.

As far as I know, none of the men working for them were offered "garden grounds."  The commissioners knew they needed workers but didn't want them to grow comfortable in a city to be  peopled with the gentlemen who would lead the country.