At Thanksgiving, one's thoughts naturally turn to stuffing - not yourself, but the turkey.

Some ingredients for stuffing can be reaped from the garden. Here in western South Dakota, you can set aside a little portion of the garden next year as a stuffing garden.

Beyond bread crumbs

The bread and butter of any stuffing is something starchy, often breadcrumbs. Forget about growing those - though conceivably you could buy wheat "berries" at a health food store, plant them next spring, harvest the grain when the plants dry down, thresh and winnow out the berries, grind them into flour, make the flour into bread, then let the bread go stale and pound it into crumbs. Whew!

Or you could get fancy and use wild rice as the starchy base of your stuffing. But you'll need a permanently wet spot - 6 inches of slowly running water is ideal. Plant the seed of this self-sowing annual sometime between now and early spring. Here in the arid Black Hills, we'll never get that kind of moisture.

Something nutty

If you decide to grow your own chestnuts, figure at least five years will elapse before you can harvest something, because chestnuts grow on trees. Ev Merritt, an experienced gardener who tills the soil and tends the plants at Cottonwood Acres in Rapid City, says she wouldn't even attempt to grow a chestnut tree in our locale, and doesn't even know what would make an appropriate substitute unless perhaps pine nuts, which also aren't grown in these parts.

"There's nothing to substitute for chestnuts that we can grow here," Merritt said. "Seems something like onions would be better."

But chestnut stuffing can be delicious, and does seem most authentic because wild turkeys once stuffed themselves with wild chestnuts. So why not plant a chestnut tree and patiently wait? As they say in China, "The longest journey begins with the first step."

And speaking of China, Chinese chestnuts are resistant to the blight that decimated native American chestnuts. Some hybrids, such as Layeroka, Sleeping Giant and Mossberger, have genes of Chinese and other Asian species and also resist blight. (Trees are available from specialty nurseries such as www.burntridgenursery.com and www.nolinrivernursery.com.) You'll need two different varieties for cross-pollination.

On to the vegetable garden

While you are waiting for chestnuts, make stuffing based on one of the more quickly grown starchy vegetables. Potatoes, for instance. And those we can grow locally, no problem.

The best potatoes for making stuffing will be those that are dry and mealy.

That also describes what you want when choosing a winter squash variety to grow as a base for stuffing. Chestnut and Sweet Mama are two dryish squashes. One authentic stuffing would be based on nu nu, a golfball-size, starchy tuber also called makoosit or groundnut (Apios americana).

Native Americans harvested and ate nu nu, and it was one of the foods crucial in helping the Pilgrims survive their first winters in Massachusetts. Be careful, however: Nu nu can spread like a weed. The plants do sport decorative and sweetly fragrant, lilac-colored flowers.

Flavor highlights

Seasonings for stuffing are a lot easier to grow, and Merritt has a plan for success with these.

Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme come to mind, as do summer savory and sweet marjoram. Merritt says all these can be started indoors in a window garden and set out when the danger of frost has passed.

"I start herbs around March and April, then transplant to a larger herb garden or container," she said.

Her herb garden generally goes outside by the middle of May, but she cautions that we have had frost even on the first of June.

"That's rare, but I put herbs outside the middle of May or first of June, with an eye to the weather," she said. "I like container gardening, because if there is storm or hail you can put them in, then put them back out when the sun comes out again."

Sage and thyme are perennials, each also available in designer flavors: pineapple sage and caraway thyme, for example.

"Sage grows really well," Merritt said, "but it gets really big. It should go in the actual garden," rather than in a porch pot.

Rosemary is a perennial where it survives winters outdoors. Or it can happily spend its life in a pot kept indoors in winter to provide pretty greenery, piney fragrance and savory snippings.

Finally, round out the flavors and bulk with other pickings from the vegetable garden. Onion, garlic, celery and carrots will be mainstays, but vegetables such as parsnips and garlic can make special - and powerful - contributions.

"Garlic should be planted in the fall," Merritt said. So there is time to get that going while there's no snow on the ground.

And parsnips? What are parsnips?

"I don't have good luck, but they can be grown here," Merritt said. "They are so good. If you stir fry parsnips in butter, it's just like candy."