We pre-sprouted Havasupai sunflower (that have an interesting history you can read about in our last post here). We planted the pre-sprouted seeds on the edges of our two corn quadrants. The sunflowers are currently drying, at which point, I’ll post a count of how many seeds [achenes] per plant. The following are a series…
At the start of growing season, we planted sunflowers on the edges of our corn quadrants as part of our plot. They weren’t just any sunflowers, but Havasupai sunflowers. Havasupai sunflowers have an interesting place in the recent, as well as past history of sunflowers. The Havasupai have an interesting tradition of combining agriculture with…
If you missed the first post in the interesting history of agriculture amongst the native Americans of the Great Plains — and the records of Buffalo Bird Woman and the Hidatsa red bean — check it out here. After that, here our some first looks at our hidatsa red bean harvest. Following Buffalo Bird…
As we mentioned in the last post on Hopi Blue Corn, the quadrant that was not pre-sprouted (quadrant 2) did very poorly in comparison to the quadrant that was pre-sprouted (quadrant 1). At the end of the season, before the first predicted freeze (which unfortunately came very early) we tallied the results of the corn…
It’s been awhile! Here’s a reminder of what we are trying with our Hopi blue corn experiment. As you’ll recall, Hopi corn is usually planted a foot deep so that it can get enough moisture to germinate without irrigation. However, we are not planting exactly in the traditional way. Using a raised garden of amended…
The Hopi have selected and cultivated certain corn for so long has been successful because it was planted deep enough to find moisture in the dry climate of Northern Arizona and germinate; traditional varieties of Hopi corn were planted a foot deep. The assumption of this project is that this is the best way to…
Our next zea mays is Hopi Blue Corn. But which Hopi Blue? There are actually at least four different types of Hopi varieties of blue corn, but you wouldn’t know that from the common label of ‘Hopi Blue.’
The Hopi are known to have the most longstanding progressive agricultural history in the Southwest, and possibly, the country. Historically, a little north of where the Hopi Reservation is today, the descendents of Hopi lived in well carved canyons that allowed them to live in dry spots and cliff dwellings while making use of the…
The next zea mays in our project is a beautiful multi colored desert corn from the Ute Reservation in northeast Utah. It’s interesting as it’s the northern-most adaptation of desert corn, as well as thought to be related to the ancient cave corn found in the region.
The first corn selected for our project is a Zuni blue flour corn first collected in 1954. Archeology suggests that for 3,000 to 4,000 years, the Zuni have found ways to grow corn in a semi-arid climate with soils that are naturally alkaline and without much organic material. How did the Zuni manage to thrive…
The last phaseolus selection for our project has a history that’s stirred the imagination of many an armchair archaeologist. When I chose this bean, all I knew was that it was originally collected from the Zuni Pueblo, New Mexico in 1935. When it arrived, its purple color with black lines uncannily resembled a bean behind…
Ethnobiologists don’t unanimously agree on whether the common bean, phasoleus vulgaris, originated in one place or two, like the Lima, but they are certain that — like other beans, squash, and corn — it came from the southern hemisphere of America, a long, long time ago.
